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December 05, 2006
They Will Say Anything Comments (1)
The Vienna Town Council passed a resolution on November 5, 1979 that stated:
"WHEREAS: There exists in the Town of Vienna a structure known as Moorefield House which was constructed in the late eighteenth century and originally served as the home residence of Jeremiah Moore, a Baptist Minister who risked his personal freedom and fortune to secure the principle of religious freedom in Virginia and in the United States, and WHEREAS: The Moorefield house has been designated by the Virginia historic landmarks Commission as a historic landmark, but is in a state of advanced disrepair and deterioration, and WHEREAS: the Town Council of the Town of Vienna, Virginia (Town Council), recognizing the historic significance of Moorefield, did on September 15, 1979 hold a public hearing to obtain public comment on the question of whether the Town of Vienna should or should not undertake the reconstruction and restoration of the Moorefield House, and WHEREAS: A substantial majority of persons who appeared at the hearing of September 15, 1979, including representatives of residents living in the Moorefield neighborhood, and Centreville district Supervisor, Martha V. Pennino, indicated strong support for restoration of the property, for use as an archaeological interpretative center. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED: That the Town Council finds it appropriate and desirable that restoration of the Moorefield House for use as an archaeological interpretative center, or other closely similar function, be undertaken as promptly as possible, but expresses concern that the Town is not in a position to fund any major portion of the cost of restoration from existing financial resources, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED: That the Town manager is, therefore, requested to investigate and report back to the council on what sources of funds may be available for funding the proposed restoration, including Federal, State, County and private sources and whether it is possible to schedule for public advisory referendum the question of Town of Vienna participation in such funding, and if an advisory referendum be impermissible, then what procedures are necessary to schedule a binding referendum on whether the Town of Vienna should issue bonds to fund its share of the restoration cost."
When it comes to historical politics, Vienna leaders will do and say anything at any time, but they never take action. Sure, we have proved time and time again that these people are frauds, but that doesn't mean we will stop adding details to our case any time soon. Corruption must be rooted out.
Bookstore Debate: Mental Patients Are In Control Comments (1)
Recently, a debate was had. On one side we had a Vienna resident saying that Vienna could really use a bookstore, it's own Borders or Barnes & Noble. The other person said, "No, we don't need that, the Freeman Store sells books." The person with that view has a husband on the Board of Directors of Historic Vienna, Inc. Better yet; the husband was once named Vienna citizen of the year! Ladies and gentleman, the power reigns in Vienna are currently held by fools who actively work against the overall betterment of the community. We don't need a bookstore because the Freeman Store sells a few dozen books about making rock candy and phony Vienna histories? Yes, someone in power really thinks that way.
December 04, 2006
Historic Vienna, Inc. Ruse in Action Comments (0)
On March 17, 1986 Historic Vienna, Inc., the Town funded historic scam manned by Laine Hyde, said that it:
"...looks forward to a day in the not too distant future when we can all see the Moorefield House restored and standing in tribute to one of Vienna’s earliest residents and one of this nation’s colonial heroes. Again, we urge you not to abandon your efforts to achieve restoration of Moorefield. In light of the ever advancing tide or development throughout this area, the preservation if our significant historical landmarks and values becomes an increasingly important legacy for future generations."
Of course, we all know that the only Vienna house ever on a State or Federal historic register was torn down under Laine Hyde's leadership. There can be no bigger historic phony in Vienna than this Hyde character. She must wake up every day and pray that the Washington Post doesn't write a story about the organized and tax payer funded ruse she runs at Historic Vienna Inc.
July 19, 2006
Moorefield Article: R.I.P.! Comments (2)
Lost: A Piece of Vienna and the County's History. By Harl Jeffrey
July 12, 2006
Moorefield Ruse Uncovered Comments (1)
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.
