Saturday, August 7, 2010

Caring for a Historic School

The Montgomery C. Smith School is the oldest school building in the Hudson that is still being used as a school. Originally built as Hudson High School, the Colonial Revival building was a project of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1997, a significant addition was added to the school building which surprised some observers by being a commendable example of the compatibility of new design with historic design.

Recently, the cupola on the original building had been showing some deterioration. Although the Hudson City School District cares for this historic school in a manner that belies what seems to be their usual contempt for old buildings, the fact that the cupola remained in a state of disrepair for several months was worrying. Yesterday, however, Gossips noticed that the cupola is now surrounded by scaffolding. It appears that the cupola is getting the repair it needs.

4 comments:

  1. We're worried about fixing the cupola when we laid off teachers and cut the sports programs. Really?

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  2. Is it only a coincidence that there was progress toward historic preservation while Wurster was out of town on vacation?

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  3. Yes, Amber - it's rational to fix the roof of a school building even when having financial trouble. Allowing problems like that to persist and become bigger problems is not doing any favor for taxpayers or kids, it's just delaying.

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  4. Maintaining a building is an important lessons for young people to understand. Adults should take care of their properties and children should learn that that is what is expected of them as adults. The students will long forget the times they spent in kicking a ball around when they are adults and need to face the responsibilities of property repair.

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