By Derek Spellman
dspellman@joplinglobe.com
NEWTONIA, Mo. — Local preservationists hope that repairs to the tornado-damaged Ritchey Mansion will be complete by Sept. 1 as thoughts turn to the future of the historic site.
For the historic mansion, a “ballpark” estimate puts the total cost of the damage to the building caused by the May 10 tornado at between $86,000 and $100,000, said Kay Hively, a member of the Newtonia Battlefields Protection Association, and an advocate for preserving the house and grounds. The association will not have a final number until after the contractor has finished his work, she said.
Much of the damage to the building will be covered by the association’s insurance, although the organization will have to absorb some of the costs of cleaning up the surrounding property and of running an underground power line to the utility pole at the edge of the property, Hively said. Many of the trees that once studded the front and back lawns are gone.
“The place looks bare now,” she said of the grounds. “It looks like a big house on the prairie.”
The Ritchey Mansion served as a headquarters and a field hospital during two Civil War engagements in Newtonia. The Newtonia Battlefields Protection Association owns the mansion and both of the nearby battlefields.
The tornado that swept through Newton County last month tore off all three of the mansion’s chimneys, part of the brick in the front and several large chunks of the roof. It also inflicted other exterior and interior damage.
Hively said repairs to the outside of the building have been completed. The roof, missing brickwork and damaged windows all have been replaced, and crews have begun restoration work on the inside of the house.
That work will include tearing out and replacing damaged parts of the ceiling, repairs to floorboards, and rewiring the house, she said.
The association has not been asking for donations to help defray its repair costs, although that has not stopped some from contributing money to the effort or volunteering their time to pick up glass and other debris littering the lawn, Hively said.
The association is awaiting the final cost of repairs and the amount that insurance will cover to determine how much of the bill it will have to pay and how to do so, Hively said. The group hopes to have the repairs and cleanup on the mansion property finished by Sept. 1, although it has been and will continue to host tours while the work is under way.
Supporters are hoping that the show of local support will help accelerate a study of the battlefield sites that was approved by Congress and endorsed by President Bush several days before the tornado hit.
The legislation aims to determine the best way to preserve the sites. It authorizes the National Park Service to conduct the study to determine if the battlefields could be made a separate unit of the Park Service or brought under the management of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield near Republic.
Jeffrey Olson, a spokesman for the National Park Service, estimated that the study would cost between $250,000 and $300,000, and take between 18 and 24 months.
He said he did not know when the agency would launch the study. The law requires the agency to conduct the study within three years of when funding becomes available.
The Park Service has about $550,000 available in its budget per year for studies, and the bill signed into law by President Bush last month authorizes a total of eight new studies, including the one for the Newtonia battlefields, Olson said. There also are some planned studies ahead of those.
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