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Chicopee seeks help in renovating City Hall auditorium

Date: 12/12/2014

CHICOPEE – City Messenger Jean Croteau takes a long slender piece of wood and gently presses it against one the top of one of the stained glass windows that adorn the auditorium in City Hall. It moves and it’s certainly not supposed to.

That window, though, is still in one piece, which unfortunately can’t be said for the huge circular stained glass window that is in the front of the building. That window is missing a large piece of a carved sandstone frame – called “tracery” –  and part of the stained glass has broken away.       

The city has issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to hire a “qualified architectural firms” for a “comprehensive building assessment and preservation plan for City Hall.” Special attention is required for the auditorium and the stained glass windows.

Mayor Richard Kos would like to use the auditorium as a meeting place for both the City Council and the School Committee. Television equipment would be installed and seating would allow the elected officials to face an audience attending the meetings, Croteau expained.

Croteau said looking at the large circular window and it’s problems, “It’s a giant jigsaw puzzle.”

The auditorium may have played a significant role as a gathering space in the city’s past, but now it is a storage space. According to the city’s website, educator Horace Mann, author Charles Dickens and civil right activist Frederick Douglass all appeared at the auditorium.

Croteau pointed out there are several restoration challenges in the room. A large amount of plaster had fallen at one point from the wall where it meets the ceiling on the side of the room that faces Front Street. Croteau said it was possibly from water leaks from the roof, but that was never confirmed.

There was failing plaster work on the walls on the front side of the building that Croteau said was restored thanks to a crew from the Westover Job Corps, but that work had to be stopped when it was revealed the room is painted with lead paint and the students from the Job Corps were not qualified to work on such a surface.

The large circular window was first thought about 10 years ago to be potentially damaged by the city’s practice of hanging a large artificial wreath from it every Christmas. While Croteau cautioned the wreath might not have damaged the window, there has been a steel support structure installed inside the auditorium to make sure the window didn’t break into the auditorium.

The last week of July, segment of the carved sandstone tracery for the window’s glass, measuring more than two feet in length, broke. At the time the break caused a section of the glass to shatter and the hole was covered with plastic. Since then the plastic has been replaced and strengthened.

This is why the front entrance of City Hall cannot be used, he explained.

Croteau showed there are additional cracks in other parts of the stone frame of the circular window and cracks in the tracery of other windows.

Croteau believes there may be additional problems with the windows along the side of the room, but he does not have a ladder tall enough to reach and assess them.

Other issues mentioned in the RFQ include the weathering and structural integrity of the exterior’s brick stonework and mortar; deferred maintenance to the building’s slate roof; updates to the building’s wiring, heat and cooling system and first floor windows; and the examination of greater energy efficiency.  

On Dec. 21, City Hall will be 143 years old, and Croteau believes it may be one of the oldest municipal buildings in the region still in use.