To the Editor:
I’ve temporarily escaped Berkshire cold for an artist’s residency in Santa Ana, Calif., but the future of the Searles School is still on my mind. Santa Ana is the Orange County seat, a low-slung city except for a number of blocky, glass-faced high-rise office buildings—all of which, along with the three-story cement parking garages that accompany them, are vacant. At one time someone must have thought they were a good idea, but the business never came, or came and went, and the city is left with shiny looming ghosts.
Because no true American wants to impede another’s opportunity for profit, the giant steamroller of “progress” continues its destruction. Everyone touts the possible jobs, and additions to the tax rolls — as they no doubt did in Santa Ana — and the buildings with character, the buildings that cause us to want to live where we live, the buildings that contain memories and histories, fall.
On my way here, I passed through Grand Central Terminal, now the pride of New York City. But that, too, was slated for the wrecker’s ball, and took a massive effort to save. They couldn’t save Penn Station, however, and its replacement is now a civic embarrassment.
Great Barrington needs to cherish the buildings that add to its attractiveness as a vibrant year-round community. This, as well as to protect the small hoteliers, is why we enacted the 45-room limit, and why our Master Plan emphasizes throughout the reuse of existing structures, historical or not.
However, the Searles School is an important part of our history, a gift to the town by Edward Searles, and built by his personal architect, whose other accomplishments include the National Cathedral in Washington. But even if it weren’t, it’s a beautiful building of a certain period (the same as Town Hall), that adds to the ambiance of the town. Also, the natural beauty of its river site, instead of being covered over with 1.6 acres of asphalt for parking, should be preserved and enhanced for all to enjoy.
Sentimental history is also important to consider, for this is what holds us together as a community. Taking the children to show them where we went to school is a universal parental ritual. As a child I was devastated when the primary school I first attended, the little Glenside School outside Philadelphia, a Victorian gem, was destroyed to make way for a supermarket.
These are the values we voted for when we enacted our bylaws and put in place the Master Plan. The reuse of the Searles School as residences, as has been proposed, would not only preserve our history, but put the building to a solid, non-speculative use that would also generate income and contribute to the well-being, financial and otherwise, of the community for years to come.
Carol Diehl
Housatonic
