by Mrs. Kitty Galbraith
709 Aspen Road Starkville, Ms. 39759
THE SPLENDOR HAS DEPARTED
In the pleasant city of Rochester, New York, there is a building to fall in love with. It is a handsome structure of porches and columns and ambience. Although it is vacant and boarded-up, it retains dignity and charm like an aristocrat down on his luck. It is the old Wilmot Apartments in the historic Third Ward.
Bounded by the Genesee River and the Erie Canal, the Third Ward Is the neigħborhood where the young city’s first families built their splendid mansions, and lived their genteel lives. But by the 1960’s the Erie Canal was a paved street, and the Third Ward had become a slum, and the Wilmot a residence for welfare recipients.
Because it is located in what had been the city’s finest resideutial neighborhood, the plight of the Wilmot seems especially poignant. Closed by order of the city, and vacant for years, it sits slowly crumbling. Paint is peeling from the tall Corinthian columns, and the cast granite balustrade is cracked. Glass, bricks and chunks of concrete litter the yards and porches. Marble from the entrance foyer has been pried out, and much of the central staircase is gone.
Yet all around the Wilmot are signs of a dramatic neighborhood renaissance. When it looked like Urban Renewal would destroy most of the Third Ward, the Rochester Landmark Society went into action. Working with the City Council and the Urban Renewal Agency, a rehabilitation program was begun. Instead of slum clearance, the area got a conservation program. Much of the valuable architecture was saved.
But not the Wilmot. Why had the Wilmot remained decaying year after year? Why had the Wilmot not benefitted from the Urban Renewal Program? What happeñed to the Wilmot?What was it’s story?
The story of the Wilmot could begin when the land was “an ash swamp filled with water most the year”. So wrote Judge Moses Chapin describing what the settlement was like in 1816. Later, Sophia Street, named for Colonel Rochester’s lady ran through that swamp, and the Erie Canal crossed it, and a young lawyer named Byron D. McAlpine came to town and set up
offices on the Buffalo Road.
When Sophia Street became South Plymouth Avenue in 1857, the lot was vacant. Mr. Bronson had built his Greek Revival brick at 151, and Mr. Sage had built on the other side. The lot became an address in 1886 when Byron McAlpine built an imposing brick home on the site. From the details still intact on the north and south sides, the style seems to have been high Victorian.
That house became the McAlpine family home. But by 1913, Miss Florence McAlpine, the only person the city directory listed at that address, had moved out to East Boulevard. The house was vacant. And that was when two young men in their late tweuties saw it and were interested. They were Leo Held and Raymond Tierney.
Leo Held has been dead many years; but Raymond Tierney spoke long and lovingly about the Wilmot. Не was 93 уеars old at the time, and death was just two months away.
“I’ll never forget that McAlpine family home,” he said. “They were very wealthy. Railroad magnates. They built that house like a fortress, They built it to stand 200 years. Those brick walls were so thick.”
It was Leo Held who saw the empty house first. Не соnvinced Tierney that they should try to buy it. They were partners in a real estate venture. They wanted to remodel the McAlpine mansion into an elegant apartment house. The price was $24,000; and Darrell Sully of the Genesee Valley Trust Company was the executor of the McAlpine estate.
Tierney laughed as he recalled how Sulley’s white beard shook with anger at their offer of $15,000 for the place. Sulley called Tierney “a young whippersnapper”, but said he would put their offer before his committee.
“You’re going to lose it, Ray,” Held told him. But they didn’t. With $5000 cash and a loan from the Albany nSavings Bank, it was theirs.
The partners hired an architect, Howard Nurse, to draw plans for the transformation of the house into an apartment building. Nurse’s plans called for a third floor, a rear addition, and a change in the facade that would not diminish the integrity of the original building.
“We kept those McAlpine bay windows on the sides;” he said. “The front had those ‘same arched windows with the rose medallions, but we took them out. We wanted that big expression of glass across the front. And boy, did we have it!”
The support of their Third Ward neighbors was very important to them. “When we showed those people the drawings Nurse had done for our project, they almost clapped their hands.” Tierney went on to say that the houses around their place were well-built for prominent people; and they could not put up anything that was not up to the other places. “It was a very lovely neighborhood, and we built accordingly. And when it was finished, the Wilmot was a monumental and beautiful thing.”
The partners were going full blast with their building when tragedy struck. Raymond Tierney’s young wife died when their second child was sixteen days old. Their first child had been stillborn. “It knocked me silly. I told Leo I was pretty well shot.”
