Weathervane Wednesday ~ A restored weathervane on a renovated historic building

Weathervane Wednesday is an on-going series of photographs I post every week.  I started out by publishing only weather vanes from the Londonderry area, but now I've been finding interesting weather vanes from all over New England.  Sometimes these weather vanes are whimsical, or historical, but all are very unique.  Often, my readers tip me off to some very special and unusual weather vanes.

Today's weather vane is from somewhere in Massachusetts.

Do you know the location of weather vane #281?  Scroll down to see the answer...

These images were sent to me by a reader, Bill Olsen of Plymouth, Massachusetts, known locally as "America's Hometown".  They are of the restored weather vane from on top of the 1820 Old Court House in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that is being renovated into the new Plymouth Town Hall.  He told me that they belonged to Janice Drew, a local photographer.  After writing to Janice for her permission, she sent me the JPG files of these images to use for Weathervane Wednesday.  This is the first time I have borrowed photos from a professional photographer for the blog, but since this is a local New England story, and a historical building, I made an exception in this case.

This American Eagle weathervane was made in 1820, the year the courthouse opened. It was recently restored and re-gilded with  23.75 karat gold leaf by the artist Penelope Austin on Nantucket island.  The weathervane has survived a fire, the Blizzard of 1978 and Hurricane Gloria when it was stolen after being blown down from the roof.  It was put up on top of the cupola again at a ceremony on September 10th.  The courthouse is being renovated and the project is expected to be completed by 2020, the 400th anniversary of the town of Plymouth.

Photography by Janice Drew    http://janice-drew.pixels.com/ 

A story about the weathervane restoration project:
http://www.wickedlocal.com/news/20160914/1820-courthouse-weathervane-returns-to-plymouth  

A detailed history of the Plymouth 1820 Court House (six pages):
http://www.plymouthredevelopment.org/1820/history/history1.html  

Click here to see the entire series of Weathervane Wednesday posts!

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To Cite/Link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Weathervane Wednesday ~ A restored weathervane on a renovated historic building", Nutfield Genealogy, posted  October 19, 2016,
(http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/10/weathervane-wednesday-restored.html: accessed [access date]).