Kudos to Cornell College on the work being done to restore King Chapel following the derecho damage.
As DeeAnn Rexroat, director of communications, noted, that building isn’t just important to the students and alumni of Cornell College, it’s also a space many Mount Vernon residents have attended for concerts or even to hear renowned speakers who were coming to the Mount Vernon and Lisbon communities.
For more than one hundred years, that building and space have been a gathering place and concert venue for many different performers, as well as one of the crown jewels among Cornell’s many historic buildings.
We all know the repairs aren’t going to come cheap, and even covered by insurance, doing the job the correct way is most likely going to be the longer path, necessitating that events be held at some of the college’s other spaces in the interim. They’re the right steps to protect the building and make sure it is safely restored and usable for years down the road.
The passion radiates from people like Scott Ladwig as he discusses the imperfections and potential warning flags running from the trusses at the top of the building and to the foundation, and how he wants the public to be kept abreast of this restoration project, knowing the eyes from the community and alumni are all watching every step. That he has been very open and sharing with the Mount Vernon Historic Preservation Commission and documenting important steps in the process is an even greater boon to this community, keeping those with knowledge of the historic buildings in this community up to date on the efforts to restore a decades old building.
The number of discussions the college has been having with multiple contractors, subcontractors and crews to make multiple plans for the building’s repair show the care they have to keep this building restored from an act of mother nature.
This week, the first step in the process began with the removal of the pipe organ from the interior of King Chapel. Again, as the subcontractor Amory Atkins pointed out, this was the right first move, as it allows the building to see the repairs it needs and remove an instrument which could be injured from elements like dust or the scaffolding that will need to be installed throughout the building. He’s been on organ removals where that didn’t happen originally, and the damage to the instrument and his work was harder to repair then groups taking steps to remove an organ before work started.
Sometimes being proactive means taking harder steps up front to protect the items we all find important for the decades to come, and Cornell has been open about why they’re taking these steps to many groups asking about the project.
Sun editorial: Cornell College’s repairs to King Chapel and open transparency on project commendable
December 16, 2021