Township officials are looking to move to the next phase of the restoration project at the Schenck Farmstead site, with discussion set to continue at a special Township Council meeting with the West Windsor Historical Society on Monday, October 22. ##M:[more]##
With progress made on the Dutch-English barn at the historical site, the carriage/wagon house and school house, both of which are still in bad shape, are next. The three structures, which date from approximately 1740s to the early 1900s, complement the main house, which now serves as the historical society’s home.
Restoration on that house was completed around 1993, and the rest of the project has already spanned about 10 years.
Discussions at a meeting on October 4 at the farm site, centered mostly around whether the council should spend money to fully restore the unstable wagon/carriage house or leave it alone while officials try to find a similar structure to replace it.
Project architect Kyle Van Dyke explained to Councilwomen Heidi Kleinman and Linda Geevers, and Council Vice President George Borek that the barn on the Southfield Road site has been reassembled with a new foundation. The whole barn — the original parts of which were built in the 1740s — was dissembled, the old foundation was ripped out, new foundation was put in, and the old timbers were refurbished and restored. The barn also received new siding and a new roof.
But the question remained what to do with the carriage house, built around 1910. The carriage house is under-engineered, Van Dyke said, and would need to be rebuilt if ever used for tours.
The environment of the farmstead as a whole is what reflects the history of agriculture in West Windsor, not just the individual structures, Van Dyke said. For that reason, perhaps the council could look into finding another carriage house similar to what would have been built in Central New Jersey 100 years ago, and place it there instead of spending money to fix it, he said.
Kleinman suggested that in the meantime, minor work be done to stabilize the building and safeguard it against the weather, and to place a fence around the structure to keep the public from going inside.
Officials suggested that a bid proposal go out sometime in the next week or two for that work, so that it can be done before the winter.
Van Dyke also took officials inside the barn to show them what has yet to be completed. The barn doors are expected to be finished by the end of the year. Sam Surtees, the manager of the Division of Land Use, said the township also has funding to hire a professional to replicate the doors and windows for the barn and won’t have to go out for public bid because it is a historic structure. The township expects to award the bid by the end of this month.
Work on the shed — where officials want to redo the foundation, restore the timber, and reconstruct the siding — is also funded, and officials expect to have bids by end of the month and construction starting after the new year, Surtees said.
What the township does not have funding for is the work needed to completely finish the barn so that tours can be held there.
“We would need to make sure that the barn meets all the construction code requirements,” Surtees later said in a phone interview. Fire suppression codes require bathrooms and electrical work to be done. For the climate-controlled display room, heating and air conditioning in a small area of the barn, is required. Building requirements for the loft area, where straw and hay were once kept, also have to be met.
Kleinman was concerned that the council didn’t know the scope of the project, how much has been budgeted, and how much more work and money needed to be earmarked. She said a list should be provided. “What council needs is to understand when 100 percent” of it is complete, she said, so it can make decisions and budget for the rest of the work.
Van Dyke said the project had been set back over the years because it’s hard to get bid proposals written in a way that bidders won’t overestimate the cost and magnitude of what the project actually entails.
Surtees said Van Dyke is getting estimates for everything that still needs to be done and will be submitting them as proposals for this year’s capital budget.
With regard to the school house, which dates back to the Civil War era, officials are looking to create a replica, which possibly includes bringing a trailer on site, dismantling it, and using about 40 percent of the original material to reassemble it. About a decade ago, the school house was relocated to the site from its original location at the Maurice Hawk school on Clarksville Road. A foundation was quickly put in, but it didn’t resemble what a school house from that era would have looked like, and the roof of the building was also placed improperly, causing leaks, Surtees said. No money was put into the capital budget to fix it, and the schoolhouse just sat there for years.
— Cara Latham