He offered his partner his share of their venture. But Held begged him to stay. He offered to do all he could to help him in his grief. So Tierney took on all the detail work. For one solid year he spent all his time there. Не decorated every room. He went all over town picking out
wall paper so that each apartment would be different. Не even hired an out-of-work artist to hand paint designs on the walls of the entrance hall.”Nothing splashy. All dignity. It was a lovely thing to walk into.”
A lot of Raymond Tierney went into the Wilmot. “It was my salvation.” And in the process, some of the burden of grief was lessened.
“Terrible things happen to you. And you weep over them. Later things turn out all right.” (A year and a half later, he met and married Mary Walsh who survives him. She was a mother to his small child, and they had six of their own.) Raymond Tierney’s eyes lit up that day as he recalled all kinds of details about the Wilmot: the steam vapor heating system installed by the Unsmeyer Company; the hardwood floors put down by the Adams Flooring people; the blue and white awnings from the Sabey Company; the cast granite balconies on the first floor porches made by George Kirchner, master mason; the three story wooden columns, made and installed by the C. H. Rugg Company. (“They had quite a time. They did not have the hoisting facilities that we have today.”)
And where did the partners get the name “Wilmot” they gave to their building? Tierney said the Wilmot-Castle Company was in Rochester that time. “That’s Sybron today. It was a good company. Very respected. So we took the dignity of the name for our building.” Tierney hastened to add that the Wilmot-Castle Company had no connection with the James P. Wilmot of Page Airways.
When the Wilmot was completed it had 18 apartments. There were six units on each floor. Those in the front were the most spacious. They were also the most expensive. They had their own private porches. The rent for them was $50 a month. That rent was quite a bit if a person only made $2000 or $2500 a year, Tierney pointed out.
The C. F. Garfield Company was hired to acquire the tenants and draw up the leases. Since Mr. Garfield lived across the street, they knew he would be selective in his choices. Their first tenants were people with good jobs. People with standing in the community. People who no longer wanted to maintain big houses. People who wanted to be near the heart of the city. A check of the 1915 city directory reveals those tenants buyers for downtown businesses; local government people; were: a teacher; a chemist; an insurance man; some retirees; and so forth. They were a good cross section of the middle class. “The right people”, said Mr. Tierney.
Mr. Tierney had a picture he was very proud of. It was a photograph of an attractive couple sitting in a snappy roadster in front of a very posh-looking Wilmot. He wasn’t sure but thought that they might have been among those first tenants of the Wilmot. Someone who wanted their picture made in front of their new home. Frozen in time, the couple, the car and the Wilmot recapture an eloquent image of the past.
The Tierney-Held partners operated the Wilmot for three years and sold it. “It got to be cumbersome.” They did not lose money on it. He estimated the total cost of the purchase and conversion came to $55,000. They sold it for $68,000. They did not expect to make a big profit in those days. Things were cheaper then. Workmen, masons, materials, etc.
From 1918 when Tierney-Held sold the Wilmot to two tailors named Kovel and Kappel, the building’s fortunes seemed to be on the decline. There were ten owners during the 1920’s. Some of the parties owned it more than once. Then there were four more owners during the period from 1930-1937. Then the Albany Savings Bank took the property for four years. (That was the bank Tierney-Held borrowed from in 1914.) Three parties owned the Wilmot during the 40’s; one owner had it during the next two decades. But from 1974 there seems to have been several.
Studying the list of owners and the dates, one is left wondering if the rapid succession of owners in the 1920’s was part of the rampant financial speculation of that period that culminated in the “crash”.
In the Department of Buildings and Property Conservation at the Rochester City Hall, there is a file on the Wilmot. It is a thick file. The documents it contains seem to tell the story of the cow that had been milked dry. There are documents that contained warnings about everything from tree. limbs and junked cars to the final listing of the 278 housing code violations. And finally there is the demolition hearing findings, dated 3/28/74: “Building represents an immediate health, safety and public welfare hazard….owner is hereby directed to commence demolition of said property”.
For some reason, the order was never carried out. But the reading of random documents in the Wilmot’s file seem to spell out the doom of the fine old building. It is like reading the case history of a dying patient. Still there are documents that seem to offer hope. There are petitions from concerned Third Ward neighbors. They are addressed to the Commissioner of Buildings and Property Conservation, and to the Judge of the State Supreme Court. They urged that the “fine building” be saved from demolition; and that they owner “…be instructed to sell or rehabilitate the property.”
And there is a letter from the Landmark Society. They have given the building their second highest rating. They believe it has sufficient architectural and historical merit to make it worth saving. Mrs. Harrington, the Director of the Societysays they consider rehabilitation a feasible alternative to demolition, and a preferable one. “If the owner would like assistance in promoting the sale of this building to a new owner, we would be glad to give publicity”.
