WESTFIELD – The City Council voted recently to keep to a Community Preservation Act project in the Legislative & Ordinance Committee for further review.
The council voted at its Sept. 5 session to hold a proposal to spend $25,000 to begin preservation work on the city’s last standing one-room schoolhouse, located in Wyben.
L&O Chairman Christopher Keefe said members of the committee have concerns about the total cost of preserving the West Farms Schoolhouse. The Community Preservation Commission has voted to fund $25,000 to repair the envelope of the building, built in 1862, to prevent further weather-related damage.
However, Keefe said, L&O members voted to hold the appropriation while a School Department financed structural assessment is completed. The School Department, which owns the building, has budgeted $4,000 to determine the scope of work needed to repair and preserve the wood-frame building.
Keefe said that he supports the preservation effort, but that members of his committee are “trying to get more detail.”
“It is the only one-room schoolhouse left in the city, so it is worth preserving, but the committee members are concerned that it could be a project with an open-ended cost,” Keefe said.
The Community Preservation Commission voted in July to allocate up to $25,000 to preserve the envelope of the “Little Red Schoolhouse” at the request of the Westfield Historical Commission. The building, now painted red, was originally whitewashed and could be returned to that color for historical purposes.
Historical Commission Chairwoman Kitt Milligan and Walter Fogg, who lives in the Wyben neighborhood on Russellville Road, gave an hour -long presentation at the CPC meeting on the city’s last one-room schoolhouse, which at one time served all of the children of the Wyben area until they went to high school.
The residents of Wyben purchased the property, on which the school stands today, in 1861 for $62.50, right after a mob, incited by an abolitionist speech, burned down the former schoolhouse.
The 30-by-22-foot building is currently owned by the School Department.
City Planner Jay Vinskey presented the request for the $25,000 to the CPC, explaining that those funds would be used “to stabilize the building’s roof and foundation,” but added that “preservation of a building of local significance” will require a greater investment of Community Preservation Act funding.
“It needs a lot more work than just stabilization. This is a commitment to fund more money for preservation,” Vinskey said. “There is hope that the stabilization can be done before next winter.”
Milligan said at the July CPC meeting that, because the building is a small wood and brick structure, the cost of preservation should not exceed $100,000 and that the project will have an educational component similar to the Dewey House on South Maple Street which is also currently being repaired with CPA funding.
“You will not have another opportunity like this in Westfield,” Fogg said. “If this building goes, there is nothing else to replace a Civil War structure.”
“The foundation is brick and needs to be reset,” he said. “The building was originally white with dark green trim because whitewash was the cheapest paint available. I hope you restore it to that original appearance.”
The City Council is slated to meet on Sept. 19 at in Room 403 of the Westwood Building located at 94 North Elm Street.
