East Island's Common Hall, in its current röle as a museum, is run by Witgarn Sprochner, the head curator. Sprochner does not in any sense own the museum; the land and buildings are owned by the Millstone Foundation, of which Sprochner is an employee. Nevertheless, Sprochner has been the head curator for several decades now, and many regulars to the Millstone Gardens can hardly imagine anyone else being in charge. A scient historian with especial knowledge of East Island, Sprochner can discourse at length about the history of the neighborhood, and can answer all manner of obscure question about it.

Sprochner is himself not only a native of East Island, but a descendent of its original settlers. However, his position as head curator of Common Hall is a sufficiently prestigious one that even most of the wealthy residents who otherwise resent or look down on the deep-rooted East Islander families who refused to move when the more affluent later inhabitants moved in accept and respect him, seeing him almost as one of them. Sprochner himself is more conflicted about the matter. While he has friends among the neighborhood's rich residents, he can't help but lament the way most of the original settlers were forced out, and regret what the neighborhood has become. He has friends among the other descendents of the original settlers, too, being one of few people who are on good terms with both the old and the new residents. He has occasionally wondered if there might be some way he could leverage this fact to try to bring about some sort of improvement in the neighborhood's situation, but so far hasn't come up with anything, and isn't sure he'd have the courage to carry it out even if he did.

Sprochner is a gray-skinned, long-faced, long-bodied man whose hair is still brown only because of regular application of dye. He has a tall, thin nose, a high forehead, and deep creases at the sides of his mouth. Sprochner tends to speak in a somewhat lugubrious voice, though he gets notably excited when talking about history. He generally wears somewhat old-fashioned tailored gray or rust-colored suits, festooned with old pins and decorations he's collected over the years.