Four Vermont Upper Valley communities were the recent recipients of state historic preservation grants to address structural needs of historic building in their towns.
The grants — given to Chelsea, Bethel, Norwich and Weathersfield from the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation — are around $9,500 each, except for Chelsea, which received $5,400, and require a 100 percent match from the town.
In Weathersfield, the money will be used to restore the first floor windows in the 1879 portion of the former Perkinsville School. Town Manager Ed Morris said the restoration would allow the windows, which are original, to be opened and closed more easily.
The school has been closed for almost 10 years and the newer additions built in the mid to late 1900s, were torn down several years ago. Morris said the Weathersfield Food Shelf is allowed to operate there now but until a handicap accessible ramp is built, full use of the building will not be permitted. Voters will be asked at Town Meeting this year to borrow $30,000 over three years for the ramp.
In 2015, voters approved borrowing $70,000 to make other building repairs including removing mold from the basement, installing a new heating system and addressing code issues.
Once the work is complete, the building will be available as multipurpose meeting facility with possibly a reading room with books borrowed from the Proctor Library in Ascutney.
In Norwich, the Root District Game Club received $9,300 to repair the concrete foundation and address drainage problem at the Root School, a one-room school house built in 1937.
“I breathed a big sigh of relief when I learned we got the grant,” said game club president Brian Cook. “The state grant gives us the confidence we can do this work in 2017.”
The school closed in 1945 and seven years later, was deeded to a group of hunters, Cook said.
During the latter half of the 20th century, the building was used a community space, until it was closed in the early 2000s because of the foundation and drainage problems.
“It is a terrific space, with a stage and piano,” Cook said. “We hope to have it fixed up and put new life in there.”
The cost of the project, which will require lifting the schoolhouse off the foundation, removing what is there and rebuilding it, could be anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000, though in-kind donations could lower that estimate. Cook said the state grant puts them at their fundraising goal to match a $40,000 donation from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation.
“We have the match in hand,” he said. “We have been working on fundraising a long time.”
Cook believes state support for the competitive grant would not have been possible without the local support that included a $5,000 grant from Mascoma Savings Bank and $3,000 from the Norwich Women’s Club, in addition to $1,000 from The Country School Association of America and $1,000 from the Historic New England.
“I am confident these other four grants helped demonstrate to the State the wide range of support for this building, ranging from the local to the national, and strengthened our application immeasurably,” Cook said in an email Sunday.
The 1892 Bethel Town Hall clock tower metal sheathing will be scraped and repainted with help from a $9,500 historic preservation grant.
Bethel Town Manager Keith Arlund said the town has the required match in the town hall rehabilitation account but as to when the work will be done, he could not say.
“We had a couple of bids for background but we have to develop a scope of work and zero in on what we can do,” Arlund said. “I’d like to see the work done this summer.”
Arlund said the plan is to remove as much of the old paint as possible down to the bare metal of the zinc sheathing before repainting it. He said the sheathing is located above the brick and below the wood in the tower.
Chelsea’s grant is for the 1894 town hall and library building. It will pay for repair of “three structural piers in the basement and complete flashing repairs around the building’s two chimneys and a roof vent,” the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation said in a newsletter announcing the grants.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com
