06880

As Westport grapples with the need for a new Long Lots Elementary School, the options — renovate or rebuild? — find echoes in a debate more than a quarter century ago.

In 1996, town officials debated what to do with Greens Farms Elementary.

The parallels with today are not exact. GFS had been closed more than a decade earlier, then converted into the Westport Arts Center.

But the controversy over the possible displacement of a major town institution — the WAC then, the Westport Community Gardens now — are similar.

100 plots, at the Westport Community Gardens just south of Long Lots Elementary School. (Drone photo/Franco Fellah)

On October 20, 1996, the New York Times published a long story in its Connecticut section about the issue. It was written by James Lomuscio, editor of the Westport News.

Alert “06880” reader (and former educator) Werner Liepolt found the piece online, and sent it to “06880.” It’s worth reading, to see how much has changed since then.

And how much has not.

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In 1920, in a gray-shingled house near Compo Beach in Westport, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote ”The Beautiful and the Damned.” In 1950, J. D. Salinger holed up in a house on South Compo Road to write ”The Catcher in the Rye.” And James White, a native of Westport, recalls chatting with a struggling, young screenwriter named Rod Serling as he labored over ”Requiem for a Heavyweight” in the Westport Public Library.

The iconic (and Photoshopped) shot of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Photoshopped in front of their Westport home.

Other kinds of artists have also been drawn to the town, a little more than an hour by train from New York City. The illustrator Stevan Dohanos, for example, gleaned many scenes for Saturday Evening Post covers from Westport. James Earle Fraser, famous for his ”End of the Trail” sculpture and for designing the buffalo nickel also lived in town. And there have been scores of Broadway and Hollywood performers, from Bette Davis to to Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. ”Maybe it’s the geography, the folklore, or just something in the air,” said Burt Chernow, first president of the Westport Arts Center and current chairman of the town’s Arts Advisory Council.

It was that artistic heritage that Mr. Chernow, William Seiden (the First Selectman at the time) and others wanted to preserve when they formed the town-sponsored Westport Arts Center in the Greens Farms school in 1984. The building was one of five elementary schools shut down due to declining enrollments in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

When it opened, Mr. Seiden said the center would provide affordable studio space to struggling artists.

”Typically, when people with money come into communities the artists pack up and leave for less expensive areas,” said Mr. Seiden in 1984. ”We want to keep the artists here.” (Mr. Seiden himself had been a child actor who appeared in the ”Boys Town” movies and ”The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”)

With studio space in the center starting at $8.50 a square foot a month — compared to upwards of $25 a square foot elsewhere town — scores of artists have adopted the classrooms just as in other places they moved in on vacated factory space.

Burt Chernow

”We have over 100 members in the Theater Artists Workshop using the center, and there are more than 30 visual artists here,” said Mr. Chernow. ”At any given time you have close to 150 to 200 people, including musicians, using it.”

Over the years, many artists have come to consider the Greens Farms school a permanent location. Heida Hermanns, the concert pianist and president of Performers of Connecticut, even sold a Chagall painting to finance converting the school gymnasium into a concert hall in memory of her husband, Artur Holde.

But a lot has changed in Westport over the last 10 years. The elementary school age population has nearly doubled, going from 975 students in 1987 to 1,869 in 1996, according to school officials, and now the Board of Education wants to reclaim the Greens Farms building, a proposal that pits two town hallmarks, art and education, against each other.

The arts center is currently in its sixth year of a 10-year lease, and tomorrow the school superintendant, Dr. Paul Kelleher, is expected to deliver a list of options to the Board of Selectmen. Among them are: discontinuing the arts center’s lease in 2000, dissolving the lease sooner, or figuring out a way school children and artists can share the building.

”Let me tell you, we’re out of space, and if we have any more elementary growth as of next year we’ll have no classrooms for them,” said Dr. Kelleher. He said that despite additions and the use of modular classrooms the town’s three remaining elementary schools — Coleytown, Bedford and Kings Highway — are already at capacity.

”We’re beyond the point of posturing,” said Ira Bloom, chairman of the Westport Board of Education. ”We need space, and we need it quick.”

Of the five elementary schools closed more than a decade ago, school officials say the Greens Farms building, on nine acres at the corner of the Post Road and Morningside Drive South, is best suited to reuse. The Bedford Elementary School is now used as the town hall. Last month, the Saugatuck School officially opened as housing for elderly people. In the early 80’s the Burr Farms School was razed, and three years ago the town subdivided the land and sold the lots. The Hills Point school building, now being used for nursery schooling, is not properly designed for reuse as a school, Dr. Kelleher said.

