I want to thank you for the great job your crew did aboard the USS Constellation. The lead paint stabilization project presented us with a couple of big problems. Being a museum, which relies on admissions for most of our funding, there was no way we could close the ship to visitors. ARC’s innovative construction of an airlock passage in the ship’s forward ladderway made it possible to have visitors on the upper decks while your team worked safely below.

Although the overall complexity of Constellation’s 1854 construction details was a huge challenge for ARC, you were able to remove the lead paint from areas that we thought were inaccessible. It is truly wonderful to have the entire ship open to the public again for the first time in a decade.