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07/21/2021 09:00 AMA historic resource inventory and historic narrative commissioned by the E.C. Scranton library was recently completed after almost two years of work, recommending three buildings for national or state registries and adding specialized research and documentation to the library’s website as part of a compromise struck over the demolition of a historic structure to make room for the new library.
Heritage Resources, based in Norwalk, worked with the Library Building Committee on the documents, which tell a detailed and illustrated story of Madison’s downtown as well as a more technical, quantitative survey of the entire downtown area that could potentially be used to apply for grants or historical recognition by the state.
Tod Bryant, a principal at Heritage Resources who led the survey, said there were plenty of interesting pieces of information that came out of his work, and there remain plenty of opportunities to expand on it going forward.
“It’s a great little history of the town,” he said.
Bryant also explicitly suggests R.J. Julia Booksellers and the Monroe Building, which currently houses Walker Loden and Blue Moon by the Sea, for the State Register of Historic Places, and the Post Office for the National Register of Historic Places.
It would be incumbent on the owner of these properties to go forward with these applications, said Henry Griggs, a member of the Library Building Committee. If they are recognized, there is potential tax credits and financial help for maintaining those buildings, according to Griggs.
“Ideally what would happen is that these recommendations...would be acted on,” Bryant said. “Ideally, it would also spur more of these historic resource inventories in other parts of town. Basically they’re planning tools.”
Griggs said he felt the survey itself is a special and exciting new resource for anyone in town interested in Madison’s history, and particularly the granular evolutions of downtown where much has been preserved from the look and feel centuries past.
“If you drive out Route 1 to New Haven, it’s an unrelenting parade of big box stores,” he said. “Then you get to Madison...and there’s a really rather bucolic stretch.”
After controversy and the threat of lost funding back in 2019, Scranton negotiated an agreement with the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) that required the library to commission and pay for these surveys, among other things, with the idea that it would offset the loss of the actual historic structure.
Doing a survey like this was not “onerous” according to Griggs, and is something the library would have liked to have done anyway. The survey and report is the final step in fulfilling SHPO’s requirements, he added, with the library having already made a donation to the Madison Historical Society and run programming related to local history.
Bryant described his work as having very broad and foundational implications as far as planning in the town, and is the “lowest level” of a potentially longer process that could see more of Madison’s downtown structures receive historic designations.
Griggs said the documents and the survey are a relatively easy, non-invasive way to categorize and understand both broad historical trends and the specific historical place certain structures or neighborhoods have in it.
“I’m very pleased and also relieved that we are finally able to get this out to the public,” he said. “I think it will be a valuable resource down the road.”
Other towns have worked toward building a comprehensive inventory of every building and neighborhood in town, according to Bryant, with grants available to fund further endeavors along these lines.
Each of those surveys, which often include up to 150 structures, would also likely include a narrative telling the history of structures and how they fit into the evolution of Madison, according to Bryant
Other buildings downtown should also be assessed for their ability to take on upgrades for energy efficiency, according to the survey, with care taken to maintain the original material and architecture.
Bryant identified other buildings as having specific architectural significance in various ways, and traced their origins back sometimes as far as the mid-1800s, including recent businesses or tenants and the effects of several destructive fires.
Though he said there wasn’t anything new discovered, working with prominent local historian Griggs and members of the Madison Historical Society, the survey gives residents a fascinating and accessible snapshot of downtown.
Personally, Bryant said he was particularly interested in how the fires—two of which struck downtown in the 1980s—as well the effect of tourism and restrictive zoning molded what the town looks like now.
“It maintains that unity of downtown center,” Bryant said. “A lot of it is new construction, because the buildings just burned down. There was nothing you could do about it.”
Residents can actress both the resource inventory and the narrative through the library’s website at www.scrantonlibrary.org.