Here are tales of two buildings and the people who can’t bear to give them up. No one can say members of the Little Red Schoolhouse Preservation Committee didn’t try. But after years of work, the object of their devotion is being taken apart this week on the Amherst College campus to make way for a $214 million science center.
That was the plan a year ago as well. But the project had to wait out a demolition delay imposed by the town’s Historical Commission, which cited the schoolhouse’s status as possibly the first in Amherst designed for preschool classes.
The college bided its time. And now, despite last-minute calls for it to show mercy, a crew is taking the 1937 building down and that will be all she wrote for Little Red.
Demolition delay orders walk a line between public and private interests. They buy time for historic preservation groups to come up with alternatives to the wrecking ball and are responsible for saving prized architectural structures in the Valley. But buildings like Little Red are not public property and their owners have rights, too.
The college understands the importance of being a good citizen in Amherst. From what we can see, it worked hard to spare this little place of learning for little people, tucked within a campus of learning. The building was created to house the Amherst Day School; classes continued until 2013.
The college offered to give Little Red away if preservationists could write its next chapter. The school calculated, though, that it could cost as much as $1 million to move the 1,800-square-foot building.
For a time, the preservation committee pinned its hopes on relocation, even asking that the town’s Community Preservation Act fund pony up $200,000 for moving expenses. But it couldn’t find a new home for Little Red.
It can be hard for a community to know the value of these places. No one would demolish Emily Dickinson’s homestead. But does it matter that Little Red might have been the town’s first specially designed preschool?
Though the building is coming down, its story will be saved. The college hired an architect to document its design. Those drawings, along with scads of photos, will be kept in the school’s Frost Library archives. And Little Red will live a while longer in the memories of those who studied there, or those who fought on principle — and a noble one at that — for its preservation.
People had competing goals for this building, and for the ground on which it stands, but they worked without acrimony to resolve the dispute.
Meantime, across the river in Hatfield, there’s hope that a much bigger building with an even higher profile will find a new use after many gave up hope of preserving it.
Residents voted overwhelmingly at Town Meeting last month to save the 100-year-old Center School, vacant for a decade. It too was the subject of a demolition delay. The old school and its grounds have defined the look of Hatfield center for decades.
The 222-16 vote was a reversal of fortune for this handsome old building. Residents had at an earlier session allocated $400,000 to demolish it after hopes of attracting an outside developer bottomed out.
But sentiments seemed to shift during the demolition delay, and the town’s redevelopment authority worked to make the case that a developer could still be found to create condos for people over age 55.
E. Lary Grossman, that panel’s chairman, said residents have “spoken loud and clear that they recognize the significance of the building.” Some probably also liked the notion of putting the building on the tax rolls; a 2014 study estimated that as private housing, it could generate $46,000 in yearly property tax revenue for the town.
Hatfield residents are pragmatic. If the building doesn’t sell in 270 days from the date of the Town Meeting vote, it will be demolished, and residents OK’d extra money to do just that.
Moderator Joe Lavallee probably spoke for many when he quipped, “Let’s hope it’s over, this time.”
But the clock is ticking on this “save” and time will tell.