After the original Saugatuck Elementary School on Bridge Street closed, it was adapted for use as co-op housing for older residents.

That leaves Greens Farms. School officials say it would cost substantially less — $11.5 million — to renovate there than it would to build a new school on town-owned property — $16 million.

The executive director of the Westport Arts Center, Marilyn Hersey, argued that students would be better served by a new building.

”Listen, the kids need a school, but they deserve a state-of-the-art new school,” said Ms. Hersey. Greens Farms, constructed in the early 1900’s, lacks accessibility for those with disabilities as well as adequate parking; there are asbestos-covered pipes and a driveway with an incline too steep for school buses in icy weather, she said. ”And why anyone would want to put an elementary school on the Post Road is beyond me,” she added.

Dr. Kelleher responded by citing engineering and architectural reports that say the old building can be reused. ”I am respectful of the history of the arts in Westport and the commitment of time and money to the arts center over the past 10 years,” he said. ”But I feel less respectful of their comments over the suitability of the building as a school.”

Herzl Emanuel, at work.

Herzl Emanuel, a sculptor, was one of the first artists to get a space at the center. A W.P.A. artist who later spent more than 30 years working in a small studio in Rome, Italy, Mr. Emanuel now works in the same room that was his son Adam’s third-grade classroom more than 25 years ago. Mr. Emanuel said he believes the school board wants the Greens Farms building because art is no longer a community-wide priority.

Westport, he said, ”is no longer characterized by a huge knowledgeability and appreciation of the arts. Their foremost concerns are the usual prosaic interests in material things: their homes, their vacations and their shopping malls. In short, we are no longer different from other communities in the area.”

Caroly Van Duyn, a multimedia artist who works in paint and clay, and who has been at the center for four years, agreed the character of the town has changed. ”I grew up in town near Old Mill Beach, and my mother was an artist and my father a designer, and all of their friends were artists,” she said. ”So, growing up as an artist in Westport was nothing unusual.

”This conflict has been a real eye-opener to me because I’ve come to realize that not everyone here is supportive of the arts,” added Ms. Van Duyn. ”Where are we going to disperse to? If this building is reclaimed, some people will go into their homes and be less visible, or they will move out of town, which is sad for the community.”

Ms. Hersey describes the center as a community resource through its concerts, art shows and educational programs. ”We give back to the town’s children $100,000 a year in programming,” said Ms. Hersey. ”There are also scholarships to high schools in Westport and Weston. There’s the Young Artists Competition.”

Mr. Bloom, of the Board of Education, said that while he acknowledged the arts center’s value to the community there was a more pressing need. ”I spent a lot of time there with my own daughter who is involved in the theater groups,” he said. ”But I think you have to look at the big picture and the changes in demographics in recent years. Our primary responsibility has to be to adequately educate our children.”

Mr. Bloom added that reclaiming the Greens Farms building would not preclude establishing an arts center elsewhere in town. ”In my judgment that’s a problem that can be solved,” he said.

Greens Farms Elementary was ultimately reclaimed, and reopened …

Joseph Arcudi, Westport’s First Selectman, has suggested that the artists and the Board of Education share the building. ”The win-win situation would be for both the arts center and the Board of Ed to share it,” said Mr. Arcudi. ”I think it can be done.”

But Mr. Chernow fears a shared use would be ”the worst of both possible worlds.”

”You wouldn’t get the school of the 21st century, and you wouldn’t get the art center that Westport deserves,” he said.

Mr. Chernow added that any savings the town would net reclaiming Greens Farms would be offset by the cost setting up a new arts center.

Early this month, art and education stood side by side at a ceremony at the Kings Highway elementary school, celebrating the restoration of two John Steuart Curry frescoes, ”Comedy” and ”Tragedy,” painted in 1934.

”I’ve looked through decades of old newspaper clippings,” said Alice Shelton, a chairwoman of the Kings Highway P.T.A. ”In 1925 Westport was described as the town that believed in schools. In another article I found it was called a town made famous for its artists.

”I hope that these trends will continue,” she added, ”so that Westport will be known in the 21st century as a community that continues to care about its schools and its artists.”

Ultimately, Greens Farms was reclaimed, and reopened as an elementary school. The Westport Arts Center moved to its own building on Riverside Avenue (today it’s MoCA of Westport, on Newtown Turnpike.). 

What’s next for Long Lots, and the Westport Community Gardens? That chapter has not yet been written.