Beam, er, Sign Me Up: Residents Mark a New Piece of History [VIDEO]

While many historians and taxpayers were heartbroken to see the old Kimball and Millville schools demolished to make way for a new school on the same site, residents this week were able to offer their own historic mark.

The Concord School District used the alert phone system last week to let everyone connected to the various elementary schools in Concord know that they could come down to the construction sites of the new McAuliffe and Abbot-Downing Elementary schools and sign a steel girder beam. The beams were set up at the sites and community stakeholders were invited to grab a permanent marker and offer a John Hancock, a note, scribble, or even some words of wisdom.

Teachers, school officials, parents, and children have been coming by the sites to sign the beams all week, according to Matt Cashman, the director of Facilities and Planning for the Concord School District. By the afternoon of June 30, the McAuliffe beam was literally covered in ink.

Cashman called the beam signing an old tradition first started in Scandinavia where the last beam of any project was signed before installation, to commemorate all the hard work put into the construction of a building. He said workers would put a tree or a flag on the beam before it was sealed, so it would be visible to people at the site.

“It’s really interesting, if you get a look at some of the things people are writing on here,” he said. “Kids have signed it, past people who went to Kimball School, like these folks who were here in the ‘80s … there are kids that are going to be going here, there are kids that did go here, there are other folks who have been following this process along …”

Cashman said they wanted to deviate a little from the historic tradition of having construction workers sign the beam to let the school kids sign it too.

“We’re really building it for them,” he said.

Residents interested in signing the beams have until late in the afternoon on July 1 to do so.

At the old Kimball site, the beams are located at the Pleasant Street construction entrance, just off the intersection with Rumford Street. At the old Conant site, the beam is placed near the front door of the old school. Both beams will be installed on the new building sites next week and will be visible until later in the construction process, when the buildings are sealed.

“It will be visible for a period of time,” Cashman said, before being sealed by the façade of the building.

A beam for the new Mill Brook Elementary School will be set up for people to sign on July 6, according to Cashman. Any resident interested in signing that beam will have a week to do so.