LEVERETT — A municipal building in town center that for 87 years served as the town’s library, and for the past two decades has been a repository for historic objects held by the Leverett Historical Society, continues to have an uncertain future.

Following several months of work to identify both a use for the building at 1 Shutesbury Road, and a means of taking care of it, the Ad Hoc Committee for the Future of the Field Building is laying out three options for the building that opened as the Bradford M. Field Memorial Library in 1916.

“It is a lovely little building and one that is held dear by the community,” said Richard Nathhorst, who is chairing the committee.

But Nathhorst said the building, a Colonial Revival style with a gambrel roof and a fireplace in the middle, built at a cost of $6,000, is “essentially in limbo,” as the building has not been maintained through the town’s budget since the new library opened at 75 Montague Road in 2003, only getting minimal heat paid for by a member of the Field family.

With a small and wet 1.5-acres site, the 845-square-foot building, also has no running water or pipes in the building, no bathrooms or sinks, no second means of egress and no accessibility to the second floor. That adds to the challenges.

“What really needs to happen is the building needs to be better taken care of,” Nathhorst said.

While three options are available, Town Meeting might not get a say on which is preferred until 2024, which is also when the town’s 250th celebrations are taking place.

The first option would be for the town to either sell the land and building to a private entity or give it to the Historical Society, which has a collection that includes a Civil War uniform and an antique two hole outhouse seat, as well as paper records.

“Every manner of old stuff is there,” Nathhorst said. “It’s basically a Field family attic and basement consolidated into this building.”

The second option would see the town retain ownership, maintaining the existing site and completing any improvements at town expense.

“That’s what a number of purists want,” Nathhorst said.

The third option, and the one he prefers, would be to move the building to the site of the current library, creating a campus just across a large lawn from the Leverett Elementary School.

Nathhorst said the idea of moving comes from his own experience as the cofounder of the University of Massachusetts Historical Society, which supported relocating an 1894 barn slated to be demolished. The Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation Hall was moved from Grinnell Way, where it was last used for the UMass mounted police patrols, to become the centerpiece of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture’s Agricultural Learning Center on North Pleasant Street in Amherst.

“It went from a derelict building to one very useful by relocating it,” Nathhorst said.

Any move would require a new foundation and come with moving costs, but the building could then access the well and septic of the library and school, as well as use the parking lots and connect to the walking trails.

“That would make it useful to the citizens of Leverett,” Nathhorst said.

Grants and Community Preservation Act money might be available for expenses. Already, CPA money is being used for the due diligence process underway, including having a consultant sanitarian see whether a well or septic system could be built on the current building’s site, and surveyors to see just how big the site is. Unfortunately, like many properties given to the town, the land was not ideal.

“It’s a very marginal piece of land that makes it very difficult to do anything with,” Nathhorst said.

The building’s history includes that its benefactor, Field, was a nearly lifelong resident who intended to have a library erected in town, though died in 1913 before it was constructed. Field had been postmaster for the town for 50 years, appointed during the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. The building was designed by Northampton architect Karl Scott Putnam, a Leverett native who taught art at Smith College and also designed dormitories at Smith and a Vermont home for President Calvin Coolidge.

Nathhorst is against letting a private developer take control. “It would be a shame for the town to lose ownership of this,” Nathhorst said.

“The entire committee cares about this building and wants to work out the best solutions for it, ” Nathhorst said. “Ultimately, the citizens of Leverett will make the decision.”

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.]]>