NORWAY — Hundreds of bricks have been laid this week along the foundation of the historic 1851 Gingerbread House on Main Street as restoration of the building continues.

Randy Wells of Wells & Son Masonry of Turner and his assistant, John Simon, have been working all week to lay the bricks on the Gingerbread House foundation that Wells built last September using about 500 concrete blocks.

“It’s a nice old building,” he said. “We’re going to make it nicer.”

The bricks, handmade in Auburn by the Morin Brick Co., were baked two times to give them a raspberry color, said Wells, who has been in the masonry business for 44 years.

Pat Shearman of the Gingerbread House Task Force said that although the group hoped to use the original bricks, which were salvaged from the foundation and chimneys when the building was moved last year, their condition was too poor for reuse.

Nine courses of bricks 2 feet high are being laid on the foundation of the three-story building that measures 17 feet wide in the rear, 29 feet wide in the front and 88 feet long.

In June 2011, James G. Merry Building Movers of Scarborough moved the Gingerbread House from its original site behind the Advertiser-Democrat Block at the corner of Pikes Hill and Main Street to its new home 950 feet up Main Street by Butters Park.

On July 24, the Gingerbread House Task Force will present the recently developed Preservation Plan for the Gingerbread House. According to information on the Norway Historical Society website, the 33-page report was researched and written by Margaret Gaertner of the firm Barba & Wheelock Architecture in Portland. She will present a summary of the three-phase, sequenced plan for preservation and repair.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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