West Tisbury Town Hall Wins Makeover

By IAN FEIN

When Sandy Fisher walks into the West Tisbury town hall, she says
the ladies' room smells exactly like it did when she went to
school there about 40 years ago.

"It's probably the original mold," she said this
week.

Sometime soon, however, the bathrooms will begin to smell different,
as the 134-year-old building is set for a dramatic $3.7 million
makeover.

On Tuesday a record number of town voters said yes to the renovation
project 1,074 to 577 at a special town election. The Proposition 2 1/2
override question needed a simple majority to pass. Voters also approved
the project at a special town meeting last week.

"I didn't think it was going to do it," town hall
building committee chairman Ernest Mendenhall said after the final vote
was tallied late Tuesday night. "I was not convinced heading into
today."

The road to a new West Tisbury town hall has been long and at times
bumpy. In a way, the town has been wrestling with the project since the
1970s. The building originally housed the Dukes County Academy, and was
converted to a town hall in 1977.

Built in 1870 with a price tag of $8,000, the Dukes County Academy
served as a private school for about 25 years before becoming public.
The academy association kept ownership of the building, and leased it to
the town for another half-century, before finally gifting the property
to the town in the late 1940s.

In the early 1970s West Tisbury selectmen formed a committee to
explore options for the future of the building. The committee briefly
discussed creating a community center, and later was approached by the
Martha's Vineyard National Bank, which showed interest in leasing
the ground floor for a West Tisbury drive-in and walk-in branch.

But the late Fred S. Fisher Jr., Sandy's father and the former
finance committee member and selectman, offered the most controversial
proposal. He suggested the town use the building as a drill for the fire
department, and burn it to the ground.

At a November 1975 special town meeting, voters decided not to raze
the historic structure, but then rejected an expenditure of $4,600 to
explore two architectural designs that would have transformed the
building into town offices. At the time the cost of the renovation was
estimated between $75,000 and $90,000.

Mr. Fisher said he could not see spending so much money "on
that damned old shack."

At another special town meeting two months later, voters approved
three separate articles appropriating $11,000 for minor renovations that
were mostly cosmetic. Some voters opposed spending money on paint.

Because of the lack of funding, police chief George Manter -
who briefly used the building as the town police department after the
school moved out and before the town offices moved in -
voluntarily did much of the remodeling and carpentry himself.

Much of Mr. Manter's handiwork still holds the building
together today. Since the 1970s only minor changes have been made,
except for a new roof that was installed in 1998.

"Under the cover of darkness," according to one
newspaper account, on a late Sunday night in July 1977, the town offices
moved into the old school, and the police department moved into the old
town offices on Mill Brook Pond.

At the time, John Alley, who served his first year as selectman in
the old town offices, explained the need for the move: "When the
town grows, so do the file drawers."

This week, Mr. Alley said much the same thing about the need for new
renovations. Between 1970 and 2000, the population of West Tisbury
increased from 453 to 2,487 - making it the fastest growing
community in the commonwealth.

Mr. Alley served as a selectman for 27 years, graduated from the
school in 1951, and has lived across the street from the town hall
building for 58 years.

"I perhaps have the best view of the entire project," he
said from his State Road home on Thursday. "And really if you look
at something for 60 years you become used to it. I think people will
tell you that they're skeptical of change. But if [the building
committee] does a good job, the change will soon be accepted by the
people of the town."

Mr. Alley admitted the building will lose some of its character and
charm. In 1977, when he and police Sgt. Jeffrey (Skipper) Manter removed
the old heating ducts, they found love notes written in the fifties.
They also uncovered a blackboard that still had an assignment from 1938
written in chalk.

Mr. Manter, whose class photo hung on the walls of town hall when
his mother, Janice, served as executive secretary, also has a unique
perspective on the building. As a young sergeant he worked under his
father in the makeshift police department on the ground floor, where he
now sits as a selectman and once played dodge ball during rainy days as
a child.

As the only member of the town hall building committee who went to
school there, Mr. Manter said he will strive to maintain the
building's historic features, such as the blackboards still
visible in the old classrooms on the second floor.

Three current town hall employees also went to school in the
building - town clerk Prudence Whiting, planning board
administrator Simone De-Sorcy and zoning board of appeals administrator
Julie Keefe. All three are excited about the prospect for new offices,
but fond childhood memories linger.

"Obviously the gut familiarity of it will be changed somewhat,
but it's not as if we're leveling the building. The same
wonderful windows will be there, with the same amount of light flooding
in," Mrs. Keefe said this week. "Ultimately it's all
in your mind anyway; you can retain it there."

For the last six years Mrs. Keefe has worked in the same room where
she started school about 50 years ago. She sits today in nearly the same
spot that her teacher, Priscilla Fisher, once sat.

"Sometimes I think I'm Mrs. Fisher," she admitted.
"Whenever anyone who went to school here comes by for town
business they comment on it. And, oddly enough, no matter what the age
group, we all remember having gym downstairs.

"We had wonderful recesses here - the best in the
world," Mrs. Keefe said. "We just had boundless energy. We
played so hard."

Some town hall employees, reveling in the override victory, said
they were so eager for the renovations to start that they were already
packing their bags Wednesday morning. But a lot of work remains before
construction begins.

"I'm ecstatic, and I want to pack up my office,
too," Mr. Mendenhall said Wednesday, a bright painting of the
proposed new town hall hanging above his desk. "But,
unfortunately, now's where the work really begins. I'm glad
we've got to this point, but now we've really got to buckle
down," he said.

Voters have approved funding and conceptual designs for the project,
but all the specifics still must be determined. Mr. Mendenhall said the
building committee will hold at least one more public meeting in the
coming months to discuss issues of concern.

He said it will likely take a few months for the committee to
complete the plans, and he hopes the project will be ready to go out to
bid by February 2005.

Sometime after that, the moldy bathrooms will be torn down, and
Sandy Fisher's scents will be just memories.

Asked whether the building will lose some of its character without
the smelly bathroom, Mrs. Fisher replied:

"No, I won't miss that. I just hope it doesn't
leak."