Town historian pleads to move from dilapidated downtown Riverhead landmark building

The building may be historic, but it’s no place to store historic documents and Riverhead Town historian Georgette Case wants out.

Case renewed her plea to move the town historian’s office out of the dilapidated town landmark in a July 2 letter to the town board, asking that the office be moved before winter to a permanent fireproof location “where the town’s history can be successfully preserved.”

Although board members have acknowledged the need to move the historian from the circa 1850 East Lawn building — they plan to sell the building outright — the board has no firm plans for a new location for the office where the town keeps original documents and materials dating back to the earliest days in the history of the Town of Riverhead.

Case said she has not had a response from the board to her July 2 letter, except from Councilman James Wooten, the town board liaison to the historian’s office, who contacted her to say he is looking into the town purchasing a building across from Town Hall on Howell Avenue, the former site of a laundromat.

Wooten said in an interview last week he has not discussed the idea with the board, nor has he spoken to the owners of the building or the real estate company handling the site.

The vacant, free-standing brick building at 215 Howell Avenue is available for rent, according to Multiple Listing Service of Long Island. A spokesperson for the real estate company whose sign is in the window of the building said last week the building is not for sale.

Last fall, Wooten pitched plans to renovate the old Second Street firehouse for use by the town historian and the Riverhead Community Awareness Program, but board members didn’t support it, deciding instead to try to sell the firehouse. The board issued requests for proposals for both the firehouse and East Lawn. It has now agreed to sell the firehouse to Bob Castaldi, who renovated and reopened the Suffolk Theater on Main Street. Board members were not willing to accept any of the three proposals received for East Lawn and plan to issue a new RFP on the building. They discussed the RFP at their July 17 work session, but did not discuss plans for relocating the town historian or the letter Case wrote two weeks earlier pleading to be moved out of East Lawn before winter.

“We’ll figure out what to do with CAP and the town historian,” Councilwoman Jodi Giglio said during the July 17 meeting.

Wooten said last week he still plans to pursue the building at 215 Howell Avenue and, if the sale of the firehouse falls through — it’s contingent on a number of conditions, including a zone change — he’d also renew discussion of his proposal to renovate it for use by the town historian.

The town historian, meanwhile, waits — though it’s clear her request for her office to be moved before winter will not be granted.

East Lawn was purchased by the town in 1984 to save it from a developer’s wrecking ball. The site was to become part of the office complex now surrounding it.

Under town ownership, it has fallen into grave disrepair, and Case has been complaining about the risk to town historic materials for years. (See Oct. 22, 2012 story.)

She described those conditions in her July 2 letter to the town board, arguing that the preservation of “the history of the town and its people” was at risk.

The historian’s office has a collection of documents and materials dating back to the late 1700s, when Riverhead Town seceded from Southold.
It includes a collection of more than 450 books, as well as maps, photographs, letters, meeting records and minutes, newspaper clippings and sundry other items. The materials are packed into shelves and boxes stacked everywhere in the tiny cramped office, including under chairs, tables and desks.

The historic materials should be stored in a climate-controlled environment, but East Lawn is anything but: the building’s windows and doors leak air and water; in wintertime, the temperature fluctuates inside the office from 60 to 62 degrees at floor level to 70-plus degrees at desk level.

Case worries that pipes in the bathroom adjoining her office in the poorly insulated building will freeze and burst, potentially flooding her office and destroying documents in boxes stacked on the floor.

Case also worries about the threat of fire at the old wood-frame building.

“Every time I leave East Lawn, I pray that everything will be safe until next time I open the door,” she wrote in her July 2 letter to the town board.