Notre-Dame Paris Cathedral Replica Choir Truss #6 and 1:10 Scale Model

Fenimore Art Museum is proud to present a remarkable cultural and educational installation: a full-scale replica of Truss No. 6 from the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The truss will remain on public view on the museum’s back lawn overlooking Otsego Lake through September 8, 2025. The model is located in the Study Center of the Fenimore Art Museum.

This powerful installation is part of the Handshouse Studio: Notre-Dame Project, created in the wake of the 2019 fire that destroyed the roof of Notre-Dame de Paris. In a gesture of global solidarity, Massachusetts-based Handshouse Studio launched the initiative to reconstruct one of the cathedral’s medieval trusses using traditional methods.

With access to the hand-drawn survey of Notre-Dame’s timber roof structure by Rémi Fromont, France’s Chief Architect of Historic Monuments, Handshouse brought together historians, traditional carpenters, students, and preservationists to authentically reconstruct Choir Truss No. 6. The truss has since been exhibited at significant sites across the United States, including the National Mall in Washington, DC, and the Millennium Gate Museum in Atlanta, GA.

The replica truss on display at Fenimore Art Museum was built using historically accurate tools and methods by a collaborative team that included Central New York native Jackson DuBois, Executive Director of the Timber Framers Guild, and Michael Burrey, a renowned preservation carpenter and instructor at North Bennet Street School in Boston. Both artisans were later invited to France to contribute to the official reconstruction of the Notre-Dame spire, joining the French team at Asselin Inc.

The Handshouse full-scale truss installation, along with a 1:10 scale model of the medieval roof structure of Notre-Dame are on exhibition at the Fenimore Art Museum by the generous sponsorship of the Fernleigh Foundation and Nellie and Robert Gipson.