Hill House Fence Restoration Progress – Summer 2025
The Bangor Historical Society is in the process of completing the rehabilitation of the granite wall surrounding Hill House and restoring the fence that used to sit atop the wall. The wall restoration started in April 2024.
The fence is being restored in order to bring back the property’s historic presence, control traffic flow around the property, and to secure the property. In addition to the ornamental fence atop the granite perimeter walls along High and Union Streets, BHS has installed black chain link fencing along the tree line with our abutting neighbor on Union St. and across the back of the property.
BHS was awarded a grant of $60,000 from the City of Bangor, through its CDBG grant and you helped us get the rest of the way with your generous contributions for this project. BHS raised $82,000 for this project. The original estimate for the project was $70,000. Fortunately we had some funds for contingencies because we needed it.
The contingency was needed sadly, because BHS had to make the tough decision to take the basswood tree on High Street down because its roots are encroaching on the wall and were in the way of installing the new drainage system which was needed to ensure the sustainability of the restoration of the granite wall and the portico. We had hoped that we could just trim the roots but after consulting with an arborist it was concluded that just trimming the roots was not a solution. The risk of the tree weakening from substantial root trimming and it dying and potentially falling on the house is too great a risk to take. Protecting and Preserving Hill House is paramount in the BHS stewardship mission and hard choices sometimes have to be made.
Unfortunately when the High Street tree was taken down it was discovered that it was core rotted. The arborist then tested the Union Street basswood tree which was found to also be core rotted and had to be taken down. We are planning to replace the trees when new landscaping is done after the restorations are finished.
There was one more bump in the road on the fence project when it was discovered that we need to do a much bigger excavation and restoration of the end of the walkway in order to do the restoration for the fence’s front gate.
We are currently on hold to finish the fence installation because the final sections are involved in the portico restoration which is scheduled to begin this fall.