Ironwork protection requests ignored

Historical panel: DCR remiss on stolen bridge parts

The Massachusetts Historical Commission asked the state last year to label and lock up the decorative cast-iron trim that was temporarily removed from the century-old Longfellow Bridge.

But the Department of Conservation and Recreation - which did label the metal parts - decided to store them in a gated outdoor work yard, rebuffing the agency's request to lock them up, as well as a subsequent plea that the metal segments be protected from the weather under a tarp or temporary enclosure.

Now the ironwork is gone, presumably melted down, after allegedly being sold as scrap metal by two DCR employees.

"We tried to reach out to them. Our role here is as protector but we don't actually have physical custody," said Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who serves as chairman of the historical commission. "It's really shocking, first of all, the crime that was alleged. But beyond that, the lack of supervision that seems to be in place as well."

Middlesex County prosecutors alleged this week that the employees used a state dump truck to haul the ironwork to an Everett scrap yard. The men allegedly got just over $12,000 for the metal, which could cost the state $500,000 to replace.

"This is outrageous, and I'm personally outraged, and I know people at DCR are outraged," said DCR Commissioner Richard K. Sullivan Jr. "But DCR has had a good history here of preserving our cultural and historic assets and clearly the Longfellow is one of those."

According to a Galvin spokesman, the commission initially asked DCR to confirm that it was keeping the material in a locked, weather-tight location. After learning that the agency planned to store the ironwork at a work yard, the commission "requested that the panels be covered, at a minimum, with tarps or some kind of temporary enclosure to protect them," said Brian S. McNiff, Galvin's spokesman.

But the DCR never responded, McNiff said.

Wendy Fox, DCR spokeswoman, said an engineer had been talking with the historical commission but disagreed with the idea of using a tarp, fearing that it would only trap moisture on metal that was accustomed to exposure to the elements.

DCR was not worried about locking up the iron work because it was kept deep in a gated state yard, said Fox.

"It was gated. It was fenced in. It was in an out-of-the-way back corner by the engineering building. It was not an easy place to get to," she said.

It is unclear whether more careful preservation measures might have saved the Longfellow pieces. One of the accused employees was a manager who had full access to the yard, Sullivan noted.

The historical commission typically would consult with a state agency before repairs were made to a historically significant structure such as the Longfellow, which lies within the Charles River Basin Historical District and will berenovated with the use of federal funds. However, repairs have been done to the bridge on an emergency basis since last August.

The commission offered input on the interim repairs, but was not overseeing the removal of the ironwork because it was a temporary fix that was not intended to change the appearance of the bridge, Fox said.

The cast-iron segments, which the agency discovered missing from a DCR yard in Stoneham last week, were removed from one side of the bridge last year when they were loose and the bridge was in need of repairs. The iron segments were also extremely heavy - roughly 300 pounds each - and the state soon imposed weight restrictions on traffic crossing the deteriorating span. The Longfellow is among the state's structurally deficient bridges and DCR has been conducting emergency repairs since last summer, when the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota raised concerns about bridge integrity nationwide.

The Longfellow is named for poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and is often called the Salt and Pepper bridge because of its shaker-like towers.

"This bridge is a true jewel of our historic area. It's almost an icon for the area, just because of its placement over the river and its design," said Galvin. "To have this savaged and desecrated this way by an inside job for public employees is just ridiculous. There has to be a greater appreciation of what we have."

The Boston Preservation Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group, had also urged DCR to protect the panels with care during interim repairs. "It was something that we were watching because you always worry that something like this, the worst-case scenario, could happen," said Sarah D. Kelly, executive director of the alliance.

"Obviously, this is a really, really unfortunate situation and just a really sad one because it's an irrecoverable loss,"

Her organization wants to see the coping restored with the bridge rehabilitation.

"The elements that were lost were an integral part of the bridge, and we would like to see them restored. The question is how is that going to happen and who is going to pay for it," Kelly said.