BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

Second of Two Parts

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEDNESDAY, OCT. 21, 2015) — Pittsfield’s appreciation and stewardship of its important buildings and architectural treasures too often means (a) tearing them down (Union Station, the Palace Theater, the Peace House, and too many others to list) or (b) letting them deteriorate until they are past or nearly past redemption (Colonial Theater, Wahconah Park, Springside House, and the like).

In the case of (b), the neglect requires redemption involving an enormous amount of funds than would otherwise have been the case, or an excuse for The Suits to swoop in and destroy. The Palace Theater went to the wrecking ball for this reason and no other, merely because one of The Chosen Ones could have convenient parking for its customers. O, if we only had “instagrams” of the cash-stuffed envelopes that changed hands! Monopoly money, we’re sure.

During the Civic Authority Civil War, Wahconah Park almost got destroyed for that reason. More recently, the decade-long abandonement of maintenance at Taconic High School fit nicely into a fix job meant to assure that a new school would be built regardless of external circumstances (loss of major industry) or need (declining enrollment). And you wonder that the fate of Springside House should arouse suspicion?

Getting SH ‘the Care and Attention It Deserves’

In our recent exchange with SH advocate and preservationist Joe Durwin, these matters could be read between the lines.

“I’ve allocated a lot of personal time to this effort because it appeals to both heart and head. If done correctly, the house could accommodate a really interesting combination of activities and programs in its 24 rooms, and the city could get a lot of bang for its buck while re-utilizing a historic treasure with great emotional significance for the Pittsfield residents,” Durwin said.

THE PLANET responded: “You are correct about the potential of SH, which is limited only by the imagination for resolve (and yes, the political resolve) of its stewards. Those stewards are the residents of Pittsfield, and the key to getting the house the care and attention it deserves is to somehow make SH relevant again to them first by appealing to its ’emotional significance’ (an apt phrase) and then to its practical potential. Just how that is done, I suppose, is the crux of the problem.”

JD: “I have to say, the overall public support has been very helpful thus far. We’ve had many wonderful letters of support and input, and the public hearings planning its reuse were very well attended.  One thing that has been effective in keeping residents interested at intervals in the past couple years has been opening the house up to the public and letting them see some of the building and peruse the memorabilia there, and I’d like to look at doing that again this winter and promoting it wildly.

“Thus far the real major impediments have come from the [Bianchi] administration, first with the tantrum scrapping the capital budget last year, which delayed grant application by a full year, then the recent “maintenance” scheme which literally served no purpose and was outside the scope of the restoration plan. It would have offered some beneficial experience to Sheriff Bowler’s inmates, but the renovation plan specifically said not to power wash, and those boards all have to come off now anyway.

“Sadly it appears this project — so prominent in [Bianchi’s] earlier speeches and inaugural promises yet conspicuously absent from campaign literature — has lost its utility as a political chip for Mayor Bianchi.

For the record, Durwin is active in Linda Tyer‘s mayoral campaign.

——– 000 ——–

If the city is ever to shake the bad spell that has kept it in the grips of political voodoo for more than a generation, it will need more citizen activists such as Joe Durwin. Those people exist. They only need to believe that government will not betray them. They will also have to trust that municipal “leaders” can act in a way that makes the quotation marks superfluous.

Talk about miracles.

——————————————————————————————————-

“Infinity, when all things it beheld, / In nothing, and of nothing all did build.” — Edward Taylor, opening of his poem, “The Preface,” (1701).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The views expressed in any comment section are not those of PLANET VALENTI or endorsed in any way by PLANET VALENTI; this website reserves the right to remove any comment which violates its Rules of Conduct, and it is not liable for the consequences of any posted comment as provided in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and PLANET VALENTI’s terms of service.