Condemned Fort Plain building being cleared to make room for park

By LINDA KELLETT

C-S-E News Staff

FORT PLAIN — It’s like peeling away the layers of an onion.

That was the analogy village resident Tolga Morawski used to describe the gradual dismantling of a former dwelling on Mohawk Street over the last few weeks.

Although the exterior of the Italianate-style house with its wide eaves, dentils, large brackets, flat roof and double front doors looked sound, the interior of the long-neglected rental property at 41 Mohawk St. was quite another story.

Condemned by the village code enforcement officer in late 2011, the once proud structure sandwiched between Unity Hall (the former Universalist Church) and an adjacent building was falling to ruin, and its owner of two decades was eager to sell it.

After a purchase agreement with a local resident fell through, Historic Fort Plain mounted a fundraising campaign to buy the building. “We need additional space,” Morawski said. “We want to put a park in.”

He explained how the money was raised to pay for the property at 41 Mohawk: “The board, wanting to be fiscally conservative, didn't want to use money from the general fund. It was financed solely through money earmarked by donors for that purpose,” he said.

“By the end of November 2012, we had accumulated $1,400 to $1,500 to buy the building, plus closing costs, title search and fees,” Morawski said.

Historic Fort Plain took ownership of the property early this year and immediately took steps to dismantle the derelict building.

The goal is to have it down by March 1. Amish carpenters and building manager Adam Bermas, of Fort Plain, have been working tirelessly since mid-February.

Almost all of the building materials will be reused. “We’re serious about preservation,” Morawski said, noting porch columns, corbels, windows and the like are being sold for salvage in order to cover the cost of the building’s removal.

Donations are also helping to finance the project. Anyone wishing to contribute to the undertaking are asked to make checks payable to Historic Fort Plain, with “41 Mohawk Street” written in the memo. Mail to P.O. Box 53, Fort Plain, NY 13339.

The treasurer of the nonprofit group, Morawski said donations will also help with the building of the park at the site, which the organization hopes to use for a community garden with fruit trees and raised beds for vegetables.

They also hope to use the basement or the old well on the property for the development of a geothermal heating system for the adjacent Unity Hall building. Toward that end, the group is applying for a grant and assistance through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

The estimated cost of the buildingís removal is between $7,500 to $10,000, he said.

Morawski said the group would gladly name the park after a benefactor.

To the excitement of many with an interest in local history, the removal of clapboards, insulation and other structural elements from the long-vacant structure at 41 Mohawk has revealed surprises about the buildingís distant past.

“This is a much older house than anyone figured,” Morawski said, noting that the frame of the building and other features, such as hand-split lath, push the date of construction back at least 30 years, from the mid-1870s to the 1820s to the 1840s.

Cooperstown consultant Jessie Ravage, who completed a cultural resources survey and the historic district nomination for the village, on Tuesday said the exposed frame revealed that it's a post-and-beam building.

“That’s unusual,” she said. “I wouldn't expect an Italianate-style building to be built with post-and-beam construction.”

What that means, she said, is there’s an “older architecture that’s not apparent” there.

“There’s nothing like the ‘document’ of the building itself,” Ravage said, noting under the 1860s-era Italianate remodel is a late-Federal-era building, she said.

In a Feb. 23 email to Morawski, Rich Strunk, of Windy Hill Restorations of Starkville, who specializes in historic woodworking, masonry and historic building restoration, gave an assessment of the property.

He said, “From our work there, the house dates to 1825-35. Split lath is usually pre-1835. The nails we found are early machine cut (square heads, not rectangular)pre-1840 with some nails in the 1820s style. There was typical Federal multiple-step window casings still extant in the front rooms. The frame is typical Federal/Georgian style, hewn frame with dimensional lumber vertically sawn. It had a gable roof parallel to the street from the location of the rafter seats cut into the plate beam. I feel the house was constructed shortly after the Erie Canal came through in the mid 1820s and Fort Plain moved down from Sand Hill.”

Additionally Strunk and his crew, who are salvaging materials from the property along with John Messina’s NY Salvage of Oneonta, noted that their excavation of an “exceptionally large privy” revealed that it was built when the house was Italianate in the 1860s from the ceramics and glass we found; and also there was plaster in the bottom layer associated with the 1860's use layer. It had been cleaned out about 1880 and filled again with artifacts from that time period to the 1890s when the sewer line was installed.

An earlier outhouse and an old well are also believed located on the property.

When asked about the ramifications of the discoveries at 41 Mohawk St., Ravage said it’s possible other structures in residential areas off of Canal and Main streets might have undergone similar transformations. There might be an “older village” under the newer construction.

She said it’s possible to see examples of that in Fort Plain. “There are lots of instances of Greek Revivals remodeled to Italianate,” she said, noting there’s an example of a Greek Revival building on Center Street that was changed to the Craftsman Style.

Greek Revival, which was common between 1820 and 1860, featured columns and referred to Greek temples. Craftsman-styled buildings are typically bungalows.

One way to chart the changes is by comparing properties on Sanborn Fire Insurance Company maps, she said, “You can see where stories were added to houses or when they tore down a building and rebuilt from scratch,” like the Universalist Church.

“People often remodel things when they change hands or change generations,” Ravage said, noting that an owner named Dygert owned 41 Mohawk St. in 1868 when the building was changed to Italianate from the Federal style. In 1905, the building was owned by a local, well-to-do owner.

“From an architectural historian’s standpoint, I think it’s an example of something that’s much more common than we realize,” Ravage added.

For property owners interested in rehabbing or restoring their older homes, she suggested they maintain elements that show the historical progression. It’s not necessary to revert back to the original style. “I’m not a purist. I think how a building evolves is more interesting than what it was originally,” she said.