Preservation Committee votes to fund Fountain

From The Republican
By Fred Contrada
Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Community Preservation Committee voted Wednesday to recommend $412,400 in funding for six projects, including the Connecticut River Greenway, a baseball field and the restoration of an old fountain on Village Hill.

The committee oversees Community Preservation funds that the city has been collecting by way of a property tax surcharge since voters adopted the state Community Preservation Act in 2005. Money from the fund, by law, may be used only for projects related to conservation, housing, historical preservation and recreation. There is $980,000 available in Community Preservation funds for fiscal 2013, according to the city.

The committee, which received eight applications in the latest round, has opted to fund six projects. It allocated $75,000 to restore the Victorian-style, cast-iron fountain that once stood in front of the main building at Northampton State Hospital. Following the deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals in the 1990s, the buildings on the campus were demolished. A range of housing now stands at the site. The fountain will be reinstalled as a memorial to the patients and employees who lived and worked at the hospital.

State Hospital Memorial Eligible for CPA Funding

From The Valley Advocate
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
By Mark Roessler

A memo sent out last week to the Northampton State Hospital Fountain Committee by Jacky Duda, the group’s chair, announced that the committee is eligible to apply for Community Preservation Funds for the planning and building of a memorial on the former property of historic Northampton State Hospital. The memo accompanied minutes from the group’s first meeting on January 3, 2010.

The group is a subcommittee of the Citizens’ Advisory Committee (CAC) that has overseen the redevelopment of the site of the former hospital. When it was initially looking for developers for the site in the 1990s, the CAC mandated that prospective applicants include a memorial in the site plan. Last year, the CAC considered multiple locations for the proposed memorial—a cast iron fountain that once stood at the hospital’s entrance. While it’s been decided the fountain will play a central role in the memorial, no design or overall concept has yet been proposed due to lack of funding.

Community Preservation (CP) funds could change that.

Kollmorgen and the Bike Trail

From the North Street Association
Saturday, June 20, 2009

Here is a blip.tv video of the last eight minutes of the 6/17/09 meeting of the Northampton State Hospital Citizen Advisory Committee. Planning Director Wayne Feiden, Benjamin Spencer, Mayor Clare Higgins and others discuss the route of the bike trail that is to pass near the planned new facility for Kollmorgen Electro-Optical.

Interesting comments about the bike path becoming a memorial to Dr. Kirkbride (strangely, as I think Dr. Earle would be considerably more appropriate) as well as a map of the path Benjamin Spencer is suggesting.

1900

1900 Stable thumbnail

An article published last week by The Republican details the Citizens Advisory Committee new subcommittee; the Amenity Subcommittee’s meeting in January regarding elements public reuse of the former State Hospital campus. Among other topics such as park space and playing fields the Amenity Subcommittee also discussed the reuse of the 1900 Stable.

Constructed between 1900 and 1901 this stable was built to replace a smaller wooden building. The older structure being rather close to the kitchen made it ideal for use as a cold storage unit, and thus too was at a somewhat unfortunate proximity for keeping horses.

Google Maps photo of 1900 Stable
The 1900 Stable was built into the hillside for the most part by regular employees with assistance by patients in framing, making mortar, and supplying the few hired masonry workers with materials. When the building was completed in 1901 Driving horses would be kept on the main floor and a hayloft (accessible from the door facing the State Hospital) was kept above. Upon completion in 1901 the building was valued at $6,000. For the sake of comparison the same year the State Hospital’s 550 acres of land were valued at $53,400 and Old Main was valued at $480,000.

Village Hill amenities considered

From The Republican
by Fred Contrada
Thursday, January 29, 2009

Will the Village Hill project include a community meeting room? Public parks? A playing field?

The biggest development in the city’s recent history has been taking shape slowly over the last decade and is still far from complete, but as the pieces begin falling into place, a subcommittee is imagining the final product.

