"Spanish House" (1890) in Chestertown

Two pieces by Peter Heck from recent editions of the Kent County News (Chestertown). Used by permission.

March 29, 2007
Kent County News
By Peter Heck

CHESTERTOWN – Washington College plans to feed its students in a temporary structure while renovations go forward on Hodson Hall, the college’s student center and dining hall.
At the Chestertown Planning Commission meeting on March 21, Louis Stettler, the college’s vice president for finance and management, and Reid Raudenbusch, director of physical plant unveiled the college’s plans.

... [snip] ...

During construction, students would be fed in a temporary building seating 368 students, slightly more than the current capacity of Hodson Hall, built in the 1930s. The premanufactured building would include a full kitchen, serving areas, and bathroom facilities in addition to the dining area. The college cited safety issues as its reason for closing the dining hall during construction.

To make room for the temporary structure, the college plans to demolish or possibly move Spanish House, located west of Washington Avenue just north of Cater Walk, near the mid-campus pedestrian crossing.

Commission members raised a number of questions about the plans. They expressed a concern that the temporary dining hall’s proximity to Washington Avenue would reduce safety at an already busy crossing. Its appearance also caused questions: in architects’ renderings, it resembled a large tent.

Several commissioners spoke against the possible demolition of Spanish House, a white three-story building that Town Manager Bill Ingersoll described as “typical Victorian.”
Spanish House and another building immediately to the south – now gone – were erected in 1890 as homes for college Princi-pal Charles W. Reid and Vice-principal James Roy Micou. The two officials and their families had until then lived in East Hall.

Micou, a native of Chestertown, was the first resident of Spanish House, where he and his wife Catherine lived until he re-signed as vice-principal in 1904. A professor of Latin and Greek, he was remembered by students for constantly flipping a coin during class.

For a while during the ’30s and ’40s, the building served as a fraternity house. Vicky Sawyer of the Career Development de-partment recalled seeing fraternity symbols and initials carved in the attic walls when her department was housed there from 1985 until 2004. She also recalled that the floors sloped and the ancient radiators clanked. “It used to scare students who came in,” she said. “The radiators would make a sudden noise and they’d jump.”

The building housed another campus legend in the 1950s, when former coach and athletic director Ed Athey and his family occupied it.

“We were there from about ’51 to ’64,” he said Monday. “There were about six houses there, a sort of faculty row. It was great being right on campus.” He said he was offered the chance to buy the house and move it, but found it was cheaper to build a new home. After he left it was converted to faculty offices.

Linda Cades, Director of Career Development, said that the building’s current name stems from its use in the 1970s as a resi-dence for students majoring in Spanish, where they could speak the language full-time and learn it by immersion. During her student days in the ‘60s, it housed the infirmary; she recalled going there with the flu in her senior year. More recently it’s been home to the Public Safety Office, as well as faculty and administrative offices. It currently provides space for the Diversity Affairs Office and the Office for International Programs.

The commissioners spent some time trying to suggest alternate sites for the temporary dining facility. Commissioners Pam Ortiz and Chris Cerino asked whether the temporary building could be placed near the new dorms being built on the north side of campus. Raudenbusch said that the presence of heavy construction equipment and plans to excavate a geothermal field for the new dorms ruled out that alternative. Other suggestions had similar drawbacks.

The commissioners then proposed rotating the orientation of the temporary dining hall by 90 degrees to avoid having to de-molish Spanish House, a solution Brawer said might be workable. Commission Chairman Jim Gatto called for a more attractive façade on the side of the temporary building visible from Washington Avenue. And Ingersoll responded favorably to architect Brawer’s suggestion that the college could plant trees or shrubbery to help screen the temporary building.

At the end of the college’s presentation, Gatto summarized the sense of the commission: it opposed the demolition of Spanish House, and was disturbed by both the placement and the obtrusive appearance of the proposed temporary structure.

The commissioners had no specific objections to the proposed renovations of Hodson Hall itself.

May 3, 2007
Kent County News
By Peter Heck
CHESTERTOWN – Want an old house for practically nothing? If you’re a charity or nonprofit organization, Washington College may have a deal for you.

Spanish House, the 1890 frame building that has served over the years as the residence of the college vice-principal, fraternity house, home to former coach Ed Athey and his family, office building and infirmary, must be moved or demolished to make way for a temporary dining hall.
Reid Raudenbush, the college’s physical plant director, said on Tuesday that the school is seeking a charity or nonprofit or-ganization to accept the building for the cost of moving it off campus. He said the college had consulted house moving experts, and that the move was feasible. “There’s possibly one group interested already,” he said.

“It’ll cost about $50,000 to raise it and put it on wheels,” Raudenbush said. Beyond that, the cost to move the house will de-pend on the distance and the exact route it needs to travel. “A couple of blocks on Washington Avenue would run $7,000,” he said. One limiting factor is the width of the building: its smallest dimension is 30 feet, too wide to fit through some town streets.

Another cost factor is the number of places on the route where utility wires would have to be raised to let the house pass. “If we were going straight to Route 291, we could take it across campus without any wire work,” Raudenbush said. A college-owned house was given to a town employee and moved along that route out to Flatland Road back in the early 1990s, he said.
When plans for remodeling Hodson Hall, the school’s 1930s-era dining facility, were presented to the Chestertown Planning Commission in March, the actual renovations met no objections. But the idea that a building from the 1890s might be demolished to make way for a temporary structure struck a nerve.

Raudenbush said he was surprised that the issue arose. “It’s an old frame house that needs work,” he said. Considering all that needs to be done on campus, “I’m not spending on it.”
The Hodson Hall remodeling is “an important piece” of the college’s plans, Raudenbush said, with more than 150 additional students expected on campus after the completion of dormitory expansion. Work is scheduled to begin right after graduation, when the need for full-scale dining facilities is at a minimum.

While the college examined ways to reorient the temporary dining hall so that Spanish House wouldn’t need to be moved, the available space was too small for the structure, Raudenbush said. He described the location of Spanish House as a “prime spot for another building.”
He also noted that the appearance of the Victorian building clashed with the newer brick structures on campus. “I’ve seen photos from when there were four or five houses there, and it looked pretty good,” he said, but added that a single building in a contrasting style was “sort of an orphan.”

Raudenbush said the college had approached the town to see if it wanted the building, but that it had expressed no interest. Now the search has turned to charitable or nonprofit organizations. “The college may be willing to sweeten the deal,” he added, suggesting that it might help with some of the cost of the move.

Athey said in March that when he moved out of Spanish House in 1964, he had been offered the structure if he was willing to pay to move it. However, the price of building a new home was less than the cost of moving the old one would have been, and he declined the offer.

Now Spanish House is on the market again. Any takers?