AG seeks to block razing of chapel
As possible buyer emerges, Tong wants alternatives weighed
HARTFORD — A potential buyer who is willing to move a historic yet decaying funeral chapel in a Hartford cemetery has emerged, but Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said Thursday he is still prepared to go to court to block any move to demolish the 137-year-old structure by the West Hartford synagogue that owns it.
“To date, [Congregation Beth Israel] has not agreed to postpone the demolition,” Tong’s office said in a statement. “The Office of the Attorney General is prepared to seek an injunction to prevent the destruction of the Deborah Chapel while all reasonable alternatives are fully considered.”
In an interview earlier Thursday, Scott Lewis, co-chairman of the cemetery committee at Congregation Beth Israel, acknowledged discussions with Tong’s office.
“There have been discussions with the attorney general’s office with our counsel for some sort of what I would call a moratorium, which the congregation is certainly willing to do,” Lewis said.
Lewis said the congregation is “actively exploring” the proposal from the buyer, whom Lewis declined to identify.
“We don’t know whether that is going to come to fruition or not,” Lewis said. “From our position, the building is still for sale for a dollar for anyone that wants to move it. So that’s basically where things stand.”
The city of Hartford confirmed Thursday that it has identified vacant property at 20 Putnam St. as a potential new location for the chapel in Beth Israel Cemetery.
The courts have ordered the city to issue a demolition permit March 21, after the city, which
supported the building’s preservation, exhausted court appeals to save it. But Tong could still use other legal avenues to block the demolition.
Even if a demolition permit were issued March 21, Lewis said Thursday he would not anticipate a rush to tear down the chapel “because we want to be cooperative with the process.”
A decade-long fight by preservationists to save the Deborah Chapel, at the corner of Ward and Affleck streets in the Frog Hollow neighborhood, gained national attention earlier this year when it was named to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of 11 most endangered properties in the country out of a field of 120 candidates.
The congregation argues the chapel hasn’t been used for a mortuary and funeral services for 75 years. The building has deteriorated and has been the target of vandalism, which has spread to the neighboring cemetery. The cemetery has become a dumping ground for trash, the congregation said.
The land where the chapel now stands also is needed for future burial plots, the congregation has said.
In December, the state’s historic preservation council asked Tong to intervene in the matter, possibly going to court to block demolition. A six-month moratorium has been mentioned as an alternative while a buyer was sought.
The debate over the chapel’s future came to a head after the city’s historic preservation commission refused to approve a demolition permit in 2019. Beth Israel sued, and the courts sided with the congregation. In November, the courts ordered the commission to grant the demolition permit and once issued by the city would clear the way for demolition after 90 days.
In a last-ditch effort, the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation petitioned the state historic preservation council, presenting two visions for converting the chapel into housing, noting the building was still structurally sound. Some council members also said the building, perhaps a part of it, could be used to showcase Jewish culture and history in Hartford and possibly in the region or state.
The council, part of the state Department of Economic and Community Development, asked the attorney general to intervene, taking another legal route under the state’s environmental protection act. The act also covers threats to Connecticut’s historic assets.
The city council would have to approve relocating the chapel to 20 Putnam St.
The Romanesque Revival-style structure was built in 1886 after a fundraising campaign by the Ladies Deborah Society, an organization of Jewish women dedicated to performing good works in the community.
The National Trust noted the chapel was “a rare and early American example of an intact Jewish funerary structure which embodies the strong leadership of women within the 19th century Jewish and communal organizations.”