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Volume 115, Number 115 - Tuesday, February 9, 1999
Middletown's Phoenix rises reborn
by John Friedlander
It's civic duty day today. If you haven't yet done so, get out and vote YES on all three bond issues.
This is no great mystery, and there doesn't seem to be much debate on the topic, so I won't belabor the point. I do notice an irony, however, that bears a head-scratch or two.
Item 1 on the referendum seeks to authorize spending up to $3.3 million to improve City Hall by fixing leaks, conforming to codes, and installing new office furnishings and equipment. The building was erected in the late nineteen fifties in a post-war building boom that spawned a generation of institutional-style municipal buildings across the nation.
Featuring clean lines, little ornament, large windows and flat roofs, these true civic centers heralded a "modern age" with "honest" architecture that appealed to our nation's "progressive" attitude. (Remarkable that we would have ever considered the fifties progressive...) Little or no homage was paid to our architectural heritage. No pillars, no pediments, no grand entrances -- little to point out that the activities within these buildings provide every day substance to the foundations of our democratic nation.
When Presidents go on TV to have a "town meeting," they seek to emulate the gatherings that occur in Council Chambers every other week -- gatherings at which we are all welcome. When we debate serious issues of local importance, we do so at City Hall. When threads of our melting pot society seek to tie the knot, City Hall issues the marriage license. When new citizens are added to our families, or residents register to vote, City Hall keeps the records.
City Hall is an important building. In many ways, it is a sacred place -- a hallowed municipal hall. So after decades of little maintenance, when the roof is leaking and the heating system doesn't work, spending money to fix it is unquestionably the right thing to do. But I confess that every time I use the most convenient entrance to the building, and find myself facing an undistinguished back stairway or a narrow side hall near the bathrooms and a vending machine, I wish the building looked and felt as important as the activities it shelters are.
In emotional contrast to Item 1, Item 2 on the referendum requests $1.6 million in additional funds to complete the restoration and preservation of the Long Hill Estate -- the mansion in the woods off Wadsworth Street many of us know as the Cenacle.
More than twice as old as City Hall, this magnificent former home of Colonel Clarence S. Wadsworth and his wife Katherine Fearing Hubbard Wadsworth was completed in 1917 after nine years of construction. Using a method of fireproof reinforced concrete construction developed for the Panama Canal, the building has withstood decades of use, and years of neglect after being vacated in 1986. Despite the passage of time and the recent ravages of looters, squatters and vandals, the building is still so fundamentally sound that a restoration worker using a jackhammer to remove an obstructing bit of concrete was so rattled by the hardness of the material that he couldn't hold his toothbrush for days. Long Hill Estate is the proverbial third little piggy's brick house, built on solid ground.
On a recent tour through the former Wadsworth home, I was struck by the solidity of the skeleton, and the grandeur of the likely final result. By using a little imagination to see past the dust of the ongoing construction, it was easy to see that the Estate will soon be a truly magnificent addition to Middletown's usable architectural inventory.
Blessed with a well-preserved setting on a rise in variegated woods, and finished in a slightly modernized version of the original Beaux Arts style, I have little doubt that the location will be in great demand for all sorts of social events. Weddings, birthdays, business meetings, retreats and the like will all find an impressive place in which to create memories to last a lifetime.
The bond issue for the Long Hill Estate seeks to authorize funds to cover unanticipated restoration expenses. Any building rescue on the scale of this one will come upon unpleasant "surprises" that will make an already frugal plan unworkable. Failing to fund this project would be pound-foolish in the extreme. Vote an exuberant YES on this item, and look forward to a visit to a polished piece of Middletown's history sometime later this year.
While I'm at it, a pox on the lout or louts who have been peppering the Long Hill Estate with BBs! Construction workers have been forced to cover the new windows with plywood to prevent further damage to glass. Shame, shame on any so disrespectful to the property we are all paying to repair. If you live in the area and your kids have BB guns, read them the riot act and tell them to keep their ammo away from Middletown's phoenix rising in the woods!
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