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Rebuilding Notre Dame’s fire-ravaged roof transports workers back to
Middle Ages
By Jeffrey Schaeffer
Associated Press
•
May 30, 2023 at 7:33 am

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A crane lifts a part of the new roof of the Notre Dame de Paris
cathedral, May 25, 2023, near Angers, western France.
A crane lifts a part of the new roof of the Notre Dame de Paris
cathedral, May 25, 2023, near Angers, western France. (Jeffrey Schaeffer/AP)

SAINT-LAURENT-DE-LA-PLAINE, France — If time travel was possible,
medieval carpenters would surely be amazed to see how woodworking
techniques they pioneered in building Notre Dame Cathedral more than 800
years ago are being used again today to rebuild the world-famous
monument’s fire-ravaged roof.

Certainly the reverse is true for the modern-day carpenters using
medieval-era skills. Working with hand axes to fashion hundreds of tons
of oak beams for the framework of Notre Dame’s new roof has, for them,
been like rewinding time. It’s given them a new appreciation of their
predecessors’ handiwork that pushed the architectural envelope back in
the 13th century.

“It’s a little mind-bending sometimes,” says Peter Henrikson, one of the
carpenters. He says there are times when he’s whacking mallet on chisel
that he finds himself thinking about medieval counterparts who were
cutting “basically the same joint 900 years ago.”

“It’s fascinating,” he says. “We probably are in some ways thinking the
same things.”

The use of hand tools to rebuild the roof that flames turned into ashes
in 2019 is a deliberate, considered choice, especially since power tools
would undoubtedly have done the work more quickly. The aim is to pay
tribute to the astounding craftsmanship of the cathedral’s original
builders and to ensure that the centuries-old art of hand-fashioning
wood lives on.

“We want to restore this cathedral as it was built in the Middle Ages,”
says Jean-Louis Georgelin, the retired French Army general who is
overseeing the reconstruction.

“It is a way to be faithful to the (handiwork) of all the people who
built all the extraordinary monuments in France.”

Facing a tight deadline to reopen the cathedral by December 2024,
carpenters and architects are also using computer design and other
modern technologies to speed the reconstruction. Computers were used in
the drawing of detailed plans for carpenters, to help ensure that their
hand-chiseled beams fit together perfectly.

“Traditional carpenters had a lot of that in their head,” Henrikson
notes. It’s “pretty amazing to think about how they did this with what
they had, the tools and technology that they had at the time.”

The 61-year-old American is from Grand Marais, Minnesota. The bulk of
the other artisans working on the timber frame are French.

The roof reconstruction hit an important milestone in May, when large
parts of the new timber frame were assembled and erected at a workshop
in the Loire Valley, in western France.

The dry run assured architects that the frame is fit for purpose. The
next time it is put together will be atop the cathedral. Unlike in
medieval times, it will be trucked into Paris and lifted by mechanical
crane into position. Some 1,200 trees have been felled for the work.

“The objective we had was to restore to its original condition the
wooden frame structure that disappeared during the fire of April 15,
2019,” says architect Remi Fromont, who did detailed drawings of the
original frame in 2012.

The rebuilt frame “is the same wooden frame structure of the 13th
century,” he says. “We have exactly the same material: oak. We have the
same tools, with the same axes that were used, exactly the same tools.
We have the same know-how. And soon, it will return to its same place.”

“It is,” he adds, “a real resurrection.”

AP correspondent John Leicester in Paris contributed.