“A Building Is Never Just A Building:” A Vassar Controversy Roils On
The project has been described as “Trumpesque.”
In July, Vassar College President Elizabeth Bradley released a statement confirming the school’s commitment to having Williams House, a faculty housing complex, demolished by early October. Williams House stands at the corner of Raymond and College Avenue in Arlington, Dutchess County. As the community grapples for the reasons why, it is not hard to see how the demolition effort echoes the current White House.
Here every stretch of green, every piece of mansard and stucco, embody a particular local and national history. The footprints of every passerby, resident and neighbor are absorbed in the earth and floors.
Currently, a construction fence surrounds the building and 159 College Avenue. The area, called the Alumni Lawn, marks one of Poughkeepsie’s most prominent pieces of greenspace in the town and a hub for community activity. The fence is a blight on the lawn, which used to look like something from a fairytale: The green swells into a hillock, and on the hillock is Alumnae House (a lodge, office and meeting venue). Way under Alumnae House was Williams, unsequestered, like a sprawling cottage with its half-timbering and sturdy, rhythmic facade. Williams’ two side-buildings bookend a green courtyard along College Avenue. The clusters of trees across the lawn blossom in the spring and bob in the wind. All year, there is a tonic aroma.
Vassar plans to build a multi-use hotel and conference center, funded primarily by an anonymous donation, on these grounds. The area occupied by Williams would become a parking lot. Bradley announced to professors in December 2018 that the building would be torn down, after much negotiation about where to locate the new Inn and Institute and much pushback from local residents, and resident and nonresident faculty, to the Alumni Lawn plan. Due to the volume of criticism, the move-out date for residents was postponed from December 2019 to June 2020.
Parking vs. Preservation
Williams stands on an Institutional District, which, according to the Town of Poughkeepsie zoning code, is “intended to preserve and protect private and public educational, and hospital uses”—and accessory use—in the Town. Initially, Vassar’s plan involved only a hotel, but the “Institute” appellation and conference center were tagged onto the project to adhere with zoning regulations.
The administration has offered some lukewarm reasons for erecting the Inn and Institute: That as a conference center, it will “put Vassar on the map,” despite the great many lectures we’ve had in already existing auditoria; that Williams presents issues of sustainability and accessibility, when plenty of the old buildings on campus need a similar and possibly more urgent revamp; that the Inn would complement Poughkeepsie’s industrial growth, when a parking lot and a sleek black thing spreading across communal green and looming over residential paths would further drive a wedge between Vassar and the city.
Another of their reasons, though, is hazy and even more questionable. In a statement regarding Juneteenth, Bradley listed a number of propositions and tools for “promot[ing] racial justice and equity, at Vassar and beyond.” The Inn and Institute, she wrote, would “allow us to create transformative programming in economic development, equity, and education.” Seizing and privatizing public space, and spending $34 million on a hotel and restaurant over, say, financial aid and necessary infrastructure, does not show great concern for people of color in Poughkeepsie or at Vassar. And it is odious to paint the Inn and Institute as a philanthropic reformist project when “Institute” is only a matter of administrative necessity.
A campus building analysis from 2007 by the architectural firm Platt Byard Dovell White confirms that at this time, Williams House, which was erected in 1924, demanded little serious repair; and the most urgent restorations would involve “periodic maintenance” every five years. Of course the house presents issues of sustainability, safety and accessibility, but the College has ensured that other, older buildings are conserved. Take the President’s House, which has building components dating from 1895 but has recently undergone “a meticulous exterior restoration”—its terrace was expanded also, and its surroundings re-graded to ensure accessibility. With the hotel in trustees’ sights, however, it is now convenient to let history and homes deteriorate.
Form vs. Function
Williams House Photo: Collin Knopp-Schwyn
As much as the Inn and Institute disturbs Vassar and Poughkeepsie community members, the destruction of Williams House could also represent a fundamental aesthetic and historical shift for the area.
Williams was designed in 1921-22 by the master architects Richard Howland Hunt and Joseph Howland Hunt. With 21 faculty apartments, it was built for unmarried women professors, who previously had to live in student dormitories. Vassar was already a unique institution for employing and educating women, but the construction of faculty housing offered a new private independence for women in higher education, legitimizing them in their personal lives. Buildings are never just buildings. The destruction of Williams is the destruction of institutional and feminist history, artistic tradition and familial memory.
Compared to their civic projects like the 69th Regiment Armory and the George W. Vanderbilt Home on Fifth Avenue, Williams House, in Tudor Revival Style, is marked more by a rustic charm according with its domestic role. The interiors have exacting and extraordinary crafted details, brass plaques for the electrical switches and original crystal glass door handles. Alumni Lawn was designed by Charles Olmsted and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, who was the landscape architect for Central Park. As residences grew around the property, the Alumnae House and Williams and the green would come to form a neighborhood center.
Sadly, comically, poetically, Vassar had to obtain a Letter of Resolution from the New York State Historic Preservation Office to remove Williams House from the State Register of Historic Places. Clearly, the decision to demolish was not ignorance or lack of research.
Hoping to prevent development in this area, the Arlington Neighborhood Association has applied for historic landmark preservation of Williams House and 159 College Avenue. The decision from the town’s Historic Preservation Commission to recognize Williams as a local historic landmark is pending. Meanwhile, town residents and students wait anxiously for the disappearance of the construction fence.
Please Support Rural Intelligence
We want to continue delivering the entertaining, informative and upbeat stories in the inimitable Rural Intelligence style, despite a pandemic. But we need your support to keep us going. Please consider making a donation; even a small amount helps secure our future. Support us now.
(If you prefer, mail a check to: 45 Pine Grove Ave., Suite 303, Kingston, NY 12401.)
Support Now