News

Arts center gets face-lift

Dave Gordon

GREENVILLE — The Greenville Cultural Arts Center, housed in a former Presbyterian church on Route 32, is home to shows ranging from visual arts to music to theater. Renovation and repainting of the building has just been completed, and the center is now a sparkling white.

The job started as a Girl Scout Gold Star project by Katy Harvey, Ashley Schoenborn and Kaylee McDonald, all of Troop 1206. The girls are all 2008 graduates of Greenville Central High School and all are attending out-of-town colleges.

Members of the All Arts Matter board, along with town officials and others who donated to the project, gathered Wednesday at the former church for a segment on Channel 6 news. None of the Girl Scouts were present, as they are away at college, but Troop Leader Cecile Plattner said the girls put in about 60 hours each of work. Most of the actual repair and painting was carried out by a group of inmates from the Greene County Correctional Facility.

At a recent Town Board meeting, supervisor Kevin Lewis praised the inmates and said he hopes to be able to arrange for them to work on another town project.

G&H Lumber donated half the cost of the Benjamin Moore paint used for the project. G&H owner Stan Ingalls was on hand to admire the finished product.

The paint is self-priming, he said, though two coats were used on the cultural arts center.

G&H general manager Tait Wheeler said the paint is a new “green” line that Benjamin Moore developed. It is low in volatile organic compounds — the unhealthy gases paints and glues give off — and also leads to less paint smell, according to Benjamin Moore’s Web site.

The building was constructed in 1868 on the site of an earlier church that burned downs, said Helen Brown, a member of the arts center board and a retired history teacher.

A plaque on the church memorializes its founding pastor, Rev. Beriah Hotchkin, who served from 1794 to 1824. He was “the first American missionary west of the Hudson River,” the plaque states.

The original congregation was from Massachusetts, and the church is built in the New England style, Brown said. When the Presbytery decided the church was no longer of use to it, they sold it to the town. “I believe the price was $25,000; I’m sure it was a nominal price,” Brown said. “The only thing they wanted to keep was the organ.”

The former church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is next door to the town library, which is also on the National Register, Brown said. “There’s a lot of history here, and a lot of us really love it. We want to preserve it. The Girl Scouts got it started; I give them a lot of credit.”

A regular feature at All Arts Matters is readings by writers, including poetry and prose. The organization also sponsors a Sunday lecture series. There are frequent children’s events and shows by local artists and photographers. All Arts Matters also organizes rotating exhibits at the Bank of Greene County, the National Bank of Coxsackie, the Greenville Cultural Arts Center and Catskill Bookee.

This year has been unusual for the Girl Scouts of Troop 1206, Plattner said. Nationwide. Some six percent of scouts earn the award; this year saw nine members of Troop 1206 completing community service projects. One group of three girls planned and produced an environmental fair they called “Little Live Earth.” Another group of three installed new, environmentally-friendly toilets in the Town Park.

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