Venerable Rumsey Hall has lost its usefulness

It always feels as if something irretrievable has been lost whenever a historical structure is torn down, particularly in New England, a region known to value its past. However, there are times when destruction is the only option left, and so it is for Cornwall’s Rumsey Hall. Still, it does seem a shame that there was nothing else to be done to keep the old building useful, after so many years of its having served the community well.

As noted by reporter Karen Bartomioli in her story in last week’s Lakeville Journal, the crumbling building has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1990. There were good reasons for this: Rumsey Hall began its run in 1848 as a boys’ private school, then as the Housatonic Valley Institute, more schools, and a gymnasium for a private school, then Marvelwood School leased the building until 1995. That’s a pretty long run.

Since then, despite the best efforts and brainstorms for uses of the building by both its owners and the townspeople of Cornwall, no idea took hold enough to become reality.

It is too bad there couldn’t have been senior affordable housing, or a new space for Town Hall. But voters did not accept the idea of renovating the building for town offices. A large part of the problem is that bringing an old building such as this up to current code is simply prohibitively expensive with no guarantees it will be able to be accomplished well no matter the amount of money thrown at it.

Farewell to a building that has been an integral part of Cornwall’s identity for more than 150 years. Since 1995, it’s been more of a negative identification, but for decades before that, there were certainly many more positive experiences that Rumsey Hall provided for those who matured and were educated within its walls. Let’s hope that sometime in the future a new structure will replace it that can claim some measure of similar historic note.