North Country at Work: Restoring Louisville's historic town hall
Patti Shirley and her husband Bill are restoring the hall, which was built back in 1900. Much of it is still intact: hardwood floors, light oak wainscoting, and three different kinds of stamped tin tiles on the walls and ceiling.
Shirley says even though it's 124 years old, most of the building is "just as solid as day one."
The town of Louisville hasn’t used the building since 1974. It was likely going to be demolished when the Shirleys bought it in 2021. But Shirley says she "couldn't see this building taken down. It was too nice of a building. Everything, it just needed upkeep.”
Louisville is a town of about 3,000 people just west of Massena. Patti Shirley has lived here, on the same street as the town hall, for 40 years. She says it’s the best place on Earth.
But like many towns in the area, it’s been losing population and young residents for decades. Shirley sees restoring the town hall as her part in trying to keep Louisville vibrant. Because for a long time, the town hall was the community.
Shirley's also Louisville's Town Historian. She says the town hall was used as a schoolhouse, court, jail, and makeshift emergency shelter: "'if they had horrible weather forecasted, everybody moved into here."
"It was absolutely everything that you could ever need it for back then. This was where the town was. Anybody and everybody that was in the town came here.”
Local doctor John O’Brian built the town hall and later sold it to the town for a dollar. When the Spanish flu ravaged Louisville in 1918, the town used the hall to treat patients.
Shirley says "the upstairs was the hospital, and the downstairs was the morgue. And there may be a visitor here still. Every once and a while you’ll feel the eyes on you.”
Shirley says there are ghosts here now. But in its heyday, you can tell that this was a happening place. Coat hooks line the walls, and the floors are worn in from sports and dancing.
Shirley’s husband grew up in Louisville and remembers playing basketball there as a Boy Scout.
Like any community center, the town hall has graffiti carved into the bathroom door, "Val + Me" inside a big heart. Shirley doesn't know who wrote it, but says she has "a few ideas."
The Shirleys want to preserve the hall’s old-timey feel in both the architecture and the decorations. They’re collecting lots of period furniture at auctions and estate sales.
One of their best finds is a Mahogany piano built in 1850 that originally belonged to a convent in Plattsburgh. It needs to be tuned, and a few keys are missing their ivory.
Other than that, it's in great shape. And Shirley says while most pianos have "a big piece of metal that the strings bang on," the soundboard in this one is made from mahogany.
Shirley says they’re buying furniture and fixing things up one paycheck at a time. Their goal is to create an event space for people in the town to use, and to bring life back to the historic building.
She says one of the first things they'll do once it's fixed up is have a dance. According to Shirley, "a lot of older people in town still remember coming here. This was their fun time. Back in the '60s and early '70s, this was fun!”
The Shirleys want the town hall to be part of Louisville for a long time to come. Their daughter lives on the same road as the town hall, and Shirley says "this will be hers when we’re gone, and it will keep on going.”
For now, the Shirleys are still repainting tiles and getting things up and running. They say they hope that one day, the town hall will be the center of their community again.
