Vinyl Windows for St. Mary's Convent new 9/3/06

The wooden multipane windows of 61 South Paint Street, formerly the St. Mary's Convent and now church offices, will be removed and replaced with vinyl windows. The Design Review Board gave approval to the request in its August 17th meeting.

The church had made the application for the July DRB meeting, but the board tabled it and returned to the application in August.

In the July DRB meeting, representatives of the church stated that two weeks before, a pane of glass had been found that fell from a second floor window. A committee met and decided that the windows were beyond repair and that they "need to do a complete restoration." The committee chose custom-built Risotti vinyl windows, which would be the same size, but with muntins sealed between single panes of glass.

Previously, the church had installed storm windows on the inside for sensitivity during a 1989 renovation.

The Chillicothe Conservancy had offered a few days before the July meeting to repair the wooden windows for $75 each. The church had not responded, though. The explanation was that they thought it couldn't be done at that price.

Design Review Board member Ron Bettin commented that the church had gone through the hurdles to demolish the St. Mary's School, and that the site looked good. He thought the church had "really cleaned up that end of the street." The church members have rights, and the project should not be put off - if not done in time for fall, the church suffers. He would rather see that church confer with the Conservancy and make a decision. Mr. Bettin thought that the overriding factor is that the church has spent a lot of money in the last 10 years, and it is special that they want to be in the downtown and have not left. He later suggested that the church do a test window but that the DRB pre-approve vinyl replcements.

Conservancy member Dard Hunter said to not be concerned with the $75 price tag for the work, because most of the labor would be donated. The Conservancy offered to repair a single window as a test.

The application was tabled in a 4 to 3 vote, with Messrs. Bettin, Proel, and Yoakum voting no.

In the August meeting, it was reported that no test window had ben done. Dard Hunter of the Conservancy had met with the church committee, but the committee did not respond to the offer to do a test window.

The representative of the church said that a key person was not present at the committee's meeting so they could not consider the offer. The church also stated that they had looked into estimates for wooden multipane replacement windows, which ranged between $51,000 and $67,000, which was considerably more than the $20,000 budgeted for the project. They spoke to a few contractors, one of which thought the Conservancy could not repair the more than 30 windows in their estimated three weeks, and that it would be more like three months. The estimated time for the vinyl windows was three days. So, the church reapplied for vinyl windows, with the offer that they would give the old windows to the Conservancy.

DRB member Terry Leonard asked the church

"Did you look at other vinyl windows? That look more like the original windows?"

Church: "We thought that it did-"

Leonard: "No."

Church: [pause] "That was the closest match to the original."

DRB member Ciel Corcoran said that the church had researched well. Though she would rather see authentic windows, the DRB has approved vinyl windows in the past, so how can thay deny St. Mary's?

The vote to approve was 5 to 2, with Bart Henshaw and Terry Leonard voting "no."

The building was begun about 1816, but only the north part was built at that time. The part with the front doorways was added (or remodelled to that configuration) probably in 1848. The building has been described as "one of the finest Greek Revival houses in Chillicothe." It was featured in an article on Ohio houses in a 1928 issue of Architectural Forum. Together with the Atwood House and other across the street, this collection of Greek Revival houses has been described as one of the best in the midwest.