Allan Appel Photo
Edgewood School art teacher Sue Matican got 15 large sheets of yellow, green, and orange Oak Tag construction paper that she called “fabulous” for collages. An architect got an armful of Strathmore bond for a song. And a Yale curator of Roman coins took home a box of 500 yellow envelopes for free. He said he had a lot of bills to pay.
Those were some of the happy transactions that took place Saturday morning as the new owners of the former Lehman Brothers printing and engraving factory in Goatville held what amounted to a stationery tag sale.
“It’s really for recycling and instead of throwing out,” said one of the new owners, Gil Marshak.
By Saturday’s end, Pastor estimated that $15,000 worth of paper had been donated to approximately 15 New Haven and Hamden school teachers.
After the 98-year-old fine printing establishment went into bankruptcy in 2008, Marshak and his partners took over in a much-watched competition to acquire and then renovate the historic property into apartments.
(Click here, here, and here for stories about that.)
On Saturday morning, the major beneficiaries thus far appeared to be kids enrolled in the art classes of the New Haven and Hamden public school systems.
Marshak and others had sent the word out. It was hard to tell if Sue Matican and her colleagues from New Haven were not in fact outnumbered by Doreen Stohler, a K‑6 instructional math coach, and her team from Hamden.
Stohler nabbed a large box of study blue binders that she said will be used to hold curriculum documents. In her haul were also inches of card stock that she said would definitely be furnished to teachers to use for flash card exercises for those irritating multiplication tables and other similar uses.
She estimated the store price for her haul would easily top $100.
All the items the school teachers took were free if they presented ID to Marshak or his co-developer, architect Fernando Pastor.
Pastor and Joseph Banks of SEEDnh had also bid on the property earlier this year after it had fallen into bankruptcy. Although they lost out to Marshak, they have since become become partners in whatever is to be the future of the site. Those plans remain inchoate, said Marshak.
As she made her list, Edgewood’s Matican said the basic construction paper her kids are supplied with pales compared to the fabulous stuff she was finding extant on the Lehman factory floor.
She said her kids might use the papers to make collages or to build what she called their “secret places.” That’s a theme this year at Edgewood, which emphasizes interdisciplinary teaching. After they make the art project, the kids will write about what they have constructed.
This year they will likely also be writing on former Lehman paper stock.
Reams and boxes were for sale, or more usually for the free taking, on tables scattered throughout the factory.
“You can see how desperate teachers are,” she added.
The school system’s art coordinator, Nilda Morales, was also there along with Sally Larrick, who teaches art at the Jepson School. Their job: to gather as much as they could to be stored at High School in the Community, the central hoarding spot for the system’s art teachers.
Full and part time, there are 51 K‑8 grade teachers and 19 high school teachers, Morales said.
Architect Bob Grzywacz picked up some high quality bond for a buck. “Architects are always looking for a freebie,” he said.
Another architect came by cradling an armful of vellum and asked how much.
With a pleasant shrug, Marshak replied, “Five dollars for an inch.”
Future Plans for the Lehman Building
When all the paper is gone and clean-up finished, Marshak and his partners will begin submission of their plans for approval to renovate the building into apartments.
Although the developers preferred not to reveal details Saturday, this much is certain: They have kept three of the large engraving presses such as this one that identifies itself as C.R. Carver, Philadelphia, 1913. The machines will be shined up and preserved and displayed in the lobby or other areas of the future apartment building. Accompanying them will be an assortment of wheels, plates, and other machinery parts as reminders of the work that went on here for nearly a century.
“To keep the history of the site,” said Pastor.
Marshak credited the tag sale idea, which was clearly generating positive community feeling among stationery bargain hunters, to Sally Hill of the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden. She had attended a similar giveaway for teachers in September, in a gesture of the previous owners. Hill urged Marshak to emulate it.
Around 11 a.m., an hour after the quietly frenzied shopping, someone came up to Marshak and asked to buy the wooden cabinets in which the type was kept.
The answer: no. It, along with the presses, were being kept for the next configuration of the Lehman Brothers factory.
“Everything was a treasure for some people, ” he said.
Marshak predicted that the first more detailed plans for the property will be unveiled before the Board of Zoning Appeals at the upcoming April meeting.
Can the Independent start reporting about the environmental clean up work that might be necessary on this property? 98 years worth of a printing business is likely to have produced some significant contamination issues.
I was once told by someone with close knowledge of this site that the people who ran Lehman Bros. in previous decades would routinely discard chemicals by just pouring them out on the ground. While I do want to see this project succeed, I would not want it to happen if it creates an unsafe situation where kids playing out in the yard were exposed to harmful chemicals. Has any cleanup work been done on the site? Has any environmental testing been done? At very least, a Phase II Environmental Site Assessment should be done which would include testing the soil for contamination.
Allan - can you check into this?