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At 103-year-old Bristol apartment building, history mixes with 21st century energy systems

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Shut down for nearly a decade, the historic Bingham School in Bristol is reopening as an apartment complex with an ultra-modern utility system that developers say will keep power and heating bills around $100 a month.

Bristol Enterprises LLC on Wednesday formally opened Bingham Place, a complex of 42 one-bedroom apartments built within the 103-year-old former schoolhouse.

About a dozen former students, some from as far back as the 1940s, applauded when Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu cut a ribbon at the ceremony. Several former teachers also showed up to see the outcome of two years of construction inside the building.

Dignitaries and Bristol officials celebrated the completion of the Bingham Place apartments Wednesday morning with speeches, a ribbon cutting and tour of the former school on North Street.
Dignitaries and Bristol officials celebrated the completion of the Bingham Place apartments Wednesday morning with speeches, a ribbon cutting and tour of the former school on North Street.

“The memories that people have, they’re what this school is about. It was built with love, charm and character in the walls,” said former Principal Susan Moreau, who retired as schools superintendent in the summer.

“You came in here and felt enveloped by this building in a way that I never felt anywhere else,” Moreau said. “Bingham is one of the most special places I ever called home. When I came to Bristol as an administrator in 1992, everybody had a story about Bingham.”

Several of those people were in the audience Wednesday, including Bernie O’Keefe, who went to Bingham until the eighth grade in 1951, and Nancy Roy, who took classes there and returned years later as a teacher.

“I taught fifth grade in the same classroom I had in the fifth grade,” Roy told a group of old friends who’d gathered for the ceremony and to tour the building afterward.

“There were ballfields in the parking lot where we’re standing now,” recalled council member David Mills, who attended Bingham from 1947 to 1955. “I have memories of baseball, the gym, and lots of fond memories of the people.”

Walking through Bingham, they got to see much of the original brick work, wooden banisters, masonry, cabinetry, tin ceilings and maple floors.

The project, a collaboration between Park Lane Group and Maynard Road Corp., earned historic preservation tax credits, with workers required to spend months carefully restoring as much of the original 1916 structure as possible. Domenic Paniccia, a project manager with PSG Inc., tracked down additional bricks and wood from the same era to so that patches or additions at Bingham would match the original materials as closely as possible.

The Bingham Place apartments, once home of the Clarence A. Bingham Elementary School.
The Bingham Place apartments, once home of the Clarence A. Bingham Elementary School.

But the basement utility room is filled with equipment from an entirely different era. Heating and air conditioning are provided through a geothermal system using heat pumps, two dozen 350-foot-deep wells and a massive network of copper and PVC pipes that circulate hot water through the building.

“It brings the earth’s energy up through the building. It creates basically free air conditioning in the summer time and very low-cost heat,” said Robert Cappelletti, a partner in the project. “It provides clean, green resource – there’s no impact on the environment, there’s no damage to the earth.”

The developers plan an array of solar panels as well to provide most or all of the electricity, and predict the building will be energy self-sufficient even though a connection to the power grid will exist for emergencies.

“Whenever we can pair parts of our history with our future, it’s a very good day in Bristol,” Zoppo-Sassu said.

Bingham School was the epicenter for many immigrant families when they arrived in the upper North Main Street area to work in the once-plentiful factories, she said.

“They walked to school, they walked back home one hour to have lunch with their families, they walked back for the afternoon. This was for most of them their only play area in the neighborhood,” she said. “This school has so much sentiment for so many people.”

The same developers are in the final phase of doing a similar renovation of the O’Connell School in the West End.

Don Stacom can be reached at dstacom@courant.com.