The Conservation of the Woodbury Area Community Center

All over the United States buildings are being replaced by even more buildings. A building is torn down here, and five more are put up over there. This is how a family in one house becomes a town and how that town becomes a city. A great example of this is school buildings. A school building formerly held all grades, their classrooms, a cafeteria, an auditorium, and maybe even an indoor gymnasium. As more people came, however, more room was needed, so the people in charge tore down the one school and built three more, an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school, each with a cafeteria, auditorium, and gymnasium. Then the people in charge needed more room in the cafeteria, auditorium, and gymnasium, so they built three more buildings. This is how one building can turn into six. This is exactly what happened to a building in my home town, Woodbury, Pennsylvania, except nobody ever tore it down. Because nobody ever tore it down, it went from being a school to being the Woodbury Area Community Center. The conservation of this building and the many uses the community gets from it keeps even more buildings from being constructed that would take away from the landscape of the area.

One use the community has found for the building is to hold Woodbury’s local government offices. Woodbury is split into two parts, Woodbury Borough and Woodbury Township. Both of these sections have their own hierarchy of leadership, and both of these groups of administrators make use of the Community Center. They both have their offices located within the building and hold meetings in the building. The Community Center is also used for another important government function, voting. The building is used for any elections that affect the area. From local elections to the presidential election, the Community Center sets up voting booths in the room that used to be Woodbury’s school auditorium. In fact, during the last presidential election on November 4, 2008, I drove right down the road to this building to cast my vote. These uses are a remarkable testament to how a single conserved building can be adapted to fit the needs of a local community and its governmental functions.

The Community Center also finds uses in serving the community’s lower class population. It accomplishes this by containing a local food bank and clothing bank. A food bank is a place where members of the community can donate items of food, usually canned and preservable goods. The local school, Northern Bedford County, also helps bring in donations of food. All these donations are collected and sorted in the Community Center. Then, once a week, members of the community can come to the Community Center and receive a certain amount of food. The clothing bank goes through the same process and provides members of the community who are in need with various articles of clothing. These functions are extraordinary because they not only conserve the Community Center, but they also provide a much needed service to the local community. They get members of the community to help and contribute to the overall good of the town while recycling an aged building that could have been torn down in the distant past.

Many other uses of the Woodbury Area Community Center exist that can be organized under one main idea. Various independent groups can make use of the building by reserving specific rooms or the pavilions outside. For example, every Veteran’s and Memorial Day, area veterans hold dinners and services that commemorate the holidays. A kitchen and dining hall are located in the building that are very convenient for groups that hold dinners for different events such as these. Another example of an event like this is the local Senior Citizen’s dinner that occurs periodically. This is a chance for local seniors to get together and socialize with one another. The old auditorium which is basically a large empty room that can be filled with chairs or tables is also reserved frequently. For example, every Sunday, a group of local Mennonites uses the auditorium to hold their religious services. Another group that uses this room of the building is the local boy scouts. They regularly hold their meetings in this room. The pavilions and playground outside the building are also popular. My church, for instance, holds its Sunday school picnic in this area twice a year. A more general community picnic is also held here once a year for anyone who wants to came. All of these community associations have needs and have found them met by one building.

As evidenced by the many local community groups who use the building for their own reasons, the Community Center is not just being conserved for the sake of conservation; it is being recycled so that the community can consolidate all of these events into one building. That way the functions of what could be five or ten buildings all take place in one. This fact not only illuminates the conservation and recycling of the Community Center, it also shows how the community has conserved land. Those five or ten buildings have to be built somewhere and that means acres and acres of land that will be turned from most likely forest and field to building and parking lot. This, perhaps, is an even more compelling argument for the conservation of buildings. The more adaptive uses people find in older buildings, the more land can be conserved in those communities. This is the case with the Woodbury Area Community Center. It has been conserved for decades and adapted for many uses which prevent even more buildings from taking over the landscape of the community in Woodbury.