An historian who worked for 50 years at the US Naval Air Station in St.

George's added her voice to the controversy over Longbird House this week by throwing some doubt on the value of the former commanding officer's home as an important piece of Bermudiana.

Mrs. Dee Block, who worked for the US Air Force's information service for 25 years and then in the US Navy's education centre for 25 more, told The Royal Gazette that the historical value of the house, which might be demolished by Government to comply with international aviation standards, is very much an open question.

"History,'' Mrs. Block said, "is in the eye of the beholder. (Longbird House) does have historical value as far as the Base is concerned, but you read about bits of the house being from the late 18th Century and that's a bit misleading.'' Mrs. Block, who claims to be impartial on the issue of whether or not the building is demolished, said Longbird House was found in an unfinished state by the American military when it took over Longbird Island in 1941.

Originally designed, in the words of Life Magazine, as a "$200,000 pleasure dome'' for globe-totting American millionaire William Marcus Greve, it was not fully completed until mid-1942, when Base builders finished it as an operations building and headquarters for the Kindley Field commander.

Since then, Mrs. Block said Longbird House has hosted a number of historic figures, including Herbert Hoover, Fiorello LaGuardia, Clare Booth Luce, Lord Beaverbrook, Andrei Gromyko and US Generals Omar Bradley, Lucius Clay and Dwight David Eisenhower.

But, the Base's unofficial historian added, such figures were only in the house for one or two nights in most cases, usually as they were being shuttled to and from Europe during the Second World War.

In addition to these passing encounters with fame, Mrs. Block said, Longbird House has also been central to some other historic occasions over the years, including the construction, in the 1940s, of the Base's first air traffic control tower on its roof.

Nonetheless, she also said, her purpose in speaking on the building publicly was to neither support nor oppose the house's demolition.

"I simply wanted to correct some of the erroneous information that's been circulating out there,'' Mrs. Block told The Royal Gazette . "I think the public should decide (the fate of Longbird House).'' In her lukewarm defence of the Longbird building, Mrs. Block joins such other ambivalent observers of the situation as art critic Mr. Andrew Trimingham and Finance Minister Grant Gibbons.

Mr. Trimingham, who is chairman of Government's Historic Buildings Advisory Committee, has said that there are "a lot more important buildings (than Longbird House) to worry about in Bermuda'', while Dr. Gibbons, who claims the house has been classified under British civil aviation rules as an obstruction to airline traffic, has said it is "hardly an historic landmark.'' Even so, Dr. Gibbons said, the Government will explore thoroughly the possibility of avoiding Longbird's demolition.

Premier David Saul has suggested that the house might be transplanted to another site.