The eagle was treated worse, it seems, by the passage of time.

First placed on the roof in 1825, it took a beating over time from the sun, wind and rain, which left it cracked and rotted. The eagle's original head was taken off a half-century ago and put in storage, and its tail was replaced more recently.

In 2003, National Park Service workers took the big bird off the roof for good, replacing it with a fiberglass replica. Over the past three years, it has been restored by a team led by National Park Service historic architect David Bittermann and conservator Carol Warner.

"The head was a tour de force of conservation," said David Kayser, the curator at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site.

"The thing I'm most pleased with is when we put on the original head, it was such a good match," said Warner, who did the detail work.

The goal of the restoration was to rediscover the original carvings of Joseph True, a famous Salem woodcarver who made the eagle out of Eastern white pine. The Park Service still has his original bill for $50.

The restoration - which cost more than $20,000 - involved cleaning, scraping, stripping, peeling, filling, fabricating, casting, screwing, painting and gilding. The regilding and other work was done by Skylight Studios in Woburn.

This month, a National Park Service team has been reassembling the eagle, which was in 16 pieces and weighs nearly 400 pounds.

When work is completed later this fall, the eagle will go on display back inside the Custom House, a floor below its former perch. It will be open to the public.

A not-so Golden Eagle?

The golden eagle atop the Salem Custom House has not always been gold. A brief glimpse of its changing colors.

1825 - Brown and white

1870s - Gold leafing

1940s - Dull bronze as wartime camouflage

1950s - Regilded gold