Urgent Action Needed to Save Historic Wells College Buildings from Irreversible Damage
The WLS sent the following letter on September 18th to U.S. Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, NYS Governor Hochul, and all other elected officials representing Aurora, NY. If you live in NYS, please send your own a message of concern! Contacts for the Senators and Governor are via their website portals. Email addresses for local representatives may be found online.
If you don’t live in New York State, perhaps you have friends who do. They can send a message to NYS elected officials on our behalf.
NYS Assembly member Jeff Gallahan: gallhanj@nyassembly.gov
NYS Senator Rachel May: may@nysenate.gov
https://www.schumer.senate.gov/contact/message-chuck
https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/contact/email-me/
https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form
Dear__________,
We are writing to you today with a sense of urgency and deep concern regarding an imminent threat to the historic buildings at Wells College in Aurora, NY, which announced its closure last spring. This week, the Wells Legacy Society, Inc., learned that the college's current leadership plans to shut off the water and heat to these buildings beginning in early October. This decision will have catastrophic consequences for these irreplaceable historic structures and their contents, which are integral to our region's cultural heritage in central New York.
Without heat, these buildings and their contents will be vulnerable to severe damage. The potential for mold and mildew will rise dramatically and ruin the college’s extensive unprotected holdings of books, archives, artifacts, and art works. This will also impact the buildings themselves, damaging the walls and woodwork.
Furthermore, extreme cold will cause pipes to develop numerous cracks. These will leak when the water is turned back on, causing immediate water damage as well as unseen deterioration with seepage behind walls and beneath floors which will lead to a loss of structural integrity. Maintenance professionals have informed us that the large campus buildings served by an elaborate, antiquated steam heat system cannot be adequately “winterized” against this damage.
More than a dozen buildings on the Wells campus are listed as part of a district in the National Register of Historic Places, including the l852 limestone Tuscan villa Glen Park (the home of founder Henry Wells), the 1858 Gothic revival Pettibone House, and the iconic 1890 four-story brick Main Building. In addition, the award winning library designed by Walter Netsch and built by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in 1968 is separately listed as a local historic landmark.
The college's trustees are responsible for protecting these valuable physical assets, yet this decision reflects a blatant abandonment of that duty. Shutting off the heat in these historic structures is irresponsible and reckless. We must act now to prevent irreversible damage, and we urge you to intervene to protect these historic buildings for future generations.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Officers of the Wells Legacy Society
Karen Hindenlang (Aurora NY)
Rachel Snyder (Rochester NY), and
Maggie Mahr (Hammondsport NY)