The Village Hill Citizens Advisory Committee created an Amenity Subcommittee last year to explore just such topics. In a meeting earlier this month, members tossed out some ideas and suggestions for the mixed residential-commercial development, which is located on the grounds of the former Northampton State Hospital.

Narkewicz stressed on Tuesday that the subcommittee is at the beginning stage of its discussions.

“People were throwing out ideas,” he said. “They’re not really proposals.”

However, the topic has already caught the eye of Joseph Blumenthal, a member of the larger Citizens Advisory Committee. Blumenthal sent an e-mail to fellow committee members warning that it would be prohibitively expensive to convert the Coach House to meeting space and suggesting that the amenities subcommittee incorporate representatives from the Village Hill developers.

According to Anderson, MassDevelopment has targeted the Coach House for commercial use, along with a second building once used as a dormitory for male attendants at the hospital. The third surviving building from the state hospital complex is envisioned as live-work space for artists, Anderson said.

The Gag Reflex

From The Valley Advocate
By Mark Roessler
Thursday, October 30, 2008

The committee charged with overseeing the Hospital Hill development shows signs of life.

Last Wednesday, October 22, the Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) met for the third time this year to discuss plans for the northernmost part of the development where the historic Northampton State Hospital once stood. Before them was a proposal for an additional hundred housing units, which, to be built, required their approval.

After years of passively accepting much of what the developers presented, regardless of how far the revised plans deviated from stated goals, this time the CAC didn’t let the double-speak go down so smoothly.

MassDevelopment, the state agency managing the development, had been busy this summer overseeing construction of the 207 units already approved for the site. In order to make the development eligible for state funding incentives that promote green building practices, last year the agency had proposed that instead of construction taking over the entire hilltop, as originally planned, they would build the approved homes closer together. At the time, there had been some concern that the actual agenda behind the compact construction was to make space available for more units later, but the city and the CAC had been assured this was not the case.

Story Continues…

The Theft of Memory

From The Valley Advocate
By Mark Roessler
Thursday, October 30, 2008

In spite of contractual and moral obligation, there may be no memorial to the mentally ill on the prime land that was their legacy from the state.

Part of the Citizens Advisory Committee’s stated mission in redeveloping Hospital Hill has been to provide a memorial commemorating the Northampton State Hospital and its 150-year history on the site. To this end a subcommittee was formed, and in May, 2007, it issued a report recommending that the hospital’s original fountain be refurbished and returned to where it once stood outside the hospital. Members hoped the memorial would be set in a secluded space that would allow quiet contemplation.

Last Monday, Oct. 20, the subcommittee reconvened for the first time since its report to decide on the seven location options developers had offered them for the memorial.

Despite the subcommittee’s recommendation, a private home is already under construction on the fountain’s original site, and the only option MassDevelopment offered that resembled what had been requested was in a narrow pathway between two other houses. Another option was right on Route 66, a location the subcommittee had already said was not appropriate. Four more possibilities were at major intersections, near playgrounds or too close to houses.

The subcommittee ultimately chose a site for the memorial on the opposite edge of the campus.

Story Continues…

Northampton Decree

DMH Memorial Panel
DMH Memorial Panel

I had the pleasure of attending a Memorial put on by the Department of Mental Health (DMH) last week to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1978 Brewster Consent Decree which began the process of closing Northampton State Hospital by stipulating that people with mental illness had the right to live and be treated in the least restrictive environment possible. I felt the speech given by Rebecca Macauley was especially apt and moving, and I have a recording made by WFCR (the local National Public Radio station) of the first half of the event. I will post the audio as soon as I get a chance to clean it up and cut it into sections.

Brewster Consent Decree at Washington University School of Law

Updated

  1. Full program and all speakers.
  2. Dedication by Rev. Peter Ives, First Churches of Northampton.
  3. Barbara Leadholm, DMH Commissioner.
  4. Rebecca Macauley, Ex-patient, Security Guard and Advocate.
  5. Elizabeth Cardona, Director, Western MA Office of the Governor.
  6. Robert Fleischner, Center for Public Representation.
Northampton State Hospital