July 11, 2006
Moorefield Charade Marches On! Comments (2)
From the Connection Newspaper this week comes:
"The long-contested fate of the one-time home of Jeremiah Moore, commonly known as the Moorefield House, finally appears to be settled. The building, which has been dismantled and put in storage, is expected to be reconstructed and restored on the site of the Eagle Eyrie Baptist Conference Center about 12 miles southeast of Lynchburg, where it will become a history museum. "It's going to be used for the same purpose we had intended for it," said Jerry Duane of the Jeremiah Moore Historical and Educational Association, who now resides in Gainesville. He added, "Quite honestly, all of us would have much preferred to see the house rebuilt in the Vienna area." The house was built around 1790, near what is now the eastern border of Nottoway Park, by Jeremiah Moore, a leader of the Baptist movement in Virginia and several surrounding states. Until it was torn down about three years ago, it was the oldest building in Vienna. ... "He really paved the way for a substantial middle class," said Town Council member Maud Robinson, who worked through Historic Vienna Inc. to preserve the house. She also noted that it represented a different slice of history than most other local historic sites. "It was a very important house because it represented a planter's house, a yeoman's house," said Robinson, adding that there are very few such houses left in Virginia. ....When they proposed moving the house to Nottoway Park, which used to be part of Moorefield Plantation, "the Park Authority just wasn't interested at all," he said. They considered moving it to the site of the nearby dog park, "but we didn't get any encouragement from the mayor or Town Council." Robinson, who now sits on the council and whose husband, the late Charlie Robinson, had been Vienna's mayor when it was decided in the 1990s that the town would not be able to restore the building, noted that such a project would have cost at least $500,000, and she added that it was difficult to arouse a lot of widespread interest in the history of the building and the story of its original owner. "When you tried to tell people about this, their eyes kind of glazed over," she said. Robinson said she and others in Historic Vienna Inc. had a study done on the life of Jeremiah Moore and applied for grants from the county and state for preservation of the building, but to little avail. Monahan, also a member of Historic Vienna, said the organization also funded the removal of asbestos tiles, as well as the removal of the small addition on the back of the house, and also raised money for an architecture study, archeological digs in the backyard and a restoration feasibility study. NEIGHBORS of the house wanted to know what would be done with it. "Nobody would want to have a derelict building sitting in their neighborhood," said Monahan. The town eventually decided to have the building demolished, but the Jeremiah Moore Association raised $25,000 to have the building dismantled by a professional, said Duane, and the town pitched in the money it had set aside for demolition. The Moorefield House was taken down in the summer of 2003 and now sits in pieces in Culpeper on the property of the specialist who dismantled it and will rebuild it at Eagle Eyrie...
This article almost sounds like it was paid for by Maud!
Question. Are Vienna tax dollars, through the government owned 'Historic Vienna, Inc.', going to be used to put this pile of junk back together again in Lynchburg? Everyone will always remember Maud Robinson as the premier preservationist of our time. She has achieved so much when it comes to talking about things - who cares if it is only talk! Hey, maybe Vienna historic groupies promoting 'fake' history can set up a shop in Lynchburg to promote Vienna history?
April 11, 2006
Moorefield: Dirty Underbelly of Historic Vienna, Inc. Comments (2)
Maud and Laine, You Can't Keep Pulling Wool Over Eyes
Over 20 years the Town of Vienna and its tax-payer funded club Historic Vienna, Inc. spent significant money on studies of historic Moorefield. Moorefield was the only Vienna house ever placed on a national historical register. What happened? Under Maud Robinson and Laine Hyde's leadership it was destroyed. Here are two detailed studies that were buried in file cabinets:
- Moorefield Preservation Plan Study. Completed by Praful Shah and Associates. 42 pages. 1983. Part 1 (PDF) and Part 2 (PDF)
- Moorefield Historic Structure Report. Completed by Nathaniel Palmer Neblett, AIA. 71 pages. 1991. Part 1 (PDF) and Part 2 (PDF)
Reflect on the irony here for a moment. There can be no greater supporters of the fraudulent Windover Heights Historic District than Robinson and Hyde. But these two historic pretenders had the two studies above in their hands and STILL voted to demolish the single most important historical landmark in Vienna. How can these people not be seen as hypocrites of the highest order? Are there documents like that for the Windover Heights Historic District? You must be kidding!
Where are the remnants of Moorefield now? While we have pictures of the demolition here, that doesn't stop the historic spin lobby from pretending Moorefield still exists. Read their brochure (PDF). The vast majority of that building in those pictures is in a landfill! More spin can be seen on the Jeremiah Moore web site.
We received feedback on this post so far:
Q1: The Moorefield PDFs and the Moorefield site both make claims that the house has been dismantled, tagged and parts of it are being stored for re-use. Yet you state that the house in the picture is now in a landfill. How do you know that the house components were taken to a landfill? Is it untrue that parts have been tagged and are in storage for possible future reassembly?
