This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Girl Scouts See Green at Academy Square

Troop visits green building and sees green art.

The Academy Square building at 33 Plymouth Street is pretty special. People outside of Montclair come to see it. It is a very 'green' building with its gold LEED certification, but it also has two art galleries that just so happen to boast two current shows with the theme of the environment and recycling.

So it was the perfect place to visit for a Girl Scout troop working on a few environment badges. Liza Hecht, leader, and Jeanne Donohue, co-leader, for Junior Girl Scout Troop 430 from South Mountain School in Millburn decided to arrange for a visit to the building. “I read about it (the art shows) in the Sunday New York Times,” said Hecht. “It fit into what we've been doing as a troop.” So they contacted Studio Montclair and made the trip out to see the building and the art on Friday.

They were met in the lobby by Bob Silver, one of the building's owners and Virginia Block, the gallery director for the SMI Virginia S. Block Gallery on the building's second floor.

Find out what's happening in Montclairwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Silver started off the tour by asking the girls to look at everything. “Look at the carpet. Look at the windows. Look at the doors,” Silver instructed them. He continued on, “Look at the lights” as he lead the girls into the building.

The building started out as the Gibbs College and the Kimberley Academy. But the time the building was purchased in 2004 to become Academy Square, it was in a sad state of decay. The before and after photographs of the transformation are on display in the lobby. Also in the lobby is an informational plaque detailing just how green the building is. Some facts: 91% of the existing walls, floors and roof have been reused. Nearly 90% of the construction waste was recycled. Tile, doors and countertops are all made from either renewable or recycled resources.

Find out what's happening in Montclairwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The girls really liked the recycled countertops. While one was made with brown bottles and quartz, the other was made out of ... money. Yes, money. They put the 'green' in greenbacks. The countertop was made from shredded, worn-out bills in various denominations.

As the girls made their way through the building, Silver showed them the windows made to let the maximum amount of light in with the least amount of heat loss. He showed them the recycled doors and the florescent lighting. He pointed out the carpet, made from recycled green soda bottles. He showed them the two button toilet. One button is labeled '1' and the other button is labeled '2'. Yes, they mean what you think they mean and are set up to use only enough water as needed.

In keeping with the recycled theme, the Studio Montclair Inc. (SMI) gallery spaces offered the girls another way to look at recycling. The current shows, “Sustainability and the Artistic Vision” in the SMI Gallery @ Academy Square and “Rendering Green” in the SMI Virginia S. Block Gallery, both have the environment as a theme. Block was on hand to give the girls a tour of both spaces and to engage them in the discussion of how the artists used materials and ideas presented in the shows.

And the girls got a surprise also. Among the artists was their own art teacher at South Mountain, Susan Lisbin. Lisbin had two pieces in "Rendering Green”.

All in all, it seems the building that started out as a school for young women continues to educate well into the 21st century.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?