A retired brigadier general has a standing offer with Westerly Armory Restoration Inc. to donate memorabilia from a military march of French troops from Providence to Yorktown, Va., during the Revolutionary War. The Westerly Armory would love to have the artifacts – if only curators could find a place to put them.
The drill hall is reserved for events. The first floor of the head house is already jam-packed with artifacts. More items are on display on the second floor, which also hosts the practice space and offices of the Westerly Band. The association has even taken to storing artifacts in the pinnacle of the tower.
“It’s a [space] problem. We are crushed in here,” said Roberta Mudge Humble, president of the restoration organization.
To find more room, the organization has set its sights on the basement. Once home to the Rhode Island National Guard’s mess hall, garage and coal furnace, Humble envisions the cavernous area boasting function rooms, exhibit space and climate-controlled storage.
In May, the association took the first step toward opening the sparse web of rooms to the public. A team of volunteers from Hampton Hotels repainted the stairwell and completed other work around the building.
Humble says the work represented just a smidgen of what would be a major and costly project to renovate the basement. But the arrival of Hampton volunteers renewed attention to a renovation dreamed about for more than three years and fast becoming a requirement rather than a luxury.
As the armory gains in popularity, more people are coming in to drop off old military uniforms and medals, photographs and more. Some days three or four people will show up with items Humble would like to display. Sometimes she accepts them and squeezes them into any nook she can find. Many times, she sends people away, telling them she does not want their treasured items to land in a box out of sight.
There are also financial implications. Westerly Armory Restoration rents the 6,000-square-foot, 500-person-capacity drill hall for weddings, small sporting events, concerts and more. Humble says adding the opportunity to rent smaller rooms in a renovated basement could attract new renters looking for places to hold events or meetings of about 40 people.
Additional rent could help pay for day-to-day operational costs and serve as a hedge against losing the $25,000-a-year support the town provides but has no requirement to continue.
Before Humble can dream about soliciting new renters, she needs to find a way to pay for the renovation. Westerly Armory Restoration has not conducted a formal cost analysis of renovating the basement. A preliminary study reported it would cost about $59,000 just to make the basement handicapped accessible, a precursor to any larger project.
To pay for the eventual project, the group started a membership program three years ago and has been seeking grant opportunities. Volunteers – including some in their ’80s – have been arriving to undertake preliminary work, such as repairing the stairs.
One move that the group is not considering is charging to visit the armory.
“We want to share it with everybody,” Humble said.
If the armory can complete the project, it would finish a restoration envisioned more than 15 years ago when the Rhode Island National Guard vacated the building. In 1996, the town purchased the armory from the state for a $1 and now leases it to the restoration association.
The restoration group started by renovating the drill hall then moved on to creating a museum space in the head house before renovating the second floor.
Along the way, the group stripped five layers of lead paint off the hardwood floors, restored the windows, put back the original merlons on the tower and installed sprinklers throughout. It put in a commercial-grade kitchen to serve events, converted the old captain’s office to women’s restrooms and restored the cannon out front.
The restoration project has been a far pricier and time-consuming process than Humble, a Westerly native, ever thought when she came onboard in the mid 1990s.
At the time, she served as the liaison to the armory from the Rhode Island Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. She shared meals with the 169th Military Police Company – now located in Warren – and was “horrified” at the condition of the building.
When the Guard prepared to depart, Humble thought a restoration would take a few years – at most. More than 15 years later, Humble acknowledges she was wrong.
The group has been helped by a $300,000 grant from the federal Save America’s Treasures program – which the armory matched with private donations – and Hampton Hotels’ Save-A-Landmark program that delivered the volunteers and a $10,000 check. (The armory beat out the Beavertail Lighthouse in Jamestown and the International Tennis Hall of Fame and Museum in Newport for the volunteers and money.)
“We’re doing it, maybe the slow way, but we’re doing it well,” Humble said. •
