The inmates of Greene County Prison scrubbed down the woodwork today in an old log house that serves as a community center in Greensboro, and also patched latticework under a porch by the Monongahela River.
“I just love it when they come to town,” said Mary Shine, president of council in the borough that is home to just 295 residents. “They are such good workers.”
So is the handful of dedicated local residents who went to battle with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to keep the agency from demolishing riverfront houses when it built new locks and a dam, raising the water level 15 feet in the 1990s.
“Every time something bad came along, somebody has come forward to save things,” said Betty Longo, 83, who runs a tiny country store in a downtown dating to the late 1800s. “Something that was important.”
The situation was dire following a major flood in 1985 that destroyed several of the homes on Water Street, eliminating 12 percent of Greensboro’s tax base, Longo said.
Five years later, the corps began relocating the dam and the process of taking the remaining houses in the flood zone through eminent domain, she said.
With resident Lydia Aston taking the lead, the downtown district was placed on the National Register of Historic Districts because of its early days as a pottery center. Potters turned local clay into blue-gray stoneware pots and jugs that were used to move goods to destinations as far away as New Orleans before the industry disappeared in the early 1900s.
The listing succeeded in preventing the corps from spending federal money to destroy historic buildings.
A settlement was later negotiated that required the corps to raise and restore five houses that were eventually deeded under a Greene County Court order to the borough. The federal.6 million to upgrade the borough’s sewer system.
“We actually saved the town,” Longo said.
The borough now rents the houses, earning agency also spent $1 about $30,000 a year, which makes up a third of its annual revenues.
“We’re probably the only borough in the United States with this much rental property,” Shine said.
She also is celebrating a more than $1 million investment using county, state and federal sources, to create a walking trail and build new sidewalks along Front Street.
Meanwhile, artists have relocated to some of the historic houses, and a private investor has turned a Victorian brick house at the water’s edge into the Captain’s Watch Bed and Breakfast. It attracts guests from around the globe, Shine said.
“The property here is cheap, peaceful,” she said. “You can sit on the porch and watch the river traffic.”
“I think the town’s been improved,” added Longo, who is well known for her milkshakes. “They’re keeping the place real nice.”