Author: PHW

As you may have deduced from past Friday Photos posts, the 1980s were the most active period for the Jennings Revolving Fund. This was a critical period which saw some truly remarkable renovations take place. This activity helped to much of the core downtown after decades of rampant demolitions for parking lots.

The unfortunate side effect of this work is that by returning these buildings to single family use, the renters in the multiple apartments were displaced. The massive amounts of work to the buildings naturally led to a rise in property values and slowly began to change the perception of neighborhoods like Potato Hill from somewhere undesirable to a safe and attractive neighborhood. This displacement, called gentrification, was one of the main criticisms leveled at PHW and the Revolving Fund.

Although PHW’s approach to Revolving Fund purchases was to offer a current renter the ability to purchase the property, in most cases this was not feasible for the renter. The Revolving Fund houses were often in disrepair past the point of someone inexperienced and not financially stable taking on the task of renovating them on their own. It is hard to imagine someone diving into renovations for the first time with properties like the Grim-Moore house, 215 S. Loudoun, or the Huntsberry Building and reaching a successful outcome.

To that end, PHW partnered with the City on a Community Development Block Grant for Kent Street. The CDBG was primarily aimed at reversing blight in rental properties and focusing on maintaining the existing building stock as the likelihood for new construction declined. A secondary motivation was in response to the fear of the downtown as a whole declining as the key anchor stores moved to the Apple Blossom Mall. By keeping the surrounding neighborhoods inhabited, there was more chance of businesses remaining downtown because of the built-in clientele.

All told, the 1980 CDBG project addressed safety and blight concerns in 28 residential properties on North and South Kent Street. Fire hazards were one of the highest cited problems for the neighborhoods. The houses typically lacked central heating and relied on wood stoves, kerosene heaters, or portable electric heaters, all of which raise the potential for fires. The data collection for the CDBG also found many buildings did not have adequate plumbing (some never having been connected to the existing sewer service) and many were overcrowded. There were also insufficient fire hydrants and in some cases the very streets were too narrow for fire equipment to access.

The houses were renovated to provide fire breaks and improve electrical wiring conditions. At the same time, sidewalks, water lines, and sewer lines were improved and the stone retaining walls on South Kent Street were repaired. PHW’s focus was primarily on South Kent Street in the 300 block. Seven of the units on South Kent Street were under PHW’s purview. Although reactions to the project were mixed and it never quelled the concerns about gentrification, one unit in particular was called out as a prime success story.

311 1/2 South Kent was the smallest of PHW’s units and the first to be renovated. Completed and put up for sale in 1982, potential buyers would have to qualify under special Department of Housing and Urban Development restrictions because the house was renovated with CDBG funds. It didn’t take long for the house to find its new owner. After being listed in February and shown in an open house event, the home was sold to Daryl Monn and his family in May. (1) (2) It had been a perfect opportunity for Monn, who had been struggling to find a home. Through PHW, the Monns could realize their dream of home ownership.

A copy of the 1980 CDBG Kent Street paperwork is on file at PHW and is available to researchers seeking more information. See the Flickr album for images of 311 1/2 South Kent Street before and during PHW’s renovation.

We will return to our normal history posts next week, but for now, please enjoy some images of South Kent Street on Flickr.

This Friday we bring you one of our favorite things: a photographic documentation of a building rehabilitation. The houses at the intersection of Cork and Loudoun Streets, just off the walking mall, had been in decline for some time, adding to the visual perception of the downtown as a dirty and unsafe place to be. PHW purchased the house at 215 South Loudoun Street in 1979. The building was in dilapidated condition, inside and out, and would require extensive work to make it inhabitable once more.

George and Vivian Smith stepped up to the challenge. Over the next two years, the Smiths worked on the home. The building was originally tentatively dated pre-1885; as work on the interior commenced, the existing moldings and mantels suggested a circa 1840-1850 timeframe. Later, the building received a facelift, adding Italianate features like the arched windows, doors, and front porch. A frame wing to the rear of the main brick house was apparently constructed over the site of an earlier structure. Archeological work during the rebuilding of the frame portion revealed the remains of a stone chimney, fragments of Canton ware, and an 1831 penny.

