March 29, 2013 2:00 AM March 19 a To the Editor: Have a walk along Parrott Avenue and you can not help but notice a disturbing picture. The stone tiles atop our middle school are gone. Record is a natural sheathing. It's native to the Northeast. Slate is among the most durable of roofing materials. A slate roof can last between 125 and 200+ years, with regards to the foundation of the slate. By means of comparison, the city's petroleum-based alternative can serve us for only two decades roughly, then it is down to the dump it moves. Notwithstanding the most obvious fiscal irresponsibility of changing out record for a poor material, the functional effects are just depressing. Since 1930, that enormous stone roof had stood out, glistening in the sunlight after a rainfall, simply seen fifty per cent of a mile away. The roof was among this traditional building's most crucial features. And it absolutely was Portsmouth's largest standing roof, definitely. If you inquire further why, you'll receive the predictably lame excuses. Their Website will confuse you further having its proposed commitment to "preserve the historical aspects of the first building." Perhaps we must be thankful they have perhaps not trashed the cupola (yet). When faced with similar problems contrast this inexcusable mistake with the reaction by preceding generations. Once the previous high school (1898) on Islington Street was converted into senior housing, it managed never to lose the slate roof. If the old hospital (1894-1920s), the old police station (1893), and the Whipple School (1889) were transformed into new uses, ditto. Go the length of State Street and you'll see up to three dozen fine examples of stone roofs atop 19th-century structures. It is not by chance that these ancient rooftops remain intact. Even those arbiters of taste and decorum at The Page Restaurant know enough to put up to their stone roof. Yet when it involves reducing our built environment, where Portsmouth's economy has for ages been reliant, it's City Hall that is significantly tone-deaf. Maybe not sure? Look no further compared to the anywhere-USA development of the Northern Tier. One it was recently compared by Herald reader, rather appropriately, to Worcester, Mass. And what are we to create of this new cinder block high-rise on Islington Street? And the demolition of the historical Martingale on Bow Street? They are on a roll, no? Now, I'll readily recognize that Mr. Jeffrey Purtell, the citizens' closest friend, had it nailed when he reminded Herald viewers that age don't justify increasing the size of the middle school. Get there today and you'll note that the school's entire application fits quite comfortably into one half of the enormous complex. The $37.5 million edifice is a grossly oversized monument to local pols who want people to know the amount of they worry about education. money would have been better spent on a difference that would be actually made by things, e.g if educational quality was their true goal, then. teachers and curriculum. Had they gone with an even more modest rehabilitation of the center school, the building may possibly still have a slate roof. It appears that the more resources we taxpayers offer, the greater their predilection for destructive behavior. The project's Site boasts of their preservation of "natural resources" and adherence to durability standards promulgated by an ensemble that goes by the acronym of NECHPS. The latter is remarkable just because a state subsidy of 3 percent of the project costs is contingent upon the city meeting those standards. The city's little roofing faux pas suggests that the decision-makers might be only careless enough to spend that chance. A good game is talked by our self-proclaimed eco-municipality, nonetheless it is mostly that... talk. Previous years spared us the fake natural rhetoric. Rather, they consistently made the common sense conclusion (and the lasting one) to preserve slate roofs. Perhaps they just had more regard for the taxpayer. Mary Morgan Portsmouth
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