Article: Did Changing A Town's Face Change Its Soul?; Residents Split Over Benefactor's Work

Early settlers called this the village of constant dawn, and it evokes that feeling today: historic lakeside mansions dusted in a kind of timeless glow, an old-world red-brick inn, ivy-clad buildings rising from the lawns of Wells College.

Even the village market, with its perfectly perched baskets of ripe vegetables, seems almost too good to be true.

For some who live here, it is.

"How polished we are now, how shiny," said village historian Sheila Edmunds. "But at what cost?"

The village of 750, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was anything but shiny six years ago. Paint peeled off old mansions, the inn fought to stay open, and the college struggled with enrollments.

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