Deed research by PHW supports these archeological findings. The lot was purchased by John Lauck in 1821. Some sort of dwelling was likely in place by 1828 when it was purchased by William Blanchard. Language of the deed in 1852 when the property was sold to Edward Hoffman seem to indicate the brick house was not yet constructed. Tax records for 1881 indicate a jump in assessments, leading to speculation the Italianate improvements may have taken place that year.

Work on 215 South Loudoun included repairing the existing porch and shutters, rebuilding and repointing the walls, jacking and leveling the frame extension and replacing the siding, and repairing and reglazing the existing windows. PHW placed special protective covenants on this property to specify all work during the repointing was to be done with hand tools to not damage the brick. Interior upgrades included new electrical, HVAC, plumbing, insulation, bathroom and kitchen facilities, as well as modifications to the interior stairs.

With so much work to be done, it will come as no surprise 215 South Loudoun was a tax credit project. It was granted a Winchester Historic Building plaque in 1982. Much like the Huntsberry Building, this property displayed a dramatic upswing in value post-rehabilitation. PHW sold the property for a little less than $23,000. In 1985, the Smiths’ asking price was $125,000. The building, just off the walking mall, was used by the Smiths for their business, but was returned to residential use by its current owners.

Be sure to visit the Flickr album to see many more images of 215 South Loudoun during its rehabilitation.

As we’ve seen over the past few weeks, PHW was becoming increasingly active in the future of the downtown. When the Huntsberry Building at 157 North Loudoun Street came on the radar as a Revolving Fund purchase, it was a perfect opportunity to demonstrate two proposed methods to keep downtowns vital against the encroachment of large shopping malls. One of these methods was to encourage more historic facade restorations, turning back some of the changes and restore a more authentic view of downtown. The Huntsberry Building would be a perfect and potentially dramatic example of this, as the facade had been covered in a cement and tile mixture in the 1940s or 1950s, obscuring the original Queen Anne details. It was also a perfect case to reintroduce upper story apartments to the downtown. The upper floors of the building had reportedly been vacant for twenty years in 1982. While in disrepair many Victorian-era architectural details were still intact on the upper stories, and the space could comfortably be divided into several apartments.(1)

PHW began with the technical work to tackle the exterior restoration portion of this project, locating archival photos of the building and doing some hands on investigation to determine how the facade had once looked. One of the best guides was a circa 1886 photo, showing where windows had once been located and a different street level configuration of the storefront. John G. Lewis lent his architectural historian expertise to the building as well, confirming through trace evidence left in the building’s interior some of the puzzling exterior questions.

PHW secured a $30,000 loan from the National Trust, matched that amount with a local fund drive, and received a state grant of $14,000 to purchase the building and undertake the facade restoration project.(2) Work on the facade started in September of 1982, and almost immediately hit an unforeseen snag. During the tile removal, the brick wall was found to be very soft, possibly having been made from salmon bricks reused from another building previously on this site. The bricks and mortar were also theorized to have not been wetted sufficiently during construction, causing the mortar to fail much more rapidly than usual. The removal of the window frames, which were structural elements, further compromised the stability of the front facade. Even a careful approach to the cement and tile removal led to dangerous shifting of the wall and more damage to the bricks.

Fearing a collapse should this work proceed, a structural engineer was brought in. The first floor and foundation were found to be in good condition. During this time PHW members made the decision to rebuild in cinder block. In an ideal world, brick could have been custom ordered to replace that which had been damaged, but the committee felt there was a lack of expertise in historic mason techniques, so that the craftsmanship of this approach could not have duplicated the original facade satisfactorily. The cinder block wall would also reduce the weight on the first floor, and when plastered would still provide the intended historic flavor without bankrupting the organization.

Although it was a potentially disastrous situation, the Huntsberry Building facade was rebuilt to much the way it appeared in the 1880s. The project was lauded as a successful experiment, with the apartments being rented soon after their completion in 1987.(3) The only downside was that the reconstruction of the failing front wall with cinder block precluded the project from realizing historic tax credit benefits. Although the owners who undertook the interior renovation put the building up for sale in 1992, the asking price was an indication of the project’s success and a turnaround in the downtown climate. PHW sold the building for $75,000. Ten years and one interior renovation later and the asking price became $300,000.(4)

Be sure to visit the Flickr album to see more images of the Huntsberry Building during the facade restoration, 1982-1983.

