MANSFIELD — Kingwood Center Gardens’ Carriage House has a new look that harkens back to the early years of the beloved estate.
“We were so fortunate to get a couple really timely donations that made this possible,” said Chuck Gleaves, Kingwood Center Gardens executive director.
Benefactors include James R. Borden, who donated $389,000, and the family of Meredith Nail Stevens, who gave $50,000. The Charles Kelley King III Trust also contributed $10,000 to go toward the project.
A dedication ceremony was held Sunday in honor of those who helped cover the cost of the renovations, as well as the cost of a new garden that sits just outside the building near the duck pond.
The Carriage House was originally used as stable and garage space. In the 1960s, it was transformed into a lecture hall where garden club meetings and flower shows could be held. All of the windows and carriage doors were closed off during the remodeling process, making the facility internally oriented.
“A lot of the garden clubs and flower shows that brought people here before are falling out of popularity, so we wanted to introduce people to gardens in new and different ways, which involves new and different ways of presenting the property,” Gleaves explained.
Architect Dan Seckel came up with a fresh design that would preserve the historical integrity of the building while adding a few modern touches.
“What we wanted to do was recreate those original openings as much as possible,” Seckel said. Thus, the building’s five arched doors and all of its windows were re-opened after having been enclosed with bricks.
The drop ceiling was replaced with a floating cloud ceiling that exposes some of the rafters and wooden vinyl flooring was installed.
Seckel said it can seat up to 130 people.
“Although it’s not a large hall, it gives Kingwood something it hadn’t had up to this point and it reuses an existing building,” he said.
Construction began in January and was completed at the end of April. Work on the adjacent rain garden then began with the help of Terra Design Studios, a Pittsburgh landscape architecture company.
“The rain garden is part of an environmental effort of dealing with surface water,” Gleaves said. “We have surface water problems here because we’re on a long slope and with a heavy rainstorm we get erosion and so forth.”
Gleaves envisions the space being used for wedding receptions, conferences, among other things. Mansfield Senior High School held its prom at the Carriage House earlier this year.
The renovations to the Carriage House are just one step in a master plan, Gleaves said. One major project included in the master plan involves the construction of a visitor’s center behind Draffan Fountain.
“The whole project came in at $8 million and our capital campaign feasibility study says we probably can’t raise that much, so we have to look to see what we can scale down,” Gleaves said.
