College purchases Old Stone Mill

Author: Kelly Janis

Last week, College administrators announced the $2.1 million purchase of the historic Old Stone Mill, located adjacent to the Frog Hollow Vermont State Craft Center, for the purpose of furnishing students with additional studio and gallery space to complement in-town offerings. The purchase was made possible by funds provided by an anonymous donor.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for the College and town to integrate our strong support of the arts," said College President Ronald D. Liebowitz in a Jan. 11 press release. "The town enjoys an existing and vibrant arts community in the Frog Hollow area and, with this purchase and subsequent renovations, the College can continue to contribute to that."

Members of the arts community agreed.

"We're delighted," said Deidre Healy, director of the Frog Hollow Gallery. "The idea that Middlebury College is going to be bringing even more of an arts presence to this area is really exciting."

"It's the continuation of this link the College is making with downtown and the business community," said Town Manager Bill Finger.

The Old Stone Mill is in possession of a colorful and storied history, as evidenced by the account provided in Samuel Swift's extensive History of the Town of Middlebury, first published in 1859. In the text, Swift details the plight of a mill "capable of manufacturing one hundred barrels of flour daily" which succumbed on several occasions to fire, first in the summer of 1825 and then again in February of 1836.

"The roof and upper part of the building, to the floor of the second story, and the wooden building at the south end, were consumed," Swift wrote of the latter incident. "Not far from the same time, the stone building at the north end tumbled down, for want of a substantial foundation."

The mill hit another stroke of poor luck in September of 1854, when "it was destroyed by fire, together with the store in front, occupied by Nathan Wood, and the brick store of Gen. Nash adjoining, occupied by W.S. Lane for a clothing and furnishing store, and the shop attached, occupied by L. Bertrand as a tailor."

As a consequence of this damage, the stone structure was completely refashioned. By 1890, the building was home to the Middlebury Electric Company, which harnessed energy from the Otter Creek Falls to power electric street lamps. Finally, in 1976, the four-story building which is currently home to the Storm Café was restored for commercial use, with the top three floors at one time containing retail businesses, offices and a penthouse apartment.

The specifics of that which now lies ahead for the resilient facility are yet to be determined with certainty.

"A program team will be created to look at the best uses for this space to support current needs," wrote Executive Vice President and Treasurer of the College Robert Huth in an e-mail. "The Storm Café will stay in operation while all this is being sorted out."

"We're going to be taking a hard look at that space in a month or so," said Dean of the College Tim Spears. "Whatever we do, we're going to want students involved in planning and thinking through some of the possibilities. I imagine that we'll begin looking ahead to that at the beginning of spring term."

According to Christian A. Johnson Professor of Art and Director of the Arts Glenn Andres, it is likely that the space will be devoted to what he describes as "activities art," or that which takes place outside of the bounds of an academic course. This may include painting, some forms of printmaking, jewelry work and ceramics.

The latter has been a particularly active topic of discussion, after a student petition calling on the College to provide facilities for doing such work garnered approximately 400 signatures last semester.

Spears, who met with students at the helm of the effort, believes their request is well-founded. "We don't have that on our campus, and we definitely need that kind of space," he said.

Andres explained that, since the Johnson Memorial Building opened in the late 1960s, students not enrolled in art courses have expressed their desire to work in the painting and sculpture studios when classes are not in session. Such an arrangement is not possible, however, given the necessity of ensuring that students completing assigned work have sufficient access to the space. As a consequence, Andres said, "there has always been this tension between academic art and activities art," a tension which the opening of the Old Stone Mill for the latter purpose would aid in assuaging.

In addition, Andres said his department has been hard pressed to find less formal venues than the Center for the Arts and the Center Gallery in McCullough for showcasing student work. "The Mill is the closest thing we'll have to a guerilla arts space."

While supporting the endeavor, however, Andres has no desire to perpetuate the Mill's flame-stricken history. "You can't have a kiln without somebody supervising it very closely, or else you would burn down the whole Mill," he said. "In fact, that's a real problem with most of the arts: they're toxic or they're dangerous. So you can't just have them taking place in some totally unsupervised setting. An aspect of the Mill would have to be that there is staff down there all of the time to make sure that the place is cleaned up, and that the equipment is working correctly, and that it's safe."

Regardless of the logistics, it is clear that the Old Stone Mill has the potential to fill a much-needed niche.

"There's a huge desire among many students on this campus to be able to do this kind of activity - to be able to make art, whether you think about art as pottery or making a chair or building a loft or a desk or whatever," Spears said.

The emergence of such a facility may also serve a larger purpose within the context of the College's atmosphere.

"I think it's connected in some way - although it might not seem to be immediately - to the larger question about social life on campus," Spears said. "What are you going to do on Saturday night? It's nine o'clock. What are your options? Well, if one of your options is to go down to the Old Stone Mill and make a pot for a couple of hours, that's a good option. That's yet another thing you can do as opposed to, I don't know, going to the gym and working out, or going to a party and pursuing that kind of activity. It's all part of a range of options for students, and I think we need to get the balance right."