As mentioned last week, Winchester’s downtown was approaching a time of reckoning in 1980. Three mall developers were looking toward construction of a regional shopping mall in Winchester’s vicinity, and the anchor stores of the downtown – Leggett’s, Sears, and JC Penney’s – had all expressed interest in moving to this new location. Nearby cities that had not invested in their downtowns were experiencing a rapid decline in the older commercial districts, with vacant storefronts, vagrants and drug dealers, and arson and vandalism problems. Winchester hoped to steer away from that path of decline through proactive assessments and actions. (1)

The special tax district that was put in place for the construction costs of the pedestrian mall was due to expire in 1983. Thoughts turned almost immediately to extending that tax and collectively using those funds to promote the downtown. More controversially, the tax could be expanded into an adjacent secondary district comprised of Piccadilly, Boscawen, Cameron, Braddock and Cork Streets. Proponents of this idea cited the tax would average about $500, or about the cost of a full page advertisement in the Winchester Star in 1980.

David Juergens, co-chair of the Downtown Development Committee studying this conundrum, laid out his thoughts on how an older downtown could adapt some of the ideas of the regional mall strategy. The pedestrian mall would have to become event and entertainment oriented, with attractions other than just shopping. A downtown administrator would be hired to coordinate among the merchants and paid for through the special assessment district and dues to the Retail Merchants Association. This was a similar strategy used by the shopping malls to keep a cohesive branding between the multiple stores. Vacant upper floors would be targeted to be filled and maximize the square footage of the downtown buildings. And as is fitting, he echoed the sentiments of architecture lovers everywhere: “We want people to come downtown where the architecture is real and the design honest.”

In November 1980, the National Development Council was hired to lay a financial plan for the downtown to compete against the expected regional mall. The other ideas of special assessment areas and a downtown manager to coordinate between all the merchants like the regional mall model were also met favorably. Efforts had previously been made to keep “alcoholics and slovenly dressed” away from the downtown via a dress code, but that law had been challenged and ruled unconstitutional. The other option was to turn the pedestrian mall into a private street, so that private security officers could be hired to patrol the area. (2) (3)

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the plan was keeping and expanding the special tax district. It was a unique idea and is reportedly the only such district in Virginia. Expanding the assessment into a secondary district caused grumbles, because most of the focus of the downtown goes into the Loudoun Street corridor, then as now. Businesses in the secondary area countered that they could use the money from that tax to individually promote themselves, or that the burden of the tax would end up raising the rents on their spaces to the point where they would need to leave the downtown. (4) Officials, including Katie Rockwood of PHW, spoke in favor of the tax supporting the commercial downtown. From PHW’s perspective, a strong downtown helped to fuel our own Revolving Fund efforts. Although most of those properties are residential, the 30 properties that had passed through the Revolving Fund at that time were cited as spurring $1.6 million in investments. Those properties could not have been so successful in an economically depressed downtown climate. (5)

Irvin Shendow responded with a lengthy open forum piece as well, citing some of the positive changes that had started to take place with the construction of the pedestrian mall. Restaurants had moved downtown, store vacancies declined between 1974 and 1980, and renovations of buildings were on the upswing after 1975. He also noted that although a new regional shopping center might be a tempting move, rents there are almost always higher than in a downtown. He cited an average of $12 to $15 per square foot of space in a mall, compared to $2 to $4 per square foot in the downtown. Add in the regional mall fees, often three to five times the fees paid by the downtown merchants, and he doubted a bump up in rents from the downtown tax would kill the downtown’s “competitive pricing edge.” (6)

At PHW’s Annual Meeting in 1981, Porter Briggs spoke on the future of Winchester’s downtown. Although he warned the shopping mall was inevitable and the downtown would change, the two could coexist. The challenge would be to keep the downtown vital during this transitional process.(7) In the long run, his prediction has been proven correct – but it did take a long time to get there. Check in next week for a look at PHW’s direct contribution to the downtown mall with a facade restoration project at the Huntsberry Building!