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Steel beam craned through Washington Co. Courthouse window for construction project

3 min read
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A mobile crane that hoisted pieces of a nearly 4-ton steel beam through a window into the Washington County Courthouse made for a “surreal” sight for onlookers earlier this week.

Crews spent both Monday and Tuesday nights lifting three separate sections of a 144-foot-long steel beam using the crane parked on West Beau Street in Washington to gingerly move the pieces into the courthouse as part of the $2.6 million construction project to add a seventh courtroom.

“It is amazing, and surreal is a good word for it,” said Court Administrator Patrick Grimm, who witnessed some of the work while leaving the county’s Law Day celebration at the courthouse Monday night.

Photo courtesy of Trent Carlson

Courtesy of Trent Carlson

Construction workers move one section of a steel beam into the Washington County Courthouse on Monday night so it can be installed in the ceiling to give the new courtroom structural stability.

The beams were hoisted through a northern-facing window in what was formerly the Register of Wills office, which is being converted into the new courtroom, where workers from MultiMetal Inc. of Greensburg assembled them and installed the beam in the ceiling to give the room structural stability. Scaffolding and support beams have filled the room over the past few months while construction crews removed two towering vaults in the office that once stored marriage licenses and wills. The large beam will allow for a more open space for the courtroom that is expected to be able to seat 50 to 60 people in the gallery and have a maximum occupancy of 90.

“It’s quite a change,” Grimm said of how work on the project is coming along since it began in January. “It’s quite the construction achievement to put that together.”

Trent Carlson, who is vice president of StoneMile Group, which is the general contractor for the project, said it has been a rewarding job for his Cecil Township-based company, especially with the intricate process of getting the massive beam inside the courthouse.

“It’s definitely a unique project in the sense of the means and methods of how the construction needs to happen to be able to get the beams in place due to their size and the restricted access to the site,” Carlson said.

Workers didn’t have enough room to bring a machine into the courthouse to maneuver the beam sections after they were hoisted inside, so they laid metal plates on the room’s floor to disburse the load and used a large cart to manually move the pieces into place. Two other smaller support beams will run perpendicular with the main structural beam, which weighs more than 7,600 pounds.

“It’s a very, very large beam. Just the complexity of it,” Carlson said.

Construction is still on pace for the courtroom to be ready some time this summer, and the judge’s chambers and office area, which is in the prothonotary’s former office, has drywall up as it gets closer to completion.

Carlson said his construction crews are appreciative of the opportunity to convert a section of the courthouse – which opened to the public in 1900 – into a modern courtroom that keeps the historic charm of the building.

“It’s definitely a job we’re proud of and proud to be a part of,” Carlson said. “Not only the historic nature of the courthouse, but the future history we’re creating.”

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