preacher and now a Temple of Israel
member, and her team assessed the
building’s needs, and then set about
meeting them: from restoring the front
door and exterior details, to carefully
handling each jewel-toned pane of
stained-glass, SDI tackled the daunting
task one detail at a time.
“I love saving old buildings,” Pancoe
says. “I mean, how many people can take
care of something that has issues, and
parameters? We had the best time dis-covering
things.”
Fiberglass was used to restore and
preserve many of the temple’s key com-ponents,
beginning with its Moorish
Fourth Street façade.
“We took out the gorgeous bell-shaped
windows and cast the horizontal
windowsills, and the molds, all with
fiberglass,” Pancoe explains.
The exterior of the temple is made of
brick, extending into the foyer, nearly
16 inches thick.
“We took out each rectangle of
original brick, near the front window,”
Pancoe says, “and the mortar would just
blow in your face.”
Covered with masonry, the exterior
façade is scored to resemble large blocks
of stone, a convention, that Tetterson
says, can also be found on other land-mark
structures built during the same
era, Thalian Hall for one.
In the sanctuary, and cresting over
the front entrance, are the temple’s
centuries-old stained-glass. The glass
itself comes from France, the red, yellow
and blue panes are Bavarian colors
arranged in Moorish design. For the
painstaking task of preserving the
original stained-glass, Pancoe enlisted
Mildred Spivey, a stained-glass expert,
to assist in the meticulous handling of
the sanctuary’s windows.
“It took us two to three weeks to do
each stained-glass window,” Pancoe says.
Each eight-foot tall window was removed
in whole and taken to the SDI ware-house
located in Wilmington’s Delgado
neighborhood.
“We created skinny little bathtubs and
put vinegar in them, and then soaked
each window for about a week,” Pancoe
30
WBM december 2013
says. “We invented our own water pick
and removed the cement off the little
diamond-shaped panes of glass, and
cleaned each one individually.”
Broken glass panes were saved, and
instead of replacing them, Spivey soldered
the spaces in between, as well as both
sides of the windows.
“To take a window out — and then
put it back, is amazing,” Pancoe says.
Today, the temple is one of fewer than
30 congregations to endure in its original
19th century structure, and history is writ
throughout. During the restoration, SDI
preserved the Temple’s original elements,
and artifacts, many of which are still
intact. Among them is the original heart
pine door.
“We took the doors apart, literally,
every piece of wood,” Pancoe explains,
“and we noticed the doorknob was
moved higher — because people grew
taller over the centuries.”
The design over the front doors
features a crescent moon and a single
star set in side a circular field of blue
surrounded by panes of purple, green
and turquoise glass.
Painted over the sanctuary doors is
the inscription: “Blessed is he Who
cometh in the name of the Lord,” in
intricately-rendered gold-leaf writing,
However, the Temple is neither the only,
nor the first, Wilmington place of
worship to welcome the reverent with
these exact words. While the inscription
was originally intended for the temple,
the blessing was accidentally painted
over the sanctuary doors at neighboring
St. James Church. Realizing the mistake,
the craftsman then painted the same words
over the temple’s archway; ultimately,
both church and temple decided to keep
the hand-painted blessings.
Continuing through the sanctuary, the
eye is drawn toward the Temple’s origi-nal
chandelier, a work of art from the
Turkish Revival tradition, dating back to
the late 18th/early 19th century. Just as
the celebration of Hanukkah remembers
the gift of light that enabled ancient Jews
to rebuild the Great Temple, which the
Syrians had destroyed, through a miracu-lous,
eight-day supply of oil to light their
Top: Scaffolding surrounds one of two
onion-domed towers at the onset of the
Temple of Israel’s extensive restoration
that began June 2010 and concluded
September 2011. Center: Mildred Spivey
and Ken Burbridge reinforce the lead came
in one of the original four foot by eight foot
stained-glass windows at SDI. Bottom: With
a wire brush, Spivey details the stained-glass
panels during one of the window
restoration’s final steps.