Moorefield Ruse Uncovered

Our post on Moorefield yesterday brought forward this email written by someone in the 'know':

"Here is all I know about Moorefield. As you may already know, the Town (and possibly Historic Vienna) owned Moorefield and basically let it deteriorate for 30 years. The Town council voted to tear the structure down because it was going to be "too costly" to fix. If I remember correctly, the Town Council said it would cost about $500,000 to repair, which I find hard to believe. After Moorefield appeared in the National Trust for Historic Preservation 's monthly magazine Preservation earning the official designation as a "threatened" historic structure, the Town sold it to a religious group who dismantled it and put it in storage. I think the town paid $20,000 of the dismantling costs. Preservation Magazine later listed Moorefield as no longer threatened but "lost". I went to the Town Council meeting a year or so ago to inquire about the building and suggested that the Town rebuild it at BRP, as an educational tool. They did not like that idea. I suggested that it would be an ideal Jamestown 2007 project, but they disagreed. They had no interest in Moorefield at all and were in fact hostile to my suggestions. The Council said the Town no longer owned or retained any control over Moorefield. So, I said to them "are you telling me that you have washed your hands of Moorefield?" The answer from Verinder and the Mayor was "yes". Maud said it was a heart wrenching decision for her and that the Town and Historic Vienna tried for thirty years to raise enough money for restoration. Then she said, "Frankly, there was no interest in the community to save Moorefield". I did not like that answer and said she should have tried harder and that the Town Council needed to take a leadership role in Moorefield's restoration and create public interest in the project."

The Town Council is a true believer in historic preservation? NOT.