We were asked to replace the front steps at the Congregational Church in Salisbury, CT, dating from 1800. There were originally a landing and two steps. As the road and sidewalk grade was elevated over the years the bottom step became submerged.

We cut away the sidewalk and used the best of the salvaged pieces at grade to create a shadow of the lost step. The new steps were sawn out of new quarried marble. We hand finished these steps in our shop.

I asked my friend Karin Sprague, a wonderful carver, to hand cut the date to match the original. We decided to add ‘2008’ on the side of the landing. Since we had the original ‘1800’ we had the ‘8’ and the ‘0’ for ‘2008’ but what about the ‘2’? Karin had a lot of 2’s in her books and so did I, but the carvers in the books were mostly from the Boston and Rhode Island areas. So we went across the street to the graveyard behind Town Hall and found a gravestone dated ‘1802’. How many stone carvers could there have been in Salisbury, CT? Must have been the guy. We called it THE ‘2’.