White Plains Historic Home Takes Step Towards Roof Repair

Algood’s White Plains Historic Home will begin roof repairs after city council approved a $41,156 bid for the work from Rackley Roofing.

UCDD Public Historian and White Plain Historian Advisory Councilmember Mark Dudney said the repair work is a great need for the cultural landmark.

“The sustained water damaged has caused interior damage in a couple of the places inside the house,” Dudney said. “So it’s both a fix on the outside on the external to stop the problem, and then to repair the interior where the water damage occurred.”

City Manager Keith Morrison said that the work will require roof removal. He said a historic grant will cover up to $22,500 of the work. Mayor Lisa Chapman-Fowler said it’s important to get this work underway because of the time constraint of the historic grant, and because this is the first bid they’ve received after trying three times. Dudney said while he chalked a lot of it up to just the past year, some of that difficulty could have come from misconceptions about the work historic preservation entails.

“I think sometimes they think there are things associated with it that are going to cause them problems and really that’s sort of misinformation,” Dudney said. “If somebody is potentially buying something that is on the national register of historic places or bidding on a job, they assume that there may problems that may or may not exist and likely don’t.”

Morrison said that costs could come down if the damage is less extensive than previously thought. Dudney said restoring this home is important to the Algood community.

“White Plains is a cultural resource, its Putnam county’s earliest center of commerce, first seat of government, and an important stop along this old pioneer road,” Dudney said. “It is enormously important for the history of both Putnam county and the region. Early on in the state it was one of the first settlements,s here. It has enormous significance for the people in that community. One of the things that really touched me when I was working on it was older folks would come in a talk about their memories of riding ponies and playing there when they were children. People have a lot of local, personal investment in it and that’s why I’m so thrilled that it’s in the hands that it’s in now.”

Dudney said that the work should not take long. He said because there needs to be some deconstruction of the roof, they won’t know the exact timeline of the work until they know the extent of the damage.