Hotel debate at Historical Commission, with foes asking: Will Great Barrington sink to ‘low-end’ tourism?

Great Barrington — At a sparsely attended Historical Commission meeting last night (November 16) in the State Street Fire Station several residents opposed to razing the former Searles Middle and High School in order to construct a 95-room “upscale” hotel said the town is not the right tourism market for what they depict as “low end” tourism, since the town’s appeal lies in its historic buildings and atmosphere.

Recently unveiled plans for hotel developers Vijay and Chrystal Mahida’s new venture on Bridge Street set off a firestorm of complaints about demolishing Searles, designated a historic structure by the Commission in June, and thus avoiding the 45-room limit imposed by a bylaw meant to outlaw building hotels — mainly chains — with more than 45 rooms. Other objections have to do with potential traffic increases as well as the design and layout of the proposed hotel, which some say is “cookie cutter” in appearance.

Residents were on hand to remind the Commission of their task. “We only have our history and our buildings, our look and authenticity as our money crop,” said Carol Diehl, an artist and writer, from Housatonic. “We really don’t have anything else here to attract tourists. We don’t have the attractions for low-end tourism…things like the beach. If we go that way we are doomed.”

A divided Planning Board said it would recommend the Selectboard vote in favor of issuing the Mahidas their special permit at its hearing on December 16.

Historian Ann Fredericks said she’s worked on buildings all over country. “It would behoove this group to make connection between [historic preservation] and tourist dollars,” she said. “I’d rather see Great Barrington be in the same camp with Santa Fe and Palm Beach than some other place promoting low-end, bus-tour tourism. Most people in this town think that only money speaks.”

Perhaps it is the 10 years and counting that Searles has sat, vacant and a no-show on the tax rolls until Iredale acquired the property last year, in a town with climbing property taxes, a low pay scale and not enough tax base, that makes townspeople giddy when someone says they might take Searles on.

Mahida promises roughly $450,000 in tax revenue to the town with a business that will replace a deteriorating building that is breeding seediness in the area between it and the Housatonic River on its eastern side. That revenue projection is so far publicly unsubstantiated due to what Dave Carpenter, Mahida Family Hospitality Interest’s Director of Administration says are proprietary and competitive issues. All will be revealed, he says, on December 16, when the Selectboard holds the hearing that will decide whether the $24 million project can go forward.

Former Finance Committee Chair Sharon Gregory isn’t buying the hotel revenue projections, and wrote a letter stating that the total hotel real estate taxes amount to $350,000, or 1.5 percent of the town’s budget. Carpenter responded that he would be happy to sit down with Gregory and show her the numbers. Gregory used to work for Iredale Mineral Cosmetics, whose founder Jane Iredale owns Searles.

The entire matter was stirred last month when retired filmmaker and small scale historic redeveloper Bobby Houston made a $500,000 offer to Iredale, who last year installed her company’s  world headquarters in the adjacent and newly restored former Bryant Elementary School. Iredale said the offer could not be considered yet since she was already in contract with Mahida and his $850,000 offer. If he were to acquire the building, Houston says he would convert the main stone structure into a dozen or so green housing units, both market-rate and affordable.

Then the lawyers stepped in. With the Selectboard requiring guidance in a matter that has many residents grousing on both sides of the issue, one that has lit local email lists and Facebook on fire, Town Counsel David Doneski of Kopelman and Paige parsed the bylaw and two weeks ago told the board that “at least some portion” of Searles must be preserved to allow the project to bypass the 45-room limit bylaw.

Mahida and his architects are now back at the drawing board in advance of the Planning Board’s continued site-review and the Selectboard’s final decision.

Amid the ongoing hotel kerfuffle, Commission Chair Paul Ivory yesterday issued a press statement reiterating the commission’s unanimous designation on June 1 of Searles as a historic structure, “historically and architecturally significant” to the town. Ivory pulled the contents, however, from the June 1 minutes with some rewording, and by not doing this in a public meeting — only circulating it among members privately — may have tangled it up in the state’s Open Meeting Law requirements. (Please see the text of the Historic Commission’s press release at the end of this article.)

Mahida’s attorney Kate McCormick, who had only just received the statement, was there to ask. “When did you discuss the contents?”

“I’m not sure what you’re driving at,” Ivory said. “This was informational. It came from the commission.”

“This press release was not done at a public meeting,” she said.

Ivory said that the statement’s “substance” was the same as the minutes, and the reasoning for issuing it was because “this building is threatened,” and the Commission wanted to stand by its “goals.”

