Preservation groups oppose Trustees’ idea for St. Paul’s




At the beginning of summer the Garden City Board of Trustees’ Priorities List for 2017-2018 caused a stir with a proposal to redevelop the St. Paul’s main building by keeping only the facade facing Stewart Avenue, while creating a new recreation venue with three to five playing fields (made of synthetic turf) behind the exterior. The stated plans would involve relocation of the village’s Recreation Department into a new facility and possibly changes to the recently-renovated Cluett Hall and the Fieldhouse. An architecture firm was scheduled to be hired this summer but August’s Village Board meeting did not address the proposal. Still the Priorities List maintains a target of February 1, 2018 for a consultant to come to the Board of Trustees with “a complete plan, including operational plan and architect renderings, with any changes to Cluett Hall and the Fieldhouse.”

Brian Pinnola, the former president of the Garden City Historical Society, sought an update from the Board in July. He asked for details, as the mayor provided a thought on potential consulting architects that had toured St. Paul’s structure with village staff. Yet no resident or trustee commented on St. Paul’s at the August 17 meeting. When the Board of Trustees’ gathers for their September 21 meeting, there may be a voice that initiates further dialogue and encourages the Garden City community’s full participation in any decisions on the edifice.

Pinnola is a board member of SPLIA – the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities. In his comments to the Board of Trustees at their July 20 meeting about St. Paul’s future, Pinnola touched on the interest St. Paul’s draws from preservationists, professionals and history fans all across Long Island. Sarah Kautz is the preservation director for SPLIA, which is based on Main Street in Cold Spring Harbor. St. Paul’s has been listed as an endangered historic place by SPLIA in 2010. The information is currently listed on SPLIA’s website under “Preservation,” and on August 17 an article in The Suffolk County News highlighted the recent listing of Idle Hour in Oakdale, the former Dowling College location. Kautz and SPLIA cover the entire island, but they followed news on St. Paul’s as the Board of Trustees’ Priorities List placed its intended usage and scope of work as a top-level priority. On August 18 she spoke with The Garden City News over the phone.

“The specifics of what the trustees are considering remain unclear but they’re thinking about more or less removing everything but the façade, where the building would be gutted and Garden City would make athletic fields. It would be really sad to tear down a National Register building to do that. I am not saying there isn’t a good reason for athletic fields, but I don’t think you need to tear down St. Paul’s School to find a place for them,” she said. SPLIA considers the position expressed by Pinnola in July, on behalf of the Garden City Historical Society. Kautz said the two preservation groups are united to oppose demolishing the interior or any parts of the main St. Paul’s School.

Kautz says since 2010, with the “endangered” listing SPLIA has been involved in trying to advocate for “the successful rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of St. Paul’s.” That, per SPLIA’s tradition, would need to meet standards set by the national Office of the Secretary of the Interior. She says that federal level sets the general guidelines for any property on the National Register of Historic Places, as St. Paul’s is.

“Those are pretty robust standards and they’re designed to have the best outcome, where you retain the significant characteristics. It depends on what the use is. As far as I know in Garden City the community has never reached a consensus on what use they would like to see there. Until we’d know what the use is it is very hard to plan for the rehabilitation; different uses would mean different kinds of rehabilitation. It has been a very languishing process for St. Paul’s,” she said.

Kautz detailed unique history attached to the building and said St. Paul’s was designed by E.H. Harris and built by the wife of (Garden City founder) Alexander Turney Stewart, as a memorial to him – just as Village Historian Bill Bellmer noted in his April 18 Letter to the Editor.

“It is a fabulous building. It was a school, it’s an architecturally significant building and it is such an important part of the community. Any kind of adaptive re-use and rehabilitation of the structure should be done in such a way that it retains its historic character. There’s lots of options for it. That does not mean it has to become a museum. We’d love to see those options explored, maybe through holding a community design charrette (an intensive planning session with citizens, officials, and designers collaborating on a vision for development). Garden City can come up with ideas for what the building could be used for if they really go to the community and start opening that dialogue up,” Kautz said.

