NORTHAMPTON — The Historical Commission is deciding whether to delay Cooley Dickinson Hospital’s plans to demolish the 150-year-old “Louise Finn” house at 1 Denniston Place, which was dedicated to a community pillar in 2009 and is believed to have ties to the early abolitionist movement.
John Atwater, facilities manager at Massachusetts General Hospital, which owns CDH, presented plans to demolish the house before the Historical Commission Monday night. He explained that the building, which opened as Cooley Dickinson’s Center for Midwifery in 2008 and is listed in the state Register of Historic Places, shows signs of significant structural damage.
Under the city’s Demolition Review Ordinance, the Historical Commission has the authority to delay a project’s demolition for up to a year following an applicant’s initial demolition request if it is “historically significant” in the view of the commission, or has “architectural or cultural merit.”
Although bringing the building up to code would cost approximately $1 million, including a $500,000 foundation repair, Atwater said the upgrades still wouldn’t make the house fit for patient care.
“At the end of the day, it’s not financially prudent for us to use the money that we have to bring that building up to code for something that wouldn’t, at the end of the day, be usable for patient care,” he said. “It doesn’t meet the codes that are required. We have guidelines that we must follow when we design-build medical facilities, the FGI Guidelines, for healthcare.”
In 2009, Cooley Dickinson dedicated the house to Louise Finn, who worked as a midwife for 53 years and advocated for women’s and families’ comfort during childbirth.
In the public comment portion of Monday night’s meeting, Finn’s daughter, Jean O’Rourke, urged that the structure be preserved. She discussed her mother’s legacy as being a pioneer vouching for fathers and same-sex parents to be allowed in the delivery room at a time when it was an extremely uncommon practice.
“My mom would speak of her own experiences in giving birth to her seven children in a cold, sterile environment … Women were subjected to a metal table with metal stirrups —their partners were not allowed to be by their side during the birth of their children,” O’Rourke said. “My mom fought for changes in the maternity unit, not just for a more comfortable atmosphere, but for women’s family members to be by their side during this joyful time. She encouraged fathers to be with their mothers, and yes, there was a shift to allow moms to be with their female partners.”
Finn’s son-in-law, Michael O’Rourke, also spoke in favor of the house’s preservation and read aloud a poem he had written about Finn. He said that to treat the building as “disposable” would be a “disservice to Northampton.”
Discussing the demolition proposal, commission members weighed the property’s degree of damage against its historical significance. Commissioner Dylan Gaffney shared research he conducted linking the property’s 1850s owner Albion Peck to the early abolitionist movement through his involvement with the anti-slavery Free Soil Party.
Historical Commission member Douglas Thayer, noting that foundational issues could be mild or extreme, depending on the extent of damage, said that he wished to see more information about the home’s condition before deciding whether it needs to be demolished.
“A crumbling foundation is a vague term, and it’s really unknown and has to be investigated,” Thayer said. “The building in this photo is sitting level and flat, and not slumping or falling. So we don’t have enough information to really know if [the damage is] strong enough to warrant this house be torn down.”
Other commission members echoed Thayer’s remarks, requesting additional information about the extent of the repairs needed to make the structure fit for rent or sale.
Many commission members, including Michael Curtin, suggested that while the property, even if it’s repaired, might not be able to accommodate patients, it can likely be repaired and sold as residential homes or office spaces for a high return-on-investment.
“Besides residential, there’s also the possibility that it’s used for offices and leased out,” Curtin said. ” There are so many different ways that this could be approached, other than ‘let’s just knock it down.'”
After further discussion, the commission voted unanimously to continue the meeting until Sept. 28 and asked that Atwater provide further detail about the house’s condition.
