Winter 2005

Town Meeting Approves Preservation of the Wright Building

At Town Meeting on March 14, Duxbury voters approved the restoration of the Wright Building, formerly the Duxbury Free Library.  The vote will appropriate $2.9 from the Community Preservation Fund to save one of Duxbury’s most important historic landmarks.

The project will stabilize the building, update the utilities, make the building fully accessible, and generally prepare it for use by tenants.  The prospective tenants will be responsible for installation of equipment and furnishings particular to their use.

Over the course of the winter, DRHS Trustee Lee Kennedy and Executive Director Patrick Browne have met frequently with the Community Preservation Committee which is coordinating the restoration effort.  A “Wright Building Work Group” was formed by the CPC in February to meet weekly to discuss issues relative to the restoration of the building the needs of the future tenants.

The decision by voters not only preserves one of the town’s most significant, and most threatened,  landmarks but also represents a major step in the Society’s process of creating an archival facility to preserve our historic documents.  In December, the Selectmen agreed to set aside the majority of the original 1909 structure for use by the Society as an archival library.  One of the goals of the construction project is to return the 1909 interior, as nearly as possible, to its original appearance.  The Society will then operate the building along the lines of its original use with a reading room on the east side of the rotunda and a stacks room where archives will be stored to the west side.  Materials belonging to the Town and other groups will be stored there as well.

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