In her view the history of A.T. Stewart’s Garden City as an early American planned community relates to St. Paul’s standing as a big component of that fabric.

In an April 28, 2017 article in The Garden City News about Pinnola as the honoree of the May 11 Historical Society Benefit Gala held at Garden City Country Club, Pinnola is quoted considering St. Paul’s future: “No vision-no progress. Akin to A.T. Stewart’s development of a planned community on the barren Hempstead Plains, Garden City could again make a name for itself among preservationists, urban planners, architects and the public through a thoughtful, sustainable, renovation and adaptive use of St. Paul’s into a Village cultural, sports and community center.” The Board of Trustees’ Priorities List debuted at a work session held immediately following the board’s Thursday, June 1 regular meeting. That meeting coincidentally fell on the first day of the new fiscal year for the village.

Kautz worries that the Board of Trustees will not hold a public discussion on the plans but the vote on expenses – taxpayer funds to go towards an architect and eventually the physical project costs – in front of an audience, could turn volatile.

“I would not be surprised if it goes that way just given the history of what’s been going on with this property. SPLIA has always advocated for more community involvement. The community should engaged and there should be a dialogue on what’s being done with this building – there’s been a lot of ideas but no options have really been flushed out or explored in a good systematic way,” Kautz said. She hopes the Village Board could explore St. Paul’s future “in an open and comprehensive way, possibilities for adaptive re-use.” She would like a start to be the board deciding on a firm that takes a full look at rehabilitation with the building.

Grant monies are another option Kautz wants the Village of Garden City to actively explore for St. Paul’s.

“A plan like this where it could be completely gutted and only the façade remains would be very regrettable. It would not be the best reuse of that building. The village can apply for grant money and there’s many opportunities, many resources available to Garden City for the village to get funding to do adaptive reuse sort of work. They do not have to go it alone, if the funding remains an issue there are resources and avenues to explore. That’s certainly a possibility and SPLIA can raise this in a letter to the village and the Board of Trustees,” Kautz explains.

She volunteers to attend an upcoming Board of Trustees’ meeting to ballast comments Pinnola and the Historical Society have already expressed in that venue and in The Garden City News. Kautz also said she is open to joining Pinnola for a sit-down with the Board of Trustees to present other options for St. Paul’s.

She cautions the board, “before you make this decision, make sure you’ve looked at every option and that it will be an informed decision on the best possible use. It is a historic resource and we do not call them resources for no reason. They are really unique and special, they should be honored and celebrated and not seen as liabilities,” Kautz said.

As a decision looms she encourages residents of Garden City to proactively approach their POA representation and the Board of Trustees directly about St. Paul’s future.

“We (SPLIA) can’t legislate anything. As a nonprofit organization we don’t have an official regulatory role – our role is advocacy and education. If there is a concern from the community the trustees should respond to that. That is their job – to listen,” she told the News on August 18.

More than St. Paul’s has come to the local preservation forefront this summer. On Monday, July 31, Kautz was the guest speaker at Huntington Public Library’s community event, “Saving Long Island’s Historic Properties.” The forum and SPLIA’s mission was billed as an important movement taking shape and a poster for that event was created to rally residents: “Learn about what you can do to preserve Long Island’s historic buildings,” it read.

Kautz earned multiple degrees including her doctorate at the University of Chicago. She specialized in preservation and public history, working with museums from around the world and living in Japan, South Africa, the southern U.S. and many historical locations in between. She has contributed research to the Museum of the City of New York and the Landmarks Preservation Commission, building a searchable online database for collections at the New York City Archaeological Repository.

Aside from her role at SPLIA, Kautz is a historical anthropologist and archaeologist who, according to her online bio, “worked closely with material artifacts, historical media, and oral narratives to study practices of early global European maritime commerce across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean.” For a graduate thesis she intensely studied the Japanese artificial island of Dejima, built in 1636 to cloister Portuguese traders and the former Asian home of the Dutch East India Company.



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