Historic preservation goes ‘off the rails’

This sto­ry is not about a trag­ic loss but more of a heart­break­ing dis­ap­point­ment.  While resid­ing in Clark County for near­ly 24 years, I’ve become involved in research and writ­ing about the peo­ple, places, and events that shaped our local his­to­ry.  This led nat­u­ral­ly to an inter­est in his­toric preser­va­tion.  The coun­ty has many his­toric build­ings wor­thy of sav­ing, and we can count a num­ber of suc­cess­es res­cu­ing endan­gered structures. 

In Winchester, we mark the large­ly intact down­town busi­ness area as a win-win for all.  The num­ber of build­ings pur­chased and reha­bil­i­tat­ed over the last few years has now reached dou­ble dig­its and con­tin­ues unabat­ed.  The score­card, how­ev­er, does reflect a num­ber of fail­ures, and one in par­tic­u­lar that I was per­son­al­ly involved in — the project to restore the V. W. Bush Warehouse, bet­ter known local­ly as the “Sphar Building.”

The build­ing, erect­ed in 1880 by Valentine White Bush, served as the first rail­way ware­house in Winchester.  His two-sto­ry brick facil­i­ty stood on North Main Street beside the Elizabethtown, Lexington & Big Sandy Railroad (lat­er the C&O), near the pas­sen­ger depot. 

Due to its loca­tion, the ware­house did excep­tion­al­ly well.  Over the years, they pur­chased, processed, and stored a vari­ety of agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts, which could be con­ve­nient­ly shipped to mar­ket via rail.  Hemp and then blue­grass seed fueled prof­its for over a cen­tu­ry, then, in the mid-1900s, the Sphar fam­i­ly oper­at­ed a lucra­tive busi­ness sell­ing feed and seed. By the time the last busi­ness closed in 2005, the build­ing was show­ing its age.  Though solid­ly built of brick, stone, and heavy oak tim­bers, a leak­ing roof had com­pro­mised sev­er­al of the load-bear­ing walls. 

Preservation efforts began to pay off a decade lat­er.  City and coun­ty gov­ern­ments rec­og­nized the impor­tance of sav­ing this land­mark, the last orig­i­nal build­ing still stand­ing on the north end of Main Street.  A plan emerged to use the restored struc­ture to house two local agen­cies — Tourism and Industrial Development — as well as the Chamber of Commerce and anoth­er non­prof­it group.  It would func­tion as the city’s wel­come cen­ter and would have a small museum. 

The city pur­chased the old ware­house in 2016.  To fund restora­tion work, $1.9 mil­lion was raised from grants and pledges. My involve­ment began with a request that September to pre­pare a National Register nom­i­na­tion for the build­ing.  That des­ig­na­tion would allow tax cred­its of up to 20 per­cent of the reha­bil­i­ta­tion costs.

These nom­i­na­tions are usu­al­ly pre­pared by spe­cial­ty con­sul­tants who typ­i­cal­ly charge up to $10,000 and take six to 12 months.  I had no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence.  Making it more of a chal­lenge, the nom­i­na­tion had to be com­plet­ed in 30 days, and there was no fee avail­able to pay for the work. I buried myself in the task and fin­ished with­in the dead­line.  The Kentucky Heritage Council approved the nom­i­na­tion and sub­mit­ted it to the National Park Service, which list­ed the prop­er­ty on the National Register of Historic Places in March 2017.

The restora­tion process began with a con­di­tion assess­ment by the archi­tect-engi­neer­ing firm.  They iden­ti­fied sev­er­al prob­lem areas:  a part­ly col­lapsed north wall due to fail­ure of the roof sys­tem, part of the east wall in bad shape, and a num­ber of floor joists rot­ted due to water dam­age.  Exterior walls on the north and east façade had dam­aged bricks that need­ed repair, and much of the brick­work need­ed tuck­point­ing. They esti­mat­ed that restora­tion would cost approx­i­mate­ly $2 mil­lion.  With the grants, pledges, and tax cred­its, this seemed a promis­ing beginning.

When the actu­al con­struc­tion bids were opened, the low bid was $2.9 mil­lion.  Rather than seek­ing addi­tion­al fund­ing or mod­i­fy­ing their plans, the city com­mis­sion sim­ply vot­ed to end their involve­ment in the project.  I joined oth­er preser­va­tion activists in efforts to save the build­ing.  It seemed quite fea­si­ble at that time to sta­bi­lize the build­ing with the avail­able funds and com­plete fit­ting out the inte­ri­or spaces when more mon­ey became available.

From that point on, the project suf­fered one dis­as­ter after anoth­er.  After the coun­ty vot­ed to return a com­mu­ni­ty block grant of $500,000, one of the non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions backed out, and cost esti­mates for even a scaled-back project exceed­ed avail­able funds. 

The final insult came with a major roof col­lapse (there had been lit­tle effort to pre­vent water dam­age dur­ing the time the city owned the build­ing).  The Sphar Building was razed in January 2020.  Only four large grain silos were preserved. 

In the ear­ly 1900s, this was con­sid­ered a rail­road town.  Winchester then count­ed over 20 pas­sen­ger trains a day.  Passenger ser­vice end­ed in 1971.  In 1981 the rail­road demol­ished Union Station, then pulled its tracks up in 1990. 

The land­mark ware­house rep­re­sent­ed the last sur­viv­ing tie with a thriv­ing rail-relat­ed indus­try that helped make Winchester what it is today.  I nev­er dri­ve by the site with­out feel­ing the pain asso­ci­at­ed with its loss.