Questions are raised on materials used for the USM art gallery renovations.

Changes and products the University of Southern Maine utilized in renovating its art gallery on the Gorham campus have sparked fears that the building’s designation as a federal landmark could be jeopardized.

Adam Ogden, acting at the behest of Town Council Vice Chairman Bruce Roullard, recently reviewed the restoration of the art gallery, which was built in 182,1 and outlined his concerns in an email April 15 to Roullard and the American Journal. Roullard is chairman of the Gorham Preservation Committee, and Ogden, a Gorham resident, is a historical researcher and former public works director in Cumberland.

“The materials are common building materials, not preservation quality and were supplied by corporate building manufacturers, not local woods or materials that were available to USM,” Ogden wrote. “Basically, the products used on this project are inferior to what was removed and thrown away.”

Restoration of the art gallery began in 2013. Christopher Quint, university spokesman, said Tuesday the facility was in rough shape.

“We saved the building,” Quint said. “We spent close to $360,000.”

But last July, a public outcry ensued after the university had removed original windows and trashed wooden clapboards stripped from the building. It planned to replace vintage clapboards with vinyl siding. The university temporarily halted work last summer when local and state historic preservationists objected to plans.

In a series of meetings, the university, which scrapped plans for vinyl siding, reached an agreement with preservationists about how to proceed with the project.

The building originally was a religious meetinghouse that was converted to use for the town. In 1961, according to a deed Ogden located, heirs of Toppan Robie, a Gorham citizen and benefactor, deeded the building to the state for $1 after the town of Gorham no longer needed it.

The university’s forerunner, Gorham State Teachers College, used the building first as a student chapel and then as the art gallery beginning in 1966.

The site is among Gorham’s most prominent and hallowed. A Civil War monument donated by Robie has been in front of the building since its 1866 dedication, attended by Maine’s hero Joshua Chamberlain.

A plaque on the art gallery, which faces College Avenue, states it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.

“It would be unfortunate to have a building lose that designation,” Roullard said this week.

Quint said Tuesday that renovation work would likely be completed within the next six weeks. He said remaining work includes painting and some concrete work under a platform in front of the building. Quint said the university soon would send a letter to Gorham Town Manager David Cole and the Town Council as a progress update for the project.

The status of the art gallery’s recognition as a federal landmark will likely come under review this year.

“Upon completion of the University of Southern Maine’s work on the Art Gallery, the Maine Historic Preservation Commission will determine whether the building continues to merit listing in the National Register of Historic Places,” Earle Shettleworth, director, wrote in an email to the American Journal.

In his letter, Ogden wrote that replacement clapboards attached with stainless steel nails were installed with clapboard ends butting and not mitered, as were originals. The replacement clapboards are “low-average quality,” Ogden wrote.

“The university chose to use a clapboard other than what was offered by the preservation community,” Ogden wrote.

But Quint refuted Ogden’s claim and described the replacement clapboards as “high-grade, high-quality pine.”

Ogden also faulted the replacement hardware for window shutters. He said original pins and hinges were removed during demolition “and thrown away.”

Quint responded that the architect said the hardware items are replicas of period pieces.

“We’ve done everything we could to keep it time period,” Quint said.

Because of costs, Quint said, a different kind of base would be installed on the columns that he said are rotting. The columns have rested on portico flooring and timbers.

But adding a base could be problematic.

“One of the issues that the commission raised with the university was the proposed alteration to the base of the columns on the front elevation. Despite our efforts and those of other preservationists, USM is moving forward with its plans to fundamentally change the historic design of the columns by inserting a classical style base where none ever existed,” Shettleworth wrote in an April 21 letter to Roullard.

“In my opinion, this alteration, combined with the other changes that have already been made to the building, seriously jeopardize the Art Gallery’s National Register status,” he wrote.

Old clapboards and windows on the front of the art gallery were not removed during renovation. But, five windows were removed from each side of the building with one window on each side restored and replaced. Newly made shutters enclose the remaining window openings.

Ogden said Tuesday an old meetinghouse sign has been reinstalled on the art gallery, but a flagpole once attached to the building is missing.

In his letter, Ogden noted a fanlight over the arched rear window has been replaced by a composite material that Ogden on revisiting the structure Tuesday called “banana board.”

Also on Tuesday, Ogden found a leftover strip of window molding that is flexible, which he said indicated a synthetic material as opposed to wood.

“The magnitude of destruction of this building is significant,” Ogden said this week.

Gorham resident Adam Ogden on Tuesday displays a leftover strip of window molding he examined at the University of Southern Maine Art Gallery that is under restoration on the Gorham campus. The flexibility of the piece appears to indicate it’s not wooden and not a match of original moldings, he says.