Pictured is the bell tower at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Jamestown. Work to repair water damage inside the tower is nearing completion. Photo by the Rev. Luke Fodor

The ringing of familiar bells in downtown Jamestown is sure to be music to the ears of officials at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in what has been a years-long restoration effort.

Work on the 410 N. Main St. church is expected to formally wrap up by the end of the year. The project, to repair years worth of water damage to the church’s iconic bell tower, began over the summer.

“It is now beautifully in place; no stones will come tumbling off,” the Rev. Luke Fodor said of the bell tower. “There is now steel-enforced everything, so things are really tied together in a way that it wasn’t before.”

He added, “It’s much more solid now than even when it was constructed the first time.”

Issues with the bell tower have been well-documented. A major flaw in its construction 130 years ago has allowed water to flow down to the church’s basement, creating a potentially serious safety hazard to the tower that is situated just off a busy North Main Street.

“Because (the walls) aren’t flush, water just flows down all the way inside the building,” Fodor said in late June as scaffolding around the bell tower was put into place.

Fodor arrived at the church in 2013, shortly after a lightning strike damaged a corner of the bell tower. A followup inspection revealed how much damage had been caused by water flowing between the tower’s interior brick wall and the stone facade.

“My first week on the job they came to fix it and I found myself thrown into this project,” Fodor said over the summer. “I’ve been scrambling ever since to kind of get it to a point where it’s not life-endangering and it will stand for another 130 years.”

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the restoration project had an estimated price tag of $1.6 million. That cost nearly doubled after 2020, forcing church officials to scale back the planned work by core drilling through the outside of the wall instead of the inside and to only repoint about half of the bell tower.

Nonetheless, the cost far exceeded the church’s cash reserves, grants and the parish’s fundraising efforts. In the end, St. Luke’s took out a $1 million loan, which Fodor said requires a $102,000 in financing per year for the next 15 years.

With Melissa Uber at Quick Solutions leading the effort, a community appeal for financial support was recently launched. Donations totaling about $10,000 have come back so far.

“It’s quite significant when you think about people who have no real connection to the parish themselves,” Fodor said of the donors, which totals about 50 and includes local businesses and organizations.

Fodor said the final bill for the latest work on the bell tower has not yet come in. He said St. Luke’s will continue to seek grant funding options.

But with a significant loan payment each year tied to the tower, Fodor said any major project that crops up at St. Luke’s will have to wait.

“There are other walls that are bowing, and just looking at them pains me, but at this point we can’t really take on more,” he said.