‘A labor of love from the town’: Gale School renovation completed after years of effort

Since 1894, the Gale School has seen everything from 19th-century arithmetic lessons to after-school detentions, illicit late-night rendezvous, indoor campfires and rumors of ghosts haunting its halls.

It has been picked up, turned around and carted down a hill. It has been stripped, gutted and all but turned inside out.

But after years of preservation and renovation, a ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for Tuesday, signifying its rebirth as a community hub.

“We’ve had fun with this,” said Woody Fogg, the Save Our Gale Schools committee volunteer who oversaw the building’s relocation. “It’s been a lot of work, but we’ve had fun.”

The 132-year-old building will host the Boys and Girls Club of Central and Northern New Hampshire downstairs and offer leased space to a social service agency upstairs.

“We’re really excited about the Boys and Girls Club,” said Sal Steven-Hubbard, senior real estate developer at the Lakes Region Community Developers. “It kind of brings children back into the building.”

The exterior of the Gale School sports eggshell siding and copper trim. At the apex of the building is a wooden finial, a replica of the 1894 original crafted by a local woodworker. Below it, the original schoolhouse bell sits in the steeple, next to a century-old wooden owl placed there to deter pigeons. The original oculus window remains to this day, above a wooden sign that reads “ERECTED 1894,” announcing its landmark status.

The commitment to historical accuracy continues indoors: chalkboards line the walls, like in the old classrooms, and the building’s wainscoting mirrors the original design. 

“We took pieces of the old molding down to a company in Cambridge and had them cut new trim and molding that was exactly the same profile as the old one,” Steven-Hubbard said. 

When it became clear that the original wooden floors were too buckled to retain, the team’s historic consultant insisted that the new floorboards be the exact same width as the old ones, laid in the same direction as before.

Steven-Hubbard gestured to the daycare room around her. “This is pretty much what it was a hundred years ago,” she said.

Many rooms feature bricked-up fireplaces from when the building used them for warmth. Now, it uses heat pump technology for both heating and cooling — no fossil fuels necessary.

Other additions include an elevator and a back stairwell to comply with accessibility and fire protection regulations.

Though the Gale School now smells of fresh paint, long-time Belmont residents can remember its dilapidation. Before it was moved to 60 Concord Street in Belmont Village in 2020, the Gale School stood abandoned next to newer school buildings.

Still, a mixture of nostalgia and appreciation for its good bones motivated the formation of the Save Our Gale School committee, a nonprofit organization that opposed the Shaker Regional School District’s plan to tear the school down.

A former civil engineer, Fogg was originally hesitant to involve himself — until former vice chair of the committee Ken Knowlton brought him inside.

“We went up into the attic, and I looked at the framing,” Fogg said. “The building is just gorgeous, from an engineer’s point of view … I said, ‘I’m in. We can’t let them tear this down.’”

In 2018, the committee successfully halted the demolition plans and struck an agreement to buy the building from the district for just $1, which was paid for with a silver dollar from 1894 found inside, according to Fogg.

From there, the committee sought help from the Lakes Region Community Developers, which had only worked on affordable housing developments until then.

“I don’t think we would have been involved with this had it not been for the passion of the Save Our Gale School committee,” Steven-Hubbard said. “It’s not our typical project, but we saw it was a community imperative, and we needed to be involved in it.”

Originally slated to cost $1.2 million, the Gale School’s renovation and relocation totaled $5 million. But Fogg estimated that it would have been much, much more: the committee only paid for about 30% of the project, thanks to federal funding, tax credits and community donations.

“The real story here to me is the New Hampshire and the Belmont way of doing things,” he said. “We didn’t want to spend any local tax money or school money, so we decided that we were going to do this and not spend a dime.”

Road work, construction materials, concrete, bricks and more came free or heavily discounted from community members and local businesses. For example, the Geddes Building Movers charged less than half, Fogg estimated, of their typical price. In order to transport the building down a steep 17% grade hill to its new home, a plot donated by a former Gale School attendee, neighbors agreed to have a portion of their properties clear-cut so a road could be built. 

In the relocation process, the building movers used a combination of hydraulic dollies and bulldozers, whose blades dug into the ground and acted as brakes for the building’s slow progress down the slope.

“Part of me never thought you’d move the building,” Steven-Hubbard said to Fogg.

The project’s timeline and price tag exceeded expectations, but Steven-Hubbard had to see it through — she even postponed her retirement for a year.

“One of the things that really, really, really impressed me about the Lakes Region Community Developers was Sal,” Fogg said. “She just would not quit.”

At long last, Steven-Hubbard and Fogg see their efforts come into fruition. Over 100 people have RSVPed to come to Tuesday’s ceremony — the highest attendance Steven-Hubbard has ever seen for a ribbon-cutting.

 “This has been a labor of love from the town,” she said.