Staples House Being Restored to Original Color

Travelers on Route 4 today will notice a striking change — the once-white Staples House in the Stephen A. Flis Municipal Common is now a deep red. The process of scraping and preparing the historic building for paint has been ongoing for about a month but what color the paint would be was decided as the paint came off.

“Once we started scraping it, we discovered the original color was red,” said Nancy Parent, director of community and recreational services. “When we saw the flaking of the paint, we had to chip away layer after layer and it was clearly red.”

The color was common for the time period in which the Staples House, or Gridley-Parsons-Staples Homestead, was built — about 1760. The building houses the town's offices for youth, family and social services as well as the fire administrator and some health screenings with the Visiting Nurses Association.

The building’s trim, columns and doors will be painted white. But not all right away, Parent said.

Some areas needed to be cut away, reinforced and insulation added, she said. Those repairs will hold up the painting.

“One corner needs more work and they’re actually redoing some of the framework. It’s still rotting a little bit so they’re going to be not only painting but making it more structurally sound,” Parent said.

Windows will also be left unfinished for a while.

"People will see the house is red with gaping holes where the windows are," she joked. Employees continue to work there.

In addition to the painting, which will be paid for as part of the town’s capital improvement plan, the town received a grant to make the building’s windows more energy efficient.

The windows, which Parent said are very old, will not be replaced but refurbished.

“We know it’s very old glass, probably not original but added during renovations done later,” she said. “We’re so excited we’ll be able to open the windows and keep it historically accurate."

The inside of the building is slated to eventually be updated and repaired, too, since much of it hasn’t been touched since the 1970s. That work will include painting and new carpets and will follow guidance from a historical analysis done by a professional from the Noah Webster House.

“We’d like to have it as accurate to the history as possible,” Parent said. “We want it to be done to really honor the history that the building has.”