Rowan University to raze Whitney-Capie House

Perched on the edge of Route 322, Glassboro's 168-year-old Whitney-Capie House has seen better days.

Once home to the Whitney family, owners of one of the many glass factories that led to the borough's name, the three-story Victorian house is close to losing its sagging porch roof.

Inside, crumbling walls are scrawled with graffiti that the structure's current owner, Rowan University, says it did its best to prevent.

Faced with the exorbitant cost to renovate, Rowan authorities have rethought their plan to upgrade the property and will have the house razed next month.

"The college did nothing to protect the building," said Diana Pierce, preservation chair of the Greater Glassboro Group, a nonprofit community service organization. "Now they're using its condition as the reason for demolishing it."

Many in town feel "duped" by Rowan, which promised to incorporate the home into its campus, according to Pierce. Members of her group and others have written to Rowan expressing their displeasure.

Before Rowan came into possession, the house had a private owner who rented it to students, primarily a fraternity, said Joe Cardona, a school spokesman.

"Windows that were smashed out by the students before they left" were secured, Cardona said. But "every once in a while someone would go there and kick out the Plexiglas."

The house and 2.3-acre lot at 29 Mullica Hill Rd. were purchased by Rowan in 2006 through friendly eminent domain. After 13 years of a neglectful landlord with rambunctious student tenants, the home would have been an expensive renovation even when it was acquired, Rowan officials said.

"It was similar to many fraternity houses, and college houses in general, in that it was not very well-kept," Gary Baker, who lived there in the summer of 2003, recalled in an e-mail.

It "probably needed major repairs, but only received minor cosmetic things from the landlord," said Baker, 29, who graduated from Rowan in 2004.

Adding to the cost of preservation, Rowan officials say they would have to move the house, whose stoop descends into newly expanded Route 322. According to an architectural study this year, the project could total $1.7 million.

"We just can't make that kind of investment based on what the economy is now," Cardona said.

Rowan, which never specified what the house might be used for, has focused more on property acquisition than on maintenance over the last seven years, he said.

The fast-expanding school, with an enrollment of 11,000, eventually "will be a 20,000-student campus. The question is when," Cardona said. The Whitney-Capie property is near the site of a planned freshman housing complex.

Pierce said she did not believe the price tag was a justification for demolition.

"When they say that there is too much damage done to the building," she said, "our response is . . . 'You created that yourselves.' "

It's a case of intentional "demolition by neglect," Pierce said. "There was never a plan to use the building, because if there was, they would have maintained . . . and secured the property."

Cardona said that Rowan gave Glassboro the option to buy the house this year, but that the borough could not afford it. Joseph Brigandi Jr., the town's business administrator, said through a staff member on Thursday that there had been no offer.

If purchasing the house was a possibility, Pierce said, "it should have been brought forward and considered, even though I realize it probably never could have been done. We don't have much money."

The handling of the Whitney-Capie House is an instance of the sometimes strained relationship that exists as a result of Glassboro's growing identity as a college town, Pierce said.

"The general sentiment is that Rowan has run roughshod over the town. We no longer have a say in what happens to our town - it's what Rowan says is going to happen," she said.

In addition, Pierce said, the expanding footprint of the state school has placed a financial burden on private-property owners as the borough loses taxable land.

Lifelong Glassboro resident Marilyn Plaskett has observed the Rowan expansion and remains optimistic. "It's an exciting time to be in Glassboro. . . . They're making many, many changes," she said.

"If the [Whitney-Capie] house goes, you'll understand why, but it would really be a shame," said Plaskett, 80.

"The Whitneys were not of the ilk of the Rockefellers or the Morgans, but they certainly were the leading society people of this general area. Glassboro back in those days was really quite elegant."