Letter to the Editor: Security Measures 'Desecrate' Historic Brewster Site

Dear Editor,

I walked into a vault called The Town of Southeast offices at 1 Main Street. This is a landmark building, once a museum quality example of 19th Century prosperity in the Village of Brewster. What were testaments to the tenacity and financial expertise of Brewster’s early leaders at the First National Bank of Brewster is now nothing more than a box, with a window to a grand interior only reserved for town employees.

The interior of 1 Main Street includes a cathedral ceiling, unpainted tongue- in- groove sheathing and elaborate chandeliers of tooled brass. All of this will be inaccessible now to the average Joe Taxpayer. In its current state, 1 Main Street has a new bulletproof wall made of wood and steel, with some “character” of the original interior obscuring not only the windows, but all of the historic elements which helped nominate this building to the National Register of Historic Places. The purpose of listing this building as a landmark was to preserve it for future generations. Now future generations will have to admire the outside but be confronted with a box with a window as they enter the once elegant Queen Anne building of the former First National Bank of Brewster. 

There are many questions to be answered about this building. Where is the benefit to this unnecessary security and destruction? How much did it cost? Why does the Town of Southeast have the Historic Sites Commission to guard over privately owned buildings when they can’t even protect their own?

And who funded the desecration of the Historic 1 Main Street? You, the taxpayer of Southeast.

Erin E. Meagher

Brewster