Seeking to preserve Harvard Square’s newly empty Democracy Center as a historical landmark is not a trick, petitioner Dan Totten told Cambridge’s Historic Commission on Thursday.
“I just want to acknowledge the elephant in the room,” Totten said. “I understand that on the face of it you might have looked at this and said, ‘Oh, you know, they’re just sort of fighting a proxy battle to try to get back into the space.’ I am not doing that. I’m here because I believe that this building is under threat and that it is significant and should be preserved.”
As a show of good faith, “I have not organized a band of 30 to 50 people that come here and speak at public comment and tell you why they wish they still had the Democracy Center,” Totten said. “I don’t want to waste your time.”
Tenants at the center, a meetinghouse for progressive organizations since 2001, were shocked to learn April 6 that the building would close July 1 for the foreseeable future for renovation, leading to a series of angry meetings with its owner, the Foundation of Civil Leadership, as well as protests and a three-day occupation. The nonprofits have also been scrambling to find new office and meeting spaces.
The commission voted for a continuance until September to seek more understanding of what the Foundation of Civil Leadership wants to do with the building and changes in commission powers since the City Council enacted laws last year about neighborhood conservation districts.
Totten said his petition on a historical landmarking for the structure at 45 Mount Auburn St. – also known as the Stickney-Winn House – only echoed a 2000 paper by the Historic Commission and a more recent 2017-2019 report calling it a significant building. Part of it is wood-framed, while many of its neighbors are brick. The building dates to 1846, and was at one point home to a particularly notorious Harvard undergraduate club.
“Mount Auburn Street had long been recognized as Harvard’s Gold Coast, where wealthy undergraduates lived in private dormitories,” said Charles Sullivan, the commission’s executive director. The house, though, came to belong to the undergraduate Speakers Club, which merged with the Pi Eta Club – which “developed a terrible reputation after a number of scandals, some of which involve law enforcement.” A university board closed the club in 1990 and eventually sold its space to the Foundation of Civil Leadership in 2002.
Awaiting permits
Totten is concerned about plans by the foundation to begin demolition quickly, referring in his presentation to an email that said “some sections of the current structure need to be stripped down to the studs for further analysis and planning. We’re beginning this work ASAP.” While building interiors are generally exempt from historic preservation laws, he is concerned that what happens inside could have an impact outside.
The foundation has yet to get permits from the city required before work can be done, however. At the time of the meeting, the FCL said it would apply for permits “within the next couple of days.”
“The next steps at the Democracy Center will be internal, structural investigations and better understanding of what needs to be done to make the historic house safe, efficient and accessible,” said Karla Chaffee, a lawyer for Nixon Peabody LLP, representing the foundation.
Sue Heilman is the interim executive director at the foundation. When she arrived last year, she was told renovations to the Democracy Center building had been considered many times over the past 22 years. The impetus to take action was that when the boiler was turned on last October, it broke.
“There is no plan to change the usage,” she said, referring to the building’s recent history of hosting civic groups, although she also previously said the only certain user of the space in the future would be a foundation program called Democracy House. The foundation will follow city guidelines on exterior renovations and has been “talking with contractors and architects and all sorts of people,” Heilman said, though the current tight market for construction labor could make it difficult to begin work immediately.
Change in the law
If the commission agrees to accept Totten’s petition and explore a landmarking, it could take up to a year. If the petition is rejected, there is a two-year moratorium on reintroducing another landmarking proposal for the building.
The Law Department will have to provide guidance, commissioners said. Last year the City Council decided to change the rules about neighborhood conservation districts – in particular, that the Historic Commission no longer had jurisdiction over changes related to the size and shape of additions, dimensional and setback requirements beyond what is permitted under zoning, and accessibility and climate. Landmarked buildings, however, are still subject to stricter rules. Totten, until last year the aide to a city councillor, noted the legislative changes in his presentation. They could have “severely gutted” the landmarking process, and he said he worked against that.
Riley Sutherland, who is a doctoral student in history at Harvard, said she uses the building in her courses to teach about historical periods and changing architectural styles. Suzanne Preston Blier, who wrote a book about the history of Cambridge and teaches at Harvard, said she shows her students the building during the tour of Cambridge she leads as part of her course. “The history of these buildings is really important,” she said.
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