The Community Center in Freeport, Maine, is a beautiful building which comprises newly renovated 53 and 55 Depot St - 2 of Freeport’s fabled “Mallett Houses”, homes built by Freeport entrepreneur E.B. Mallett at the end of the 19th century. 57 Depot St., also owned by Freeport Community Services, however, remains a creepy, rundown, empty shell of a building. As an intern at the FCS Thrift Shop, I’ve had the opportunity to see for myself the inside of 57. The house is currently a mess, but it’s also not hard to imagine the relative splendor that it once was. The front room still boasts original plaster, molding, and doors, the detailing on the outside was obviously once gorgeous, and though completely void of plaster, the upstairs rooms still hold a certain elegance.
When I started my second internship, at Energy Circle, I was excited to find out that Peter was championing a deep energy retrofit of the house I’d been so taken with. (Deep energy retrofit meaning a reduction in energy use by more than 50%.) Achieving this level of reduction comes largely from superinsulation--the practice of adding substantial insulation to entire building enclosure--walls, roof, and basement. In order to preserve the inside of the home, the decision was made to insulate outwardly, carefully removing and saving as much of the current siding as possible (most of it, to my eye, appears to be beyond repair), adding insulation, and then reconstructing all of the exterior detail just as it was originally built. This will result in the volume of the house being roughly 4 inches more than it currently is, which does not bode well for the historic preservation review. Because Freeport’s Mallet Houses are eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places, the project requires historic review before any changes can be made. The complex process is just getting underway, but there's a lot of buzz around the community center that in the name of historic preservation, the deep energy reduction may get stopped in its tracks.
Here's my view of the historic preservation versus deep energy reduction debate: The purpose of a deep energy retrofit of this scale, on this historic building, is far bigger than just to save money and energy. By completely retrofitting this structure, and, more importantly, sharing how we’re doing so, we will be able to show that it can be done. We can work to combat climate change, we can find reasonably affordable ways to make changes to existing structures. Beyond that, and without waxing too philosophical here, there is something paradoxically beautiful about a simultaneously historic and “new” building.
In my opinion, a building can be “historic” without being made of historic materials. The retrofit aims to keep completely the elements of the home that are indicative of the time they were created in - the chimneys, the molding, the waist flare, and bay window - to name just a few. I find this an extremely respectful ode to the home. And when I consider the alternative, which is essentially to let the building sit for a few more years, and then make “less aggressive” modifications, I am even more sold on the idea of a deep energy retrofit. What better way to honor the past than to ensure that a piece of it will remain a solid, energy efficient building far into the future?
It’s easy to think about “green” construction and energy efficient building only in terms of new structures - but the Mallet House can, and will, serve as an example of how important it is to make improvements to existing structures.
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