Waterford — To the people who work in Town Hall, they may be just windows.

But to Town Historian Robert Nye, they’re part of the town’s architectural legacy.

The building’s 120 windows are aging and due for replacement, and the Board of Selectmen is set to vote Tuesday on a bid from a construction firm to do the work.

But Nye said if the selectmen approve that bid, they will miss an opportunity to restore the building to its original look.

“The Board of Selectmen is faced with a once in a lifetime opportunity to establish a lasting legacy for a landmark building,” wrote Nye, the former longtime town clerk and a member of the Historic Properties Commission, in a letter addressed to Representative Town Meeting moderator Thomas J. Dembek last week.

When the town converted the former Jordan School building for use as the Town Hall in 1984, the windows on the original 1919 building were replaced with shorter ones to accommodate lower ceilings, according to Nye.

The space between the top of the windows and the supporting strip of granite on the outer brick wall was covered with white, aluminum panels.

The new look detracted from the historic origins of the 1919 structure, which was designed by the architect of several other town buildings, Waterford native Louis H. Goddard.

“Back then, preservation was probably not as … highly valued as it was today,” he said last week.

When town officials issued the request for bids to replace the windows in February, the proposed design called for the winning firm to only replace the existing windows and leave the white panels in place.

Nye has asked multiple times in the past few months that the bid process be delayed, and that his proposal to install windows on the front of the building that match the 1919 design be considered.

“Why couldn’t … that be speced out, and say ‘OK it’s going to be X amount of money, but in the context of this historic building, it is or isn’t worth it?’” he said last week.

Seven firms have submitted bids to complete the project. Municipal Facility Maintenance Coordinator Wayne Fraser will present his choice, a $142,495 proposal from JPW Building of Canterbury, to the selectmen Tuesday.

Following the specifications put forward in the request for proposals released in February, all the bids would replace the smaller windows and replace the aluminum panels with another material.

First Selectman Daniel Steward said his focus is on saving tax dollars, and that delaying the bid process or starting it over, would be a major inconvenience that could cost the town money.

“We have a budget that we are trying to maintain, given our most recent experience in losing state funding,” Steward said Monday. “Entertaining any additional expense on projects that have already been funded is not in the best interest of the taxpayer.”

According to Fraser, canceling the bid process now and installing historically accurate windows — even if it was only on the front of the building — would be more costly than the current bid.

A contractor would need to carve out space in the lowered ceiling to make room for the additional window space to replace the aluminum panels, adding more work.

“You’re talking a substantial project, to go back to full windows,” Fraser said. "You’ve got to get the town the best bang for its buck. It really gets to the comfort of the employees, so that they’re not getting cold breezes on them in the winter.”

The chosen contractor could replace the white aluminum panels with ones that blend in or resemble windows, Fraser said.

While the Town Hall building is not a registered historic building, Nye said he and the other members of the Historic Properties Commission believe it deserves a second chance.

“We just feel like [it’s] so much a part of our cultural heritage that the town should really make some effort to honor that,” he said.

But the money for the project was appropriated last summer, and the town needs to move forward to get the project done, Steward said.

“If someone wanted to change them out at a later date … that can always be done if someone wants to go spend taxpayer dollars,” he said.

m.shanahan@theday.com