The city itself, is interested in the fate of the Wilmot. Back taxes are still owed on it. Taxes that go back to 1974. In July of 1977, the city started foreclosure proceedings, but the present owner paid a portion, 25%, and made arrangements to pay the balance. Something he has not /done.
There are many people who are interested in the Wilmot and feel keenly about it. Lowell Colvin is one of them. Не is the developer of the Ellis East Complex on East Avenue. The Landmark Society regards him highly. Colvin said that the rehabilitation of the Wilmot would give the whole Third Ward a lift. “It is in a pivotal position and it has a lot of charm”.
Colvin said he would have liked to develop the Wilmot and several adjacent buildings into a pattern the way he did the Ellis East Complex. There would have been parking in one area, recreation in another, and green land in another. “That’s the only way it would work”, he said.
Colvin made an offer to the present owner of the Wilmot. But there was the matter of the back taxes. If the city would forgive the taxes to a new owner, he might have been able to swing the deal. “The business of the back taxes made the venture economically unfeasible;” he said sadly.
Al Rayburn, who lives in the neighborhood is another person who hates to see the Wilmot the way it is. “What a crime. So many people are interested in it. But it just sits there. People coming up Plymouth see it and say: ‘Wow! What a fabulous place. Why hasn’t something been done about it? ‘ And everybody and his brother wants to buy it.”
One person who cares about the Wilmọt and knows it well is Steve Baldwin. When he was a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1967, he lived in the Wilmot. Не remembers that there were some fine detailing in his apartment. The dining room had bay windows and beautiful wood-work and plate rails. The rent was $250 a month, furnished. The rent would be shared by several students who would share an apartment.
Baldwin remembers that the place was very run down, with only the minimum of maintenance. “Once we were wi thout the use of the kitchen sink for three weeks,” There were no beautiful hand-painted designs on the entrance walls. And the wall paper that Mr. Tierney had gone all over town to procure, was covered with years of cheap paint.
But even then, Baldwin felt it was still a special place. He went inside the building one summer during a neighborhood arts festival. The desolation, vandalism and ruin were shocking, he said.
Can the Wilmot. be saved? And at what cost? What kind of federal money is available?
Justin Streb, a rehabilitation specialist for the Bureau of Redevelopment, Department of Community Development, says that money from the Section 312 program is available. “I talked with the owner of the Wilmot last year. I outlined the procedure. But the main hitch was the back taxes. 312 money becomes a mortgage, the taxes must be current.”
Streb said the owner indicated that he might try to sell the place.
The 312 program (HUD) was set up for rehabilitation of property like the Wilmot, Streb said.
It is money that can be borrowed at 3% simple interest, with up to 20 years for repayment. “The maximum loan límit has been recently increased to $27,000 per unit.” The Wilmot has 18 units, so that is quite a bit of money, he remarked.
The procedure to obtain the money is to work up a package with an architect’s floor plan, a write-up of specifications, and a work write-up showing what is to be done. The package is then sent to HUD for approval. The procedure takes from three to six months.
As to how much it would cost to restore the Wilmot, noone has any definite ideas. “A quarter of a million on up;” Streb thinks. Al Rayburn, a contractor, thinks that figure isn’t conservative.
But he hastens to add that he has not seen the inside lately and would have no way of knowing. “It has central cores for the plumbing, heating and electricity, and that would make any rehab job easier;” Rayburn adds.
And what of the owner of the Wilmot? His name is McKinley Tarbel, and no one seems to know who he is. He has no address or telephone number, and can only be contacted through his lawyer. Lowell Colvin has talked with him and says the man would like to sell the Wilmot at a reasonable price, and get out from under it. Other Third Ward neighbors have not been successful in reaching him, even when they had prospective buyers for the Wilmot. To them, the owner remains an elusive shadowy person.
The city seems to have the deck stacked. The fate of the Wilmot remains ultimately in the city’s hands. They can either insist on force compliance with the demolition order of 1974; or/complete payment of over $12,000 in back taxes. If the taxes remain un-paid, the city can foreclose. $18,000 seems to be the amount most people think the owner wants for the Wilmot. That plus the amount to cover the back taxes. However if the city forecloses and sells the property at an auction, all the back taxes are forgiven.
Meanwhile the Wilmot sits there, decaying a little more with each passing day. “How foolish we were to lavish so much effort and pride on that building;” Mr. Tierney once said. “But we did it because we were Rochesterians, and we were young, and we had a great feeling for our city, and we wanted to do something for Plymouth Avenue.”The Wilmot could use someone like Raymond Tierney today .