Yet Searles has always been under threat. It could be demolished tomorrow. All it would take is a demolition permit, according to Town Planner Chris Rembold.

The Commission knows this sobering fact. They discussed a demolition delay bylaw to be voted on at the next Annual Town Meeting. “We should strike while the iron is hot,” said Commission member Malcolm Fick. He also noted that the Historic District Commission is looking at “expanding the District, which offers more protection.”

Rembold confirmed this. “Even if it’s on the National Register [of Historic Places], that’s not protection. The local historic district is actually a regulation and has teeth.” He added that a demolition proposal in that case would first have to go through the Historical Commission. “The only reason Vijay is in front of us is because he wants a hotel and wants more than 45 rooms.”

In Santa Fe, noted Fredericks, the historian, “you can’t get a demolition permit unless you file a plan about what you’re going to do.”

Closer to home, as it turns out, Pittsfield has a demolition delay ordinance.

Searles sits in a “B-3 Zone.” What that means, Rembold said, is that the wrecking ball could hit Searles for any number of uses besides industrial, and wouldn’t require a special permit unless it was 20,000 square feet or more. The site could see Searles razed for retail, a bank or housing, though “there may be other triggers” to the permitting to protect the nearby river.

The battle will continue Wednesday night at the Conservation Commission. “Bring your knitting,” says a Save Searles School Facebook post. “The 79 Bridge Street piece may be postponed but none the less it is important to make our presence known to all the boards.”

To see the Conservation Commission’s Wednesday agenda, click here

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Text of Historical Commission press release:

Great Barrington Historical Commission

c/o Selectmen’s Office

Town Hall

334 Main Street

Great Barrington, MA 01230

June 1, 2015

Notes on Significance and Preservation of Searles High School (1898)

SUMMARY OF BUILDING’S SIGNIFICANCE

SEARLES HIGH SCHOOL IS HISTORICALLY AND ARCHITECTURALLY SIGNIFICANT TO GREAT BARRINGTON

The building embodies associational and design values and has maintained its architectural integrity.

1. Associative Value: characteristics and aspects of the property’s history link it with historic persons
2. Edward Searles: as a designer and the master of Kellogg Terrace (Searles Castle) and a benefactor to Great Barrington, he is clearly an important link to its history.

2. Henry Vaughan (1845-1917)

• A distinguished architect and pioneer in the introduction of English, neo-Palladian and Georgian forms.
• Vaughan produced dozens of churches and school buildings, as well as plans for one of the largest ecclesiastical structures of [the 20th ] century, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C..
• His biographer William Morgan called ” Vaughan’s buildings . . . the best argument for his placement in the pantheon of notable American scholar-architects, along with [Richard] Upjohn, [Charles Follen]McKim and [Ralph Adams]Cram.”
• 10 Lack of Documentation of his Work: there is a dearth of documentary material about him and his work: no family to save and pass on his work, his office had no telephone, typewriter or secretary; no office records survive; specifications were written in longhand. With so few written records upon which to draw, the primary sources for a study of Henry Vaughan must be the buildings themselves.

Searles and Vaughan’s Close Relationship

• It is virtually certain that Henry Vaughan designed everything that Searles built.
• 138 From the mid-1880’s until his death, Vaughan was involved in dozens of Searles-sponsored project – schools, churches, and castles, organ cases, tombs, and remodeling work.
• Vaughan, Searles and Kellogg Terrace

1888. 139-140 Vaughan was involved in the design of several improvements and additions to Kellogg Terrace                                                                from 1884 until its completion in 1888.

• This includes design of the Roman Doric Garden Temple — the terminal feature of the reflecting pool behind Searles Castle
• Vaughan surely must have decorated the English Baroque music room at Kellogg Terrace, for he designed the 25-foot oak case for the giant pipe organ that Searles installed there.

Source:  William Morgan, The Almighty Wall. The Architecture of Henry Vaughan (MIT Press 1983)

3. History of Education in the Great Barrington Community

• For nearly a century and a quarter the lives of a majority of Great Barrington residents, and those of surrounding towns, were shaped by the Searles schools.

4. Distinguished Educators

• Many individuals, such as School Committee Chair, Charles Giddings, George Argonal Taylor, the first African-American teacher in Great Barrington, Principal John Clark, Coach Mike Alphonso, Superintendent Russell H. Bellows and teacher Kathleen McDermott, made their mark on the lives of the students.

1. Design value: The building illustrates the Georgian Revival Style

• Searles High School is a prominent local example of an architectural trend begun in the latter19th century and which continues to this day. In the late 19th C. American architects, inspired by the 1876 Centennial focus on colonial America, began to look to their own national past for appropriate models. Our Town Hall, built in this period, is a notable local example of the Colonial Revival style.

