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Historic Farmhouse Saga
Continues
Urbana-Champaign
On October 9th, 2010, the University of Illinois
demolished later-built additions of the Mumford House,
despite objections by the Chancellor’s Mumford House
Advisory Committee, on which Landmarks Illinois serves,
and despite that this demolition work had not been
identified as a Phase I stabilization priority as part
of the University’s own Mumford House Historic
Structure Report, completed in March, 2010, which
was prepared by Vinci-Hamp Architects.
The Advisory Committee objected to this demolition work
due to the fact that the Vinci-Hamp report clearly
recommended retaining the non-original additions to the
house during the initial stabilization period and that
the list of necessary stabilization tasks should be a
top priority, especially given the university’s limited
stabilization budget. The Committee also advised that
removal of the later additions before a reuse is
finalized was inappropriate and could cause further
deterioration to the historic structure. After removal
of the wings, the wood clapboards of the house were
pressure washed, a cleaning method known by preservation
professionals to be damaging to historic buildings.
Publically, U of I officials continue to state that no
university department wants the Mumford House. Yet
Landmarks Illinois continues to hear from university
students, faculty, and area residents that the
University has made no serious effort to solicit
potential users for the house.
In recent letters to the press, the Chancellor’s office
and other university officials, Landmarks Illinois and
its fellow Advisory Committee members have stressed that
the U of I Board of Trustees has twice voted to support
reuse of the Mumford House and that the University’s
commitment to this effort should not be misdirected or
weakened.
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Phyllis Wise
Chancellor
University of Illinois
317 Swanlund Administration Building
601 East John Street
Champaign, IL 61820
pmwise@Illinois.edu |
Background
The University of Illinois Board of Trustees voted on
May 20, 2010, to reaffirm its support for saving Mumford
House, the oldest building on the Urbana-Champaign
campus. The action came just a week after university
officials had proposed a board resolution that, if
passed, would have reversed the Trustees’ previous May
2009 vote to restore and preserve the house in its
current location.
In public testimony at the board meeting, Jim Peters,
president of Landmarks Illinois, disputed university
estimates of “millions of dollars” to fix up the frame
structure. “We believe the costs of immediate repairs
and stabilization would be less than $70,000,” Peters
said, citing the university’s own recently-released
reuse study by Vinci-Hamp Architects.
If the proposed resolution had passed, there were fears
that university officials would have moved the vacant
frame structure from its original site on the South
Quad—across from the Morrow (Experimental Farm) Plots—to
a new location two miles away, in order to provide
landscaping for a newly constructed bell tower. A
similar relocation effort had been defeated in 2009,
thanks to efforts by preservation groups, students, and
faculty members. Landmarks Illinois listed Mumford House
as one of its
2006 Ten Most Endangered Historic Places.
The Mumford House, which was named for an early Dean of
the College of Agriculture, was built as a “Model
Farmhouse” by the Illinois Industrial University, which
evolved into the U of I. After being used for more than
a century—first as a residence, then as faculty
offices—it was vacated in 1998. Although the university
had provided only minimal maintenance since then, inspections confirmed that the building
was
structurally sound, despite its peeling paint and
decayed front steps.
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