Fire the final straw in Notre Dame’s decades of neglect

In 2013, the cathedral hired Didier Dupuy and his son to scale the building and install lightning rods at different points, including its central spire. Gaping holes and cracks they discovered in the lead roofing shocked them. Just below was a dry and dusty space of timber beams, known as “the forest”, that had supported Notre Dame’s roof for centuries.

A job that was supposed to last a couple of weeks took three months as the duo performed emergency repairs before quitting in frustration.

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“We told them, you need professionals for this. We can weld, but it’s not pretty,” said Mr Dupuy, who removed 50kg of rust from the cross atop the spire. “The cross was in very bad shape.”

Last week, Notre Dame’s forest caught fire, incinerating the central spire and most of the cathedral’s roof in a disaster that dismayed the world. Notre Dame was a resplendent jewel of medieval architecture to most who saw it. On closer inspection, the cathedral was deteriorating from decades of neglect.

The flying buttresses that sustain its limestone walls were weakening. The spire, a fixture on the Paris skyline, was taking on water and rotting from the inside out.

Now investigators are looking into whether a project to renovate Notre Dame somehow led to the blaze, questioning those who were at the site in the hours before it broke out. Andre Finot, a spokesman for the cathedral, said workers were inside the forest that day, reinforcing the framing so they could finish erecting scaffolding.

The scaffold was designed to put little weight on the structure and not interfere with views of its flying buttresses. “The scaffolding adhered to the most incredible security norms,” Mr Finot said. The main contractor said the firm had followed all safety requirements. The inquiry is just beginning, with debris and damage complicating the task. Authorities say evidence so far points to an accident.

Behind the renovation was a push to line up funding and finish repairs in time for Paris to host the 2024 Olympics. The cathedral was counting on The Friends of Notre Dame, a group of American and French benefactors, to deliver funding and pressure the building’s owner, the French state, to make matching donations. Notre Dame doesn’t charge general admission, even though it is a tourist magnet that receives 30,000 daily visitors, more than the Eiffel Tower.

“For sure if the cathedral had been maintained regularly, with a higher level of funding, we would have avoided this,” said Michel Picaud, senior adviser to The Friends of Notre Dame.

Notre Dame battled decay over the long history of upheaval in France. Built in the 12th and 13th centuries, it was desecrated during the French Revolution and consigned to decrepitude when Victor Hugo wrote the novel that immortalised the cathedral.

In 1905, France passed a law that made all churches built before that year government property. State ownership of churches became increasingly burdensome as the government grew cash-strapped in more recent decades. Meanwhile, church attendance was falling.

“It’s a fact of life that many of these churches are in need of upkeep,” said David Sheppe, president of American Friends for the Preservation of Saint Germain des Pres, the city’s oldest church. “Passing the plate around, it may cover operational costs. It does not cover maintenance.”

To receive government funding for repairs, churches were required to go before a committee at the culture ministry. Notre Dame fundraisers said committee members told them the cathedral was one of nearly a hundred Gothic cathedrals across France the ministry had to look after.

The state pushed Notre Dame to follow the example set by other historic churches that charge an entrance fee. Monsignor Patrick Chauvet, rector of Notre Dame, pushed back, wary of turning a place of worship into another commercial tourist stop.

In 2015, US art historian Andrew Tallon climbed Notre Dame with a tripod-mounted laser to create a precise digital model of the building. He found grave structural weaknesses and decay. Gargoyles on the roof were propped up with plastic piping. Stone chunks of the roof had fallen off, ending up in a space one person involved with restoration called “a graveyard for architecture”.

A rooster-shaped weather vane that contained a thorn said to be from the crown Jesus wore at his crucifixion was broken. Cracks in the lead panels that coated the spire were allowing water to seep into its wood-frame core, testing the welding that held it together.

Most concerning were the flying buttresses, riblike supports made of limestone that prop up the walls, a medieval innovation that allowed the church to have towering walls with stained-glass windows. Acid from Paris’s air pollution was eating at the buttresses.

On April 15, a dozen workers from Le Bras Freres were working on the scaffolding.

The last one on the site left at 5.50pm, turning off the electricity, locking the door and giving the key to a church official in charge of the building, Mr Eskenazi said. About half an hour later, the first fire alarm went off.

– By VALENTINA POP, DREW HINSHAW and NICK KOSTOV – Wall Street Journal

This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.