Historic House Blog

“Preservation Nation,” the blog of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, recently featured a remarkable property for sale in Germantown (Philadelphia), PA.  Though it’s dubbed “The Clarkson-Watson House,” the property at 5275 Germantown Avenue has a couple of even higher-profile names attached . . . Jefferson & Washington.

So, it’s Halloween . . . and with Halloween comes ghosts.  And where are the ghosts?  Well, usually, they’re in historic homes!  Why is that?  The answer, in some ways, seems obvious.  Historic houses have been around for at least a couple of generations, if not several centuries.  Certainly, they are much more likely to [...]

I had not realized just how much of a market had developed for historic log cabins.  Old log houses.  Antique log buildings.  Pioneer log homes.  Whatever you want to call them. I’ve been fascinated with pioneers’ cabins since I was a kid.  When I was in 4th grade, my dad rented an old farmhouse near [...]

A classified-style listing (for sale by owner) on eBay offers the former home of Governor John J. Crittenden (1787-1863).  Crittenden was not just a prominent figure in Kentucky; he was also a nationally-known politician during the antebellum era.  In addition to being Kentucky’s 17th governor, John Crittenden represented Kentucky in both the U.S. House of [...]

Many-a-time on our road trips between Connecticut and Ohio, we would exit I-80 to stop for gas near a small city named Sharon, just after crossing the border from Ohio into Pennsylvania.   Yet we never really drove into town, feeling we didn’t have time to casually “explore” on such a long trip.  But had I [...]

Historic homes with interesting stories attached to them can elicit excitement & emotional attachment with potential buyers.  Historic homes with stories linking them to Revolutionary War heroes actually get press coverage.  This eight-room, circa 1790  Gambrel style home in Portsmouth, RI, (Aquidneck Island) is reputed to have once been a hiding place for General Lafayette [...]

In Eutaw, Alabama, a magnificent & restored Greek Revival plantation home (circa 1852) is now for sale. The antebellum estate — called “Everhope” — was long known as “Twin Oaks” until the actual twin oaks suffered their demise due to unlucky acts of nature.  The property is also known as the Captain Nathan Carpenter House  [...]

This one is, well,  just a tad unique.  In 1976, a black couple — Donald & Thelma Smith — bought a beautiful mansion (circa 1912) in the historic Hill District of Pittsburgh.  While doing some renovations a few years later, some exterior wood was removed from the facade to reveal — surprise, surprise — a [...]

We usually stick to American topics here on HHB–  but, wow, this property “across the pond” really caught my eye. Up for auction on November 23rd in the U.K. is this incredible, post-Tudor, sandstone block property, which is “reputed to be one of the oldest houses in Wirral,” dating to the year 1627.  Yeah . . . that’s [...]

In an upscale neighborhood in Atlanta, a man named Ruben Jones recently purchased the “Henry B. Tompkins House” (asking price $2 million) and among the renovations, he painted his 1922 Georgian Revival home.  No problem, right?  Except that he painted it ORANGE . . . a far cry from the original GRAY stucco, which, for 88 years, [...]