Gratz Grant - Parrott Hall
A look at the exterior of Parrott Hall, its first floor hidden by overgrown shrubs.
Parrott Hall is a structure of statewide significance, listed on both the NYS and National Registers of Historic Places. It was built in the 1850s as the home of Nehemiah Denton, then purchased by New York State in 1882, including outbuildings and 125 acres of land, so that the dwelling could house the headquarters of the NYS Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1950, it was renamed Parrott Hall in honor of Dr. Percival Parrott, the station’s first entomologist and director of the Agricultural Experiment Station.
The Geneva Experiment Station at Parrott Hall has significantly contributed to New York State’s leadership in scientific agricultural history. Pioneering work at the station led to advances in the study of field and garden crops, plant disease, and milk production, as well as the development of nurseries in Ontario and Monroe Counties and vineyards in western New York.
The NYS Agricultural Experiment Station vacated Parrott Hall in 1968, during a period in which many educational and government institutions abandoned historic buildings claiming they were no longer functional. When the Office of Parks Recreation & Historic Preservation (OPRHP) acquired the building in 1975, they intended to create a State Historic Site honoring Parrott Hall’s history as the birthplace of the Agricultural Experiment Station. Instead, Parrott Hall sat vacant for the next 43 years, allowed to deteriorate despite several outside attempts to encourage OPRHP to repair and rehabilitate the building. In early 2018, OPRHP commissioned a structural and environmental report that condemned Parrott Hall. The Friends of Parrott Hall strengthened their advocacy campaign and reached out to other preservation organizations.
In March 2018, the Preservation League joined forces with the Friends of Parrott Hall, Landmark Society of Western New York, and the City of Geneva, to form the Parrott Hall Coalition. The Preservation League worked with the coalition to advocate for Parrott Hall’s preservation locally and with New York State. The Preservation League found a structural engineer with historic preservation experience and, with funding from the Landmark Society, commissioned a new assessment of Parrott Hall that stated the building was structurally sound. The Coalition held a press conference at the building on June 14, 2018, announcing the results of that engineering report.
Happily, following that press conference and with the new engineering assessment, OPRHP agreed to cancel the Parrott Hall demolition contract and work with the Parrott Hall Coalition. The City of Geneva and Friends of Parrott Hall now have a license agreement for the site and Governor Cuomo awarded the City of Geneva a $400,000 Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) grant for building stabilization in December 2018.
We believe that Parrott Hall’s history can support the region’s economy and that our proposed public/private partnership investment in this building will encourage outside interest in fully rehabilitating the building. While we are stabilizing Parrott Hall and completing the EPF-funded work, Friends of Parrott Hall must complete a Feasibility Study to assess potential new uses for the building.
The League is proud to help fund this necessary work with a $9,500 grant from the Donald Stephen Gratz Preservation Services Fund. The Landmark Society of Western New York will contribute $3,500 toward the project cost as a match. The Feasibility Study, including Conditions and Adaptive Use Analysis, will guide future work and enable the Friends of Parrott Hall to prioritize repairs moving forward.
“This project exemplifies what can be achieved when grassroots advocacy organizations work with long-standing preservation organizations like the Landmark Society and Preservation League, as well as within a municipality committed to historic preservation,” said League Vice President Erin Tobin.