Galena’s new council chambers a special space

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Myers Inn cura­tor Polly Horn likes to remind folks that in 1803, “Go West” meant right here in Delaware County; and when pio­neers came west, Horn says, Galena got the lawyers and doc­tors, while Sun­bury got the hippies.

Whether that’s true or not, the Gilbert Car­pen­ter fam­ily immi­grated to the area from Penn­syl­va­nia in 1809. Car­pen­ter, the first Methodist cler­gy­man in Delaware County, was a miller by trade who chose to set­tle in Galena because the drop from the Big Wal­nut Creek to the Lit­tle Wal­nut Creek made an ideal loca­tion for a gristmill.

Galena was plat­ted by William Car­pen­ter in 1816 under the name of Zoar. Early set­tlers from both Galena and Sun­bury had to travel fur­ther west to Berk­shire for mail service.

In 1834, the res­i­dents of Zoar wanted their own Post Office, but the name Zoar was already taken by another Ohio town. Names went in a hat and one name was drawn to select a new name for Zoar. Nathan Dustin, who was born in New Jer­sey, sug­gested Galena. The Galena Post Office was estab­lished, the mail came, local bar­ber Will Camp­bell was the first Galena post­mas­ter, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Churches were an impor­tant ele­ment in early set­tle­ments. The Galena United Methodist Church (GUMC) build­ing at the inter­sec­tion of Har­ri­son Street and Church Street served the con­gre­ga­tion between 1828 and 2008, when GUMC mem­bers occu­pied their new Sun­bury Road home.

Because of the his­toric nature of the for­mer GUMC church, and a desire to main­tain it as a com­mu­nity resource, Galena Vil­lage Coun­cil mem­bers pur­chased the build­ing. The plan was to con­vert the his­toric church build­ing into a Galena Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing and sell the exist­ing admin­is­tra­tion build­ing, the old 1906 Galena Bank build­ing at the cor­ner of Wal­nut Street and Old 3-C Highway.

Fol­low­ing the 2008 col­lapse of the sub-prime mort­gage mar­ket and sub­se­quent reces­sion, plans to con­vert the for­mer church into vil­lage offices were shelved and the build­ing was put on the mar­ket. When no rea­son­able offers were made for the build­ing, Galena Coun­cil mem­bers decided to pro­ceed with con­vert­ing the build­ing for vil­lage use and sell the for­mer Galena Bank building.

Fast for­ward to Mon­day, Octo­ber 22, when the Vil­lage of Galena held its first Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing in its new Galena Vil­lage Hall, the for­mer Galena United Methodist Church at 109 Har­ri­son Street.

Galena Vil­lage coun­cil mem­ber Dave Sim­mons, who also serves as the de facto vil­lage his­to­rian, was avail­able last week for a brief tour of the new Galena Vil­lage Hall and shared infor­ma­tion about how the build­ing grew into the gem it is today.

Coun­cil cham­bers are located in the old church sanc­tu­ary, known for its restored circa 1910 pressed metal ceil­ing, Sim­mons explained; and the sanc­tu­ary is also the building’s orig­i­nal 40-foot by 60-foot footprint.

“Around 1910 a major bene­fac­tor made a major build­ing upgrade pos­si­ble,” Sim­mons said. “Opales­cent glass win­dows were installed, the sanc­tu­ary floor was sloped and seat­ing done in a mod­i­fied Akron plan. The cen­ter­piece of the build­ing, the pressed metal ceil­ing, was installed, along with a steeple and bell.”

The steeple was even­tu­ally dam­aged by light­ning, a split is still vis­i­ble in the attic; the bell was placed out­side in front of the church for many years and went with the con­gre­ga­tion to the new church building.

Sim­mons called the for­mer sanc­tu­ary, now coun­cil cham­bers, one of the great inte­rior spaces in Galena; but the church sanc­tu­ary hadn’t been much of an inte­rior space since the 1960’s when church trustees were hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing paint on the pressed metal ceiling.

“That was around the time lead was removed from paint for envi­ron­men­tal rea­sons, and non-leaded paint would not adhere to the metal,” Sim­mons said. “There was no insu­la­tion in the attic, energy con­ser­va­tion wasn’t a con­cern then, and that made the prob­lem worse, so a dropped ceil­ing was installed. When I became chair­man of the trustees I said: Couldn’t we explore restor­ing the ceiling?”

Around the same time the con­gre­ga­tion was putting a new roof on the build­ing, Sim­mons said, and while the roof was open sev­eral of the 4x4 four-foot dropped ceil­ing pan­els were damaged.

“Then we were faced with a whole new dropped ceil­ing. They didn’t man­u­fac­ture the 4x4 pan­els any­more; or we could restore the pressed metal ceil­ing,” Sim­mons said. “The ques­tion was: How would we address the prob­lem of paint not stick­ing to the metal ceil­ing? We hired a woman from an archi­tec­tural restora­tion firm in Colum­bus; she told us to treat the ceil­ing as an exte­rior sur­face and use a dif­fer­ent paint that would be more amenable to mois­ture and tem­per­a­ture change.”

Sim­mons said that set the wheels in motion. In Feb­ru­ary of 1998 local fix-it guy John Bland, now retired, was awarded a $4,000 con­tract to restore the pressed metal ceil­ing; Bland’s con­tract stip­u­lated that he would com­plete the project by April of ’98.

“The first chal­lenge was how to fill the hun­dreds of holes cre­ated by the dropped ceil­ing wires,” Sim­mons said. “John used a tem­plate and a liq­uid wood and liq­uid metal mix­ture. Then we found a com­pany to clean and insu­late the attic.

“It turned out to be a pretty dra­matic space that no one had seen for more than 40 years,” Sim­mons con­tin­ued. “The restora­tion had an imme­di­ate impact on the con­gre­ga­tion. They had a church and a space they could be proud of. The con­gre­ga­tion felt really good about it; it was like a new building.”

Today, as Galena Coun­cil cham­bers, that pressed metal ceil­ing remains a dra­matic space that mem­bers of the com­mu­nity can view with pride, Sim­mons said; and because the vil­lage would like to use the space as a wed­ding chapel, the sloped floor and Akron Plan pews have also been left in place.

“Con­vert­ing the church build­ing into a vil­lage admin­is­tra­tion build­ing is a work in progress,” Sim­mons said. “We’re doing things as we have the money; but the new space will be nice after work­ing in cramped quar­ters at the old admin­is­tra­tion build­ing. There’s room to stretch our elbows, room for vis­i­tors – and using the old bank base­ment for coun­cil meet­ings was always a challenge.

“We’re anx­ious to use the old front room for com­mu­nity events,” Sim­mons added. “When it’s ready there will be an open house. But as an exam­ple of his­toric archi­tec­ture, and his­toric use in the com­mu­nity, it’s impor­tant that this build­ing will be a vil­lage asset that will be used for many years to come.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.