The Bostonian Society had an extra incentive to perform routine maintenance on the Old State House’s two rooftop statues: a rumored 113-year-old time capsule.
Conservator Robert Shure from Woburn’s Skylight Studios detected a shoe-sized copper box inside the head of the golden lion statue on Sept. 22. Shure will need at least a week to determine the best way to remove the capsule from the statue because it was soldered shut, according to Boston.com.
“We didn’t anticipate there would be such reaction to this project,” Brian LeMay, Executive Director and President of the Bostonian Society, told Boston.com. “But it is kind of a hoot that something like this has been hiding in plain sight for a hundred and some odd years.”
The Old State House placed the lion and a unicorn statue on the building’s east façade in 1901. They replaced similar wooden statues that had rotted. The Boston Globe reported on the new statues that year, along with the coppersmith who snuck in the box.
“The work of the coppersmith is completed, and one of the last things he did was to seal a copper box, which is placed in the head of the lion, and which contains contributions from state and city officials, the Boston daily newspapers, the name of the maker of the lion and unicorn, and others, which will prove interesting when the box is opened many years hence,” the Globe reporter wrote on Feb. 24, 1901.
The Bostonian Society will take suggestions on what items from this decade will go into a new capsule. It will be placed back in the lion’s head before it’s hoisted back onto the building next month. Suggestions can be sent to the email address heather@bostonhistory.org or via Twitter using hashtag #LionandUnicorn.
The Old State House is the oldest surving building in Boston, built in 1713, and is one of the landmarks on the Freedom Trail. The Bostonian Society maintains the building as a history museum.
