Preservation students aid a historic arts colony

Cornell graduate student volunteers, from left, Caroline Harvey, Shauna Haas and Victor Gordon work on a trench to prevent water from rotting the sill of the Byrdcliffe Theater, at the Woodstock, N.Y., arts colony in early April. The building was once a studio for well-known artists. Mark Louie

By Linda Myers

Byrdcliffe, a historic arts colony in Woodstock, N.Y., that has been home to some of the most celebrated American artists, got a helping hand from Cornell preservation students and practitioners April 3-5.

The group of volunteers, led by about 40 students in Cornell's program in historic preservation planning (HPP) and city and regional planning department, spent the weekend in miserable weather stabilizing deteriorating structures at the site, which is on the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places. The students are enrolled in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

On Thursday and Friday of that week it rained, and on Saturday it snowed, but the group was undaunted. "This was the best group of volunteers ever," said Sara Shreve, a first-year HPP student and the weekend's chief organizer, along with classmate Erin Coryell. "It was so cold that you could actually see your breath, even inside the buildings, but everyone was so enthusiastic and dedicated that we got much more done than we thought we would."

The group also included members of the Woodstock Guild, the organization responsible for the stewardship of the arts colony, and about 10 Cornell alumni who are professional historic preservation planners, with one of them driving up from as far away as North Carolina with his son.

"It was a cold, snowy horrible weekend, but the students were filled with cheer and much enthusiasm," said Carla Smith, the executive officer of the Woodstock Guild. "They did a fabulous job, including some wonderful work on our stone walls. They also diverted a stream that was destroying the foundation of our theater and did a demolition project to remove the remains of an old garage that had fallen down, oh, about 100 years ago."

This year is the centennial anniversary of Byrdcliffe, which was one of the earliest arts colonies in the United States and helped found and define a heritage in rural upstate New York of experimental art production and communal living. The utopian craftsman community was constructed in 1902-03 just west of Woodstock. Dancer Isadora Duncan, writer Wallace Stevens, painters Milton and Sally Avery and educator-philosopher John Dewey were among its most famous past residents. The colony also housed a collection of furniture prized by museums and collectors for their design, workmanship and rarity. Some pieces are now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and some are part of a traveling exhibition that will reach Cornell's Johnson Museum in 2004.

Byrdcliffe is still in operation today as a residence for visiting visual and performing artists, writers and poets. Thirty buildings on 300 forested acres comprise the arts colony. Most of the buildings resemble low, rambling Swiss chalets with dark-stained indigenous pine siding, gently sloping roofs with wide overhangs and window trim painted "Byrdcliffe" blue. But in recent years, faced with mounting budget cuts to arts organizations, the colony has not been able to maintain its historic property as comprehensively as it would have liked.

The project included restacking locally quarried slate walls and completing historic structure and landscape documentation -- an important, and often costly, step in the formulation of a long-term preservation plan -- as well removing overgrown vegetation, digging swales, or drainage trenches adjacent to buildings, painting interiors and trim and repairing porches and roofs.

In the past, Cornell planning students and alumni have stabilized buildings at such heritage sites as Fort Totten Battery in Queens, N.Y., and Ellis Island.

This year, "one volunteer student from nearby Bard College who knew masonry taught us the art of stacking stone walls," said Shreve. "You had to dig out the stones, remove weeds, then reassemble the wall perfectly -- it was like putting a puzzle back together. The work was hard, involving heavy lifting, but everyone loved it and kept on going back. It was amazing to see."

And HPP students Susan Gordon and Sigrid Bergland along with alumna Kim Konrad, a preservation professional, worked on the time-consuming documentation, reported Shreve, and produced a conditions assessment document, which is essential for determining the cost of future repairs and which projects to tackle first as well, she said.

Materials and equipment were provided by the Woodstock Guild. Five pounds of coffee, which kept the volunteers warm and well-fueled, was donated by Ithaca's Gimme Coffee, and Ludgate Produce supplied an entire case of tofu, which along with chicken, was barbecued Friday night, then consumed by hungry volunteers. The students each donated about $50 to help cover costs.

The most important achievement, said Shreve, was, "We drummed up interest in the arts colony among locals and alumni who live in the area."

"It's a terrific program to give students that kind of experience. I don't know of anything like it elsewhere," said Smith. "I hope they come back again."

Shreve said she'd recommend returning to next year's spring work weekend crew.