It’s been a busy year at the Pitt House and in the out buildings.
For a couple of years we’d noticed sinking in that part of the barn that connects its two portions. Water coming off the mountain in back had weakened the foundation under that section. Ken Shearer and TK got under the floor and restored a firm foundation.
Over the winter our caretaker/tenant, Fred Burrington, has installed a new sheetrock ceiling to cover the deteriorating plaster in the Pitt House breakfast room. He has repaired cracks in the plaster walls and is prepared to paint the room in its original color.
Electrician James Slowinski installed a much-needed fan and ceiling light in the Stacy Barn, as well as outside lights on the Stacy and the main barn so that we won’t have to feel out way out of evening meetings in the dark. Since Fred had reinforced the ceiling in the Crocker Abbey, we were able to move a collection of doors and house shutters out of the barn attic and into the Abbey attic, freeing space in the barn for the storage of documents in cupboards removed from Memorial Hall.
The curatorial committee is nearing the end of inventorying those documents (it’s taken just two years so far) into conservation boxes so that they will be safe and more easily retrievable in future.
You may have noticed that neither the Pitt House nor the barns have been open to the public recently. The work on the foundation and on the breakfast room, as well as inventory work done in the dining room, have left both buildings in temporary disarray. We do hope to be open again by 2017. There will, however, be an exhibit open to the public in the front room of the barn the second Sunday afternoon in June, July and August.
....AND TO DO NEXT
After Ken Shearer and TK had lifted the south end of the connecting portion of the barn, it became apparent that the north end of that portion was now in need of a lift. That will be a priority for the coming season.
The back of the Pitt House is in need of paint. We hope to be able to get a crew from the Franklin County Jail to do that work for just the cost of paint and supplies.
And inventorying the collection continues.
(Article from Historical Notes 2016: Newsletter of the Colrain Historical Society, published April, 2016.)
