Salve to build arts center aided by $750,000 award

Two historic carriage house and stable complexes on the Salve Regina University campus will be transformed into a Center for Arts and Culture thanks to a $750,000 challenge grant from The Kresge Foundation.

To receive the Kresge funds, the university first must meet its goals of raising $12 million in private funding – including $7.5 million in capital funds for the Carriage House and Stable Restoration Project, plus $3 million for annual/program support and $1.5 million toward its endowment – by Oct. 1, 2008.

“The Kresge challenge provides a wonderful incentive for giving to the university’s capital, program and scholarship needs,” said M. Therese Antone, RSM, the university’s president, in a statement. “The leverage inherent in a Kresge challenge grant supports the work of the university’s trustees, staff and volunteers as we continue toward fulfillment of the campaign goals.

“The impact of this challenge grant will be felt at Salve Regina for years to come,” Antone added.

The Salve grant was one of 18 capital challenges – including one other in New England – awarded to educational institutions nationwide by the foundation’s board of trustees at its third-quarter meeting.

In its Carriage House and Stable Restoration Project, Salve will renovate both Wetmore Hall and Mercy Hall. Wetmore – the original carriage house and stables for Château-Sur-Mer, the first of the grand mansions on Bellevue Avenue, and now a museum – was designed and built by noted architect Seth Bradford in 1852 to 1853 for merchant and banker William Shepard Wetmore. Mercy Hall – the original carriage house and stables for Ochre Court, the former residence that now houses Salve’s administrative offices – was designed and built by Richard Morris Hunt in the mid-1890s for banker and real estate developer Ogden Goelet.

Both are rare among Victorian-era service buildings for having never been torn down, damaged by fire, broken up into condominiums or otherwise damaged.

The adjacent complexes will be transformed into a Center for Arts and Culture that will house the university’s departments of art, theater and cultural and historical preservation.

It’s “a pretty exciting project,” Michael Semenza, Salve’s vice president for university relations and advancement, said in an interview.

Salve’s main campus comprises several historic estates from the Victorian era and the Gilded Age, Semenza noted, and in a Getty Foundation competition last year, the university “was the only one in New England to win a major grant for campus heritage planning.”

The architect on the project is Mesick, Cohen, Wilson, Baker Architects LLP, and Farrar Construction Co. is the builder. In addition, Salve’s cultural and historical preservation program conducted the research to prepare the project.

Two students took the project even further, he noted, completing the paperwork that won the exceptionally well-preserved outbuildings a place in the National Register of Historic Places.

Work on the project began last year, Semenza said. “The Art Department is in one half of it already, and they’re delighted with their new facilities. So we’re halfway through, but we’re delighted to get this three-quarter million boost from The Kresge Foundation.”

“We have been able to do careful restoration and reuse,” he said, explaining: “If you look through it today, it still looks like the stables. The students are literally sitting where the horse stalls used to be; those are classrooms now. … What was the hayloft of the building, with big bays that bring in that great north light, that’s now a painting studio.”

The adaptive reuse project is slated for completion in late September. •