The Department of Transportation plans to take The Bridge House, a turn-of-the-century building on Rutherford Island, by eminent domain as it prepares to replace South Bristol’s swing bridge.
Department of Transportation (DOT) project manager Stephen Bodge confirmed that, after looking at other options, including the temporary relocation of the building, DOT is negotiating the building’s permanent removal with owner Diane Haas.
The department has yet to make an offer on the property and it’s “too early to know” when the removal of the building would take place, Bodge said.
Haas did not return messages left Nov. 21 at The Bridge House and at her Cambridge, Mass. apartment.
The municipal valuation of the property is $391,100.
South Bristol Historical Society President Ellen Wells dug into her organization’s archives to share the history of The Bridge House with The Lincoln County News.
The late Everett Gamage built the structure around 1900. The building, under Gamage’s ownership, had a grocery store and restaurant on the first floor and a dance hall upstairs. Later, from 1917-1920, the building housed the South Bristol Post Office, with Gamage as postmaster.
South Bristol Historical Society records contain little information on the building from the mid-1920s until the 1950s, when Ralph Gray bought the building and transformed it into a warehouse.
Haas bought the building from Gray’s widow, Eleanor Gray, in 1997 and restored it, briefly returning it to its food service roots as a café and ice cream parlor.
While many Rutherford Island residents are eager for a replacement for the breakdown-prone bridge spanning The Gut, Wells and her fellow history buffs hate to lose The Bridge House.
“We wish it was staying there, no doubt about it,” Wells said. “The area is going to look totally different.”
Wells, along with dozens of other South Bristol residents, has attended the public meetings the DOT has held to inform and gather input from residents.
At the meetings, Bodge and other state officials repeatedly expressed the state’s desire and intent to avoid taking private property.
“We’re not interested in buying any houses,” Bodge said at a July 14, 2010 meeting.
Haas, at the same meeting, already thought otherwise. “I do see an eminent domain issue there with my deck,” she said, referring to the location of a temporary bridge on a state diagram. “If there are eminent domain issues, when do we find out?”
The decision to take the Bridge House now “comes as a shock,” Wells said.
From 1997-2001, the state conducted a study of state bridges and their surroundings, Wells said. Despite the Bridge House’s diverse history, the state determined that it didn’t meet the criteria for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, partially as a result of changes to the building.
The Historical Society, despite its disappointment, is using the experience as motivation to inventory other local landmarks and, when appropriate, begin the multi-year application process for the Register. They’re starting with the S Road School, Wells said.
The schedule for the approximately $9.5 million bridge project, including the replacement of the swing bridge with a bascule, or lifting, bridge, calls for construction to start in the summer of 2012.
