[MassHistPres] Replicas of Historic Street Lamps

[Suzanne W Pelton]

1914 George Westinghouse, a resident in Lenox since 1887, donated 149  
street lamps to the town and sold them electricity from his newly  
formed Lenox Electric Co. Most of the lamps in the village were taken  
down and replaced with cobra highway lights in the 1980's in a cost  
saving measure. Since then, the Lenox Historical Commission has been  
working to have exact replicas re-installed to restore the historic  
look to our village. Seven original lamps are still functioning on  
outlying streets and a  dozen more are standing in various states of  
disrepair.

In 2008 the Community Preservation Committee accepted our proposal  
and recommended at Town Meeting, to put $50,000 toward erecting  
replicas of the Westinghouse street lamp. Residents approved the  
measure. The Town also passed a bond issue to redesign and re- 
landscape the main commercial street, with 22 Westinghouse street  
lamps. In addition, the Lenox Historical Commission raised $25,000  
from local merchants for the same purpose.

Now we have learned that Massachusetts codes dictate alterations to  
the original design: 5" diam. pole rather than the 3" and 4" coupled  
pole of the Westinghouse lamp.

Our questions:
	Is there a variance for historic replicas?
	What about the funds: can the funds raised/appropriated for a  
replica be spent for lamps that are NOT 			replicas?

We would appreciate any experience/information you can share with us.
Suzanne W Pelton
Lenox Historical Commission, Secy 

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: sc00494d0c.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 19245 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.cs.umb.edu/mailman/private/masshistpres/attachments/20090309/053697e2/attachment-0002.jpg 
-------------- next part --------------

Westinghouse Streelamp-Lenox