Opinion

Letter to the Editor: Hamilton should preserve historic 1793 house

By The Hamilton History Department

The Clinton Courier of November 19, 2014 published a very interesting story about the “1793 house” at 60 College Hill, owned by the College, and currently the site of an archeological dig conducted by the students of our colleague Nathan Goodale.  Towards the end of the story the reporter notes that the house’s fate is uncertain because the “option of demolition” is “being seriously considered.”  And it suggests that “this building, while old and historically interesting” may not be worth the price of its maintenance.

The members of the Hamilton history department, whose names appear below, are concerned that the College would consider demolishing an “historically interesting” and remarkably intact 18th century building.  The 1793 house – the only building that old still standing on its original foundations on the Hill, and one of the few surviving structures anywhere in the region that predate the chartering of the College, has many connections to Hamilton history.  As home to the Reverend Robert Porter, principal of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy in 1805, it is likely that his fellow-clergyman and Academy founder Samuel Kirkland himself would have been a guest in the house. 

As an institution whose history is intimately bound to that of the region, to the Oneida Nation to whom the Reverend Kirkland served as missionary, and to the white settlers who began to arrive only a few short years before the construction of the 1793 house, we have a responsibility to preserve for future generations as much as possible of the physical legacy bequeathed us by our predecessors on the Hill.  As Professor Frank Matero, chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania writes in an article on “Ethics and Policy in Conservation,” there is a “moral imperative” in how we treat our  “collective human inheritance,” including physical structures like the 1793 house.  Among other principles we should practice in this regard, he includes these:

• The obligation to respect cumulative age-value; that is, to acknowledge the site or work as a cumulative physical record of human activity embodying cultural beliefs, values, materials and techniques, and displaying the passage of time;

• The obligation to do no harm, performing minimal intervention that will reestablish structural and aesthetic legibility and meaning with the least physical interference—or that will allow other options and further treatment in the future. 

• http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/newsletters/15_1/feature1_2.html

The question of whether preserving any particular structure on campus is of economic benefit to the College is one that, of course, legitimately concerns you in your capacity as vice president for administration and finance.  But in this case, we believe as historians that the “moral imperative” to protect our collective human inheritance must take priority.  Maintaining the property will have associated costs, of course, but so will demolishing it.  And the cost of demolition includes a moral as well as a financial dimension.

If in 2014 the preservation of the 1793 house fails to make economic sense, it does not mean that sometime down the road our successors will not come up with an alternative use for the house that makes perfect sense, economically and otherwise.  As Professor Matero suggests we should “do no harm” to this structure, and preserve it in a way “that will allow other options and further treatment in the future.” We surely do not wish to be remembered by succeeding generations as vandals without vision.

Thank you for your consideration.

—Doug Ambrose, John Eldevik, Kevin Grant, Shoshana Keller, Al Kelly, Maurice Isserman, Celeste Day Moore, Robert Paquette, Lisa Trivedi, Tom Wilson

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