Letter: G&B School — What promises did Town of Wilton make to the people of Georgetown?

To the Editor:

How did Wilton get a Quit Claim Deed from the Gilbert & Bennett Mfg. Co. in 1964, giving the town ownership of the Gilbert & Bennett School? What did the Town of Wilton promise the G&B Mfg. Co. in order to secure their cooperation? The company did not sell the building for profit: only $1 changed hands. Rather they entrusted the school to the Town of Wilton in exchange for certain assurances.

The G&B School was originally owned by the Gilbert & Bennett Mfg. Co. and was built by them as a gift for the people of Georgetown, where most of the company’s employees lived. In 1916 the company deeded the school to School District No. 10, which included portions of Wilton, Redding and Weston. That deed contained covenants which, if violated, would cause ownership to revert to the company. When School District No. 10 was phased out, the company quit claimed the school to the Town of Wilton in 1964.

By that Quit Claim Deed, the G&B Co. intended to “release, relinquish and forever discharge any and all rights” they had to the property. After the deed was signed, there was no longer any risk of the property reverting to company ownership. The company’s own Board of Directors meeting minutes confirms that this was their intention: they were “releasing Gilbert & Bennett’s claim through the reverter clause in the original deed.”

But what did the G&B Co. intend regarding the other “covenants running with the land” from the original 1916 deed? The main covenants stated that:

1. The property could only be used for the purposes of a public school.
2. A public school would “be forever maintained and conducted” there by the school district.
3. The school’s Assembly Hall “may be used as a Community Hall for the benefit of the people of said Georgetown and its vicinity at such times as said hall shall not be required for school purposes.”
4. The “Assembly Hall, outside of school hours or sessions, shall be in the charge and under the control of a committee to be called the Hall Committee.”

Did the company believe these covenants would be honored? Did the Town of Wilton promise that they would be?

The intentions and expectations of the Board of Directors of the Gilbert & Bennett Mfg. Co. are laid out in the minutes of its May 13, 1964 meeting, when it voted to issue the Quit Claim Deed. The minutes read as follows:

“The main features of the original Deed of Gift from the Company have been agreed to by the school boards and the selectmen of both towns [Wilton and Redding]. Wilton has agreed that facilities of the school will be available to Georgetown residents on the same basis that school property is available to Wilton residents.”

John H. Mulliken, President of the G&B company, also communicated directly to the Board of Selectmen in a letter dated March 29, 1963, stating that, “Our only interest is to safeguard the provisions of the original Gift of the School, by our Company, to District 10.”

Unfortunately it is impossible to consult Wilton’s Board of Selectmen minutes to determine what light they might shed on the issue. All the 1964 minutes are missing from the Town Clerk’s office. Even an exhaustive search of the basement of Town Hall, where many miscellaneous records are stored, could not bring them to light. Board of Finance minutes have been relocated, but shed no light on the specifics of the deal.

Board of Education minutes are extant. They show the Board negotiating in 1964 with the Georgetown PTA and other organizations to come up with rules to govern community use of the school. The rules adopted were closely modeled on a document that had mediated community use of the building prior to the 1964 quit claim, showing continuity of usage norms before and after the Town took ownership.

The only other evidence remaining is the testimony of a then-member of the Board of Finance who was involved in the 1964 negotiations. Peter Levin wrote his account of the agreement between the Town and the company in a guest column for The Wilton Bulletin in 1998. He stated that the G&B Co. gave the property to the Town only on the condition that the Town “satisfied” its concerns that “at such time as the property might cease to be used as a [public] school, the building and grounds would continue to be available to the people of Georgetown for social and recreational activities.”

Levin concluded by saying that the company received repeated assurances to this effect from the Town and that, “I have no doubts that all of those who represented the town believed firmly that we were entering into an inviolable transaction.”

My opinion is that the Town of Wilton should uphold its promises. When the building is not being used as a public school — and the G&B company according to Levin clearly accepted that this use would eventually lapse — the building and grounds are promised to the people of Georgetown as their community center.

Beyond this, selling the building into private hands — no matter how well intentioned they may be — raises another concern: what happens if the buyer decides to resell the property? At that point the people of Georgetown will have absolutely no say in the matter.

Julie Hughes
Historian

Julie Hughes is Archivist at the Wilton History Room. Her views do not represent those of the Wilton Library or the Wilton Historical Society.