Great Barrington — From a safe distance, one would never know the Wetherbee Vault in the Mahaiwe Cemetery is about to collapse.
For unless one absolutely must, one may choose not to get close enough to investigate. That is the Department of Public Work’s job, as overseen by the Cemetery Commission, which has determined repairs to the vault will cost the town around $27,500.
That is about $10,000 less than the estate left by Charles Lincoln Wetherbee when he was laid to rest there in 1933.
This is where Community Preservation Act (CPA) funds may come to the rescue. The vault is one of five projects for which the town has applied for CPA funding, among a total of 13 final applications handed in to the Community Preservation Committee. December 1 was the deadline. The committee will begin its deliberations next week, the start of a punishing schedule of winter meetings.
Great Barrington’s CPA fund recently received $190,000 from the state, a 48 percent match on $393,000 revenue from the town’s property tax surcharge.
But back to the tale of the vault, who lies within, and why the private burial chamber of a well-to-do hotelier and his wife is the town’s responsibility. Some answers lie in local historian Bernard A. Drew’s tome, Great Barrington: Great Town, Great History.
Wetherbee was born in Harvard, Mass, in 1849, according to Drew. He owned hotels in Chicago, San Francisco and New York, including the Gotham Hotel and the “fashionable Buckingham Hotel on Fifth Avenue,” which he ran for 20 years. Wetherbee built the 32-room Stonyhurst mansion at the north corner of Routes 23 and 71 in Great Barrington. From Stonyhurst, one had a view of Mt. Everett.
Wetherbee was one of 26 automobile owners in Great Barrington in 1910, Drew says. He drove a Packard.
Wetherbee’s only child — a daughter — died in 1907, Drew wrote; his wife Belle died in 1923. After Wetherbee’s death in 1933, Stonyhurst had incarnations as a school and an inn — it was last known as Cornwall Academy. The gates are still there, though the original buildings have since been replaced.
The Berkshire Eagle had this to say about Wetherbee in June 1941, Drew wrote: “He was for many years active in the affairs of the summer colony and entertained at his estate and was active in the affairs of the Wyantenuck Country Club…”
Wetherbee left an estate of $37,651, Drew wrote. He was the last of his family to die — there were no other heirs, said Walter F. “Buddy” Atwood III, who serves on the Cemetery Commission.
And therein lies the town’s macabre problem.
When family can’t be found, said Department of Public Works Director Joseph Sokul, “under state law we can go in and repair monuments. Usually we contact the family and they get them fixed.”
But Mr. Wetherbee remained “single,” Atwood said. Also, “in 1964 the whole cemetery,” at Silver and Main Streets, “was in disrepair and the town took it over,” he added. “When you buy a [cemetery] lot from the town, you have ‘perpetual care’.” The $400 cost of a lot goes into the account, and “the town pays for help and equipment.”
But it’s not enough to cover the Wetherbee vault.
Sokul said he had a mason do the estimate. The vault, he added, is a good candidate for historic preservation money, one of three categories for CPA funding — the other two are community housing and open space/recreation. The “original portion” of the Mahaiwe Cemetery where the vault sits, he said, is the “oldest cemetery in town, and we felt that it had a historical significance…”
The vault has broken windows and the door needs resetting, Sokul added. “The stones have shifted — a couple of the shelves inside the vault have moved. The ceiling panels fell, the building settled.”
But there are 13 final applications, down from 21 determined to be eligible in the first go round. The committee has $1.2 million to give out, and may decide to keep some in reserve, said Committee Chair Karen W. Smith.
“We’re going to do the best job we can to evaluate all the applications,” Smith said, noting that town projects get priority for funding. “One of the scoring categories is whether it’s a town project,” she added, referring to the scoring system developed by the committee.
The DPA made another CPA application for $65,000 to repair the widow’s walk-style cupola atop the Mason Library. Sokul said there were “rot and design flaws” in the renovated cupola; there were “some problems with the contractor” who did that work. And at the southwest corner of Town Hall, Sokul spotted snow and ice damage. The Department, he said, is applying for $20,000 to investigate what will be a “long-term project over $100,000. We want to do it right and put together a nice plan…”
The other town project applications are $345,000 for historic preservation of Ramsdell Library in Housatonic, and $35,495 to restore and repair the Newsboy statue and fountain at the corner of Route 23 and Silver Street.
As for the Wetherbees’ final earthly home: “It may collapse,” Atwood said. “We’ve got to do something.”