A1: This Town will say almost anything when comes to keeping up their historic ruse. However, consider pictures: 1, 2 and 3. We are sure some bricks and some planks exist somewhere in some crate. Where is that crate full of Moorefield? Who knows. Will they be able to reassemble the building as described in their two studies? No.
Q2: The way in which the house is being taken down is consistent with a 'deconstruction' process. Support beams have been left standing, and actually ARE marked with what looks like to me to be green paint in some spots. Bricks are stacked, piled and shrink wrapped, which would indicate to me that they are destined for storage, rather than a landfill. One of the brick piles is labeled 'WEST', which may be a locator for future rebuilding. There is a trim rack visible in one photo, and some wood is stacked there. Wood would be stacked there in order to protect it, not to prepare it to go to a dump. The staircase in all photos appears to have been preserved. It looks as if the walls themselves (other than the brick) were some type of plaster over lathe, and I would not expect those to have held up well enough to have had any integrity for restoration. Likely they could not be saved at all. Deconstruction can look even worse than demolition. With demolition, the house comes down in an hour or two, the debris is trucked away, and the ground is immediately smoothed and prepped for the new foundation. Deconstruction can take months and months. It looks awful. Usually, there are big blue tarps and time passes, and the rains come, debris piles up, grass grows. The whole thing just looks like there is no hope in sight. So, I hear you loud and clear, but I can't agree from your post about what happened to Moorefield. The pictures indicate to me that is was, in fact dismantled, at least in so far as was reasonable and practical to do so. But I don't know, I wasn't there. I do wonder if they did save enough of it to hope to 'rebuild' it, and if anyone will ever do so?
A2: This structure had no upkeep and no care for 25 years. It was allowed to rot and it did. Pulling some scraps together from a structure that was disintegrating from outright neglect is after the fact "spin" to make it look like these people were on the ball. Nothing can be further from the truth. If the Town thought there was any value to the venerable Moorefield pile...why not maintain ownership? Why not put it next to Freeman store? No, it was too far gone, so one last salvo of historic spin was fired with the so-called tagging and preservation effort. All of this was done to make it seem like they were not all incompetent. They were. Where is Moorefield today? Where are plans that show how to put the table scraps back together again? Does anyone care?
November 23, 2005
Historic Vienna, Inc: Political Action Committee Comments (0)
Moorefield Ruins: Laine Hyde's Leadership in Action
Below is a graphic example of so-called preservation work with the Moorefield House. They should have listened to former Council member Al Boudreau and sold the property for $500,000. The history of Moorefield will go down as a colossal waste of time (30 years of useless studies and commissions!) and taxpayers' money.
"You can only go so far in saving something like that," said Mayor M. Jane Seeman, noting that the last restoration estimate, which was done last October, came in at almost $700,000. "There's a lot of people who don't even know it's there."..."The town just doesn't have the money to put into it," said Seeman, the mayor: "That's all there is to it."
Mayor of Vienna, Washington Post
While to any ordinary thinking man these pictures appear to be the demolition of a dump, this is actually being passed off as historic restoration by The Vienna Town Council and Historic Vienna, Inc. View the last picture carefully.
Moorefield Picture 1
Moorefield Picture 2
Moorefield Picture 3
Moorefield Picture 4
Moorefield Picture 5
Moorefield Picture 6
Moorefield Picture 7
Moorefield Picture 8
Moorefield Picture 9
Moorefield Picture 10
Moorefield Picture 11
Moorefield Picture 12
Moorefield Picture 14
Moorefield Picture 15
Moorefield Picture 16
Moorefield Picture 17
Moorefield Picture 18
Moorefield Picture 19
There was no preservation!
HVI Board of Directors:
Laine Hyde, President, HVI
Paul Snodgrass (Past President, HVI)
Maud Robinson Town Council
Sarah Jane Brady
Jill Decker
Frank Lancaster
Shirley McCoy
Mildred Monahan
Cathy Salgado (Town Employee - Parks and Recreation Director)
D.H. Scarborough
Daphne Sloan
Who pays for this nonsense?
First and foremost, our entire operation is centered in and around the Town owned Freeman House property. We could not begin to provide even the current level of programs and activities, including the operation of the store, were it not for the financial commitment of the Town and the maintenance, support and services provided by Town employees, particularly those in Parks and Recreation.
Laine Hyde
Letter to Jane Seeman, Jan. 14, 2003
This group takes political positions while funded with tax dollars. They should reveal the entire membership immediately.