• Architects also had to find ways to apply 18th century details to buildings that were decidedly 19th C. in size and function, such as RR stations and public schools.  So on the Searles building we find such Georgian elements as:
• hip roofs
• sash window with wooden bars
• modillion cornices
• quoins
• a high architectural basement
• belt course
• Palladian five-part composition of a central block connected by hyphens to identical dependencies

1. The Original Building Has Maintained it Integrity

• The standard simple field test to determine the integrity of a building is if a resident of Great Barrington in the late 19th or early 20th centuries could return to town in 2015 and still be able to recognize the property as it exists today.
• It’s clear that the overall physical appearance of the building continues to convey its architectural significance.
• There have been changes over the years. The most egregiously negative alteration are the modern aluminum windows installed in the primary facade in the 1970s. These replaced the graceful original 9/9 and 6/6 wooden sash windows and totally neutered that key element of its character on the south facade. Fortunately, the 6/6 and 9/9 original windows on the north facade are extant.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Part of our responsibilities in these proceedings is to present recommendations about the architecture of the building.
• We realize you face challenges in adaptively re-using this building but hope they can be overcome and that the entire building can be preserved and recognized nationwide as a distinctive 5-star hotel, housed in a century and a quarter classic Georgian Revival landmark, and become a prime destination for Great Barrington.

1. SPECIFIC RECOMMENDATIONS TO PRESERVE THE ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES OF THE BUILDING THAT DEFINE ITS VISUAL CHARACTER

The following visual aspects and physical features that comprise the appearance of the Searles High School building are what gives this building its own identify and its special visual character. The Historical Commission recommends preservation of these key features.

1. The overall shape of the building, the Palladian five-part composition of a central block connected by hyphens to identical dependencies (wings) is an important element in its visual character 
2. Roof:

• The hip roofs on the east and west dependencies and the front-facing pedimented gabled roof with its raking cornice on the central block. (Raking Conice: a cornice following the slope of a gable, pediment or roof)
• The cornice with modillions beneath the east and west eaves of the central block
• The massive, arched brick chimneys

3. Openings

• The tall (12′ high) wooden 6/6 and 9/9 wooden sash windows should be preserved and replicas installed to replace the aluminum models on the primary facade.
• The rhythmic fenestration pattern of the windows is an important feature and should be maintained
• Decorative windows such as the round (oculus or roundel) windows in the pediments of the central block

4.   Exterior Materials that Should be Preserved

• Basement story: native blue dolomite, mined from the Hopkins Quarry on Quarry St.
• Envelope: water struck (or “soft mud”) brick, laid in Flemish bond, for walls and the pressed brick (molded under pressure) for decorative embellishments and the Indiana limestone used for the window sills should be retained
• The terra cotta embellishments to the main entrance as well as its arched frame and decorative metal grillwork over the half-round transom window.
• Quoins at the corners
• Patterned brick work beneath the windows
• the belt course of Pennsylvania brick between the first and second floors, including the section of a “broken” belt course on the south facade.

5. The Gym

• Constructed in 1937 and ’38 and designed by Morris Maloney of Springfield to answer school’s urgent need for a gym and assembly space.
• The primary facade of this building, with its engaged and fluted rectangular columns and recessed wall and with relief bronze lettering on the generous frieze, is an impressive piece of civic architecture strongly evocative of the art deco designs during this period. Indeed, it’s probably the only building with this sort of design in Great Barrington and should be preserved.

6. The Annex

• Constructed in 1959-60 and designed by architect John H. Fisher, Pittsfield, this building does not possess any distinguished architectural features.

7. New Additions

• New work should be differentiated from the old and be compatible with the massing, size, scale and architectural features of the original bldg. An addition should not appear to be part of the original bldg. When the project is done it should be clear what is old and what is new.

B    FOLLOW THE SECRETARY OF INTERIOR’S STANDARDS FOR REHABILITATION OF AN HISTORIC BUILDING

• As the responsible stewards of this historic property, we urge you to adhere to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards in project planning and execution. These standards provide excellent professional guidelines for renovating an historic property while preserving the features that convey its architectural values.

C    INCLUDE A PRESERVATION ARCHITECT ON YOUR PROJECT TEAM  

• A preservation architect has the sensibilities, skill and experience in meeting the challenges that old buildings present. They knows how to change a structure to accommodate the owner’s program without violating its essential identity.

Paul W. Ivory

Chairman