In Hillsborough, NJ, the nationwide development group Beazer Homes recently “saved” the 3,108-square-foot “Gabriel House” — an early 1800s farmhouse that sat on over 300 acres, until recently…Preserving this historic house was– of course– part of the Planning Board’s approval for Beazer to build a 165 house development off Mountain View Road (see left for example home).  The planning board, in conjunction with the township’s Historic Preservation Commission, wanted to ensure that the home was preserved while kept as a reminder and tribute to Hillsborough’s “bucolic beauty,” said Commiteeman Anthony Ferrera.  [more at MyCentralJersey.com].

You definitely can’t say that Beazer Homes ”did it on the cheap,” since they claim to have spent a half million dollars on the renovations.  And that wouldn’t surprise me, since the house seems to have been in pretty rough shape (see above, left).  I wonder, however, how much of an effort was made to restore this house (see right), versus “renovate” it with modern sensibilities for quicker resale.  The photos in the above newspaper articles don’t reveal much (see small, grainy photo on right), and I couldn’t find any websites showing interior photos.  But the developer’s own comments might be most revealing.   Jodie McCool [you can't make this stuff up!], the project manager overseeing the work on the historic house, never mentions anything “historic” when talking up the historic home’s marketing points.  From the article:

“The home includes four bedrooms; 2 1/2 bathrooms; a parlor; a library; eat-in kitchen; breakfast area; partial basement; laundry room; two-car garage; and front and rear foyers. The master bedroom includes a large bathroom complete with soaking tub and shower; 112-square-foot closet; and separate room for a gym or office.”

You can also sense possible frustrations that she may have encountered in having to conform to the Historic Preservation’s parameters.  The article notes that ”working with the township’s Historic Preservation Commission was a first for the developer,” and McCool said there was ”a lot of give and take between the two partnerships, but we got here . . . It was a learning process different than what we do every day.”  It’s hard to know what Beazer did right, and what they didn’t.  But the finished product in the tiny photo above (with its admittedly aweful resolution) just doesn’t scream “historic” to me.  Maybe it’s the color.  I don’t know.  It just looks like a newer house to me.

Regardless of the historic elements that survive, it is definitely a good thing that the anchor property — the house that has stood sentinel over the property for over two centuries — survives in some form to remind people of the neighborhood’s past.

When I received my latest e-newsletter from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, I was pleased to find an interesting interview with Charles Drayton, which  made me recall my own visit to historic Drayton Hall in 2007.   [Click here to read that National Trust article].

If you’ve never been, Drayton Hall is a stunning, circa 1742 plantation house outside Charleston, SC — and it is the oldest surviving example of Georgian Palladian architecture surviving in the United States.  It is also the only surviving plantation on the Ashley River to survive intact to today, and is a National Historic Landmark.  See the beautiful official website here.

My wife and I toured Drayton in December of 2007, and I probably snapped a hundred pictures.  Here are a few of those, with more after the jump.  The first is the rear facade of the mansion  (Ashley River side):

Looking over the front lawn from a 2nd floor balcony:

Click here for more photos of Drayton Hall…

Alex Nicholas, listing agent with Corcoran Real Estate, described the inside:  “The interior of the house is only 8-1/2-feet wide and 42-feet long and has a trapdoor in the kitchen floor that leads to a finished basement. At the rear of the house are floor-to-ceiling French doors on the first and second floor that open onto a tree-shaded back yard that is shared with neighbors. With a garret skylight on the third floor and oversized windows the house boasts an abundance of natural light.”

Sounds nice. Some celebrities over the years have thought so, too. Anthropologist Margaret Mead and Poetess Edna St. Vincent-Millay both called the skinny house home for a time. Author Ann McGovern also lived here, and her experiences inspired her to co-write the novel Mr. Skinner’s Skinny House. Actors Cary Grant and John Barrymore also allegedly once lived in the house.

Skinny houses seem to be popular the world over- check out these narrow houses across the Globe, and these, too. Boston also has its own famous skinny house at 44 Hull Street, though it’s not for sale. It’s just under 10 1/2 feet wide and is right across from Copp’s Hill Cemetery along Boston’s Freedom Trail. It was built in the 1870s or 1880s and legend has it that it was built as a spite house. According to the story, the property owner had a falling-out with the owner of an adjacent property and built this house to shut off air and light from the offending neighbor. There are other versions of the story, too.

However, the grand Italianate house is now threatened, and it appears the house will not stay where it was built.  The Ward House and a large tract of surrounding land is now owned by State Representative B. Patrick Bauer, trustee of the Burnett C. Bauer Trust, and there are plans underway to develop the land — plans that do not include the historic Ward House.

A proposal to redevelop the land on which the Daniel Ward Home sits calls for relocating the historic structure, currently home to Flourish Boutique and Gallery, about 300 yards north, to make way for a drug store and other commercial buildings.  Surprisingly, rather than fight the move, the Historic Preservation Commission, which enforces preservation standards in the county, has given it its blessing.  “We all agree it’s going to be more sensitive to the historic structure itself,” commission director Catherine Hostetler said of the proposed new location, on Gumwood across from Toscana Park.  In 1980, when the county first designated the house a local historic landmark, the surrounding area was still largely farmland, Hostetler said.  But over the past several decades, development on Mishawaka’s north side has inched steadily northward, she said, threatening to engulf the two-story clapboard house.  [Full story- South Bend Tribune]

Brian Lees and Gay Carter Lees, a couple from Kent Island, MD, began unearthing historic artifacts almost as soon as a construction company tore out their old kitchen a month ago. In the dirt, under what used to be the floor, were parts of old shoes, part of a pipe, bones from a wild boar and other animals, oyster shells, bells, bottles and many pieces of pottery.  For now, the artifacts, most still covered in a thin layer of dirt, are being held in bins.

The Leeses knew their home was historic, dating back to the mid-18th century and featuring the same kind of brickwork common at London Town in Edgewater, but just how historic remains to be seen. An archaeologist and a team of volunteers began an extensive examination of the site this weekend.  After that, the space will be sealed off and the kitchen renovation will resume with Taurus Enterprises of Edgewater, Gay said. Meanwhile, experts will start to catalog the findings, date them and put the information into a database.

The hope is that some of the artifacts might be from the earliest settlements on Kent Island in the 17th century, said archaeologist Mechelle Kerns-Nocerito of Severna Park . . .  Read more at the The Capital (Annapolis, MD).

This interest peaked because of 4 factors during the 1820s: 1) The War of 1812 caused many Americans to turn away from copying the styles of their British enemies, which was a death blow to the “Adam” or Federal style; 2) the Greek’s involvement in a War for Independence gained the sympathies of the young United States; 3) most Americans were reform-minded in the 1820s-1840s, and many saw the young “democracy” as a method towards a better society, and celebrated this by mimicking Greek style; and 4) the proliferation of printing allowed the style to be disseminated widely through guide books for carpeneters, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Practical House Carpenter (1942) and Minard Lafever’s The Modern Builder’s Guide; The Beauties of American Architecture.

The Greek Revival was very adaptable, and permeated all qualities of building, and all types of buildings—not just houses, but banks, churches, public buildings–from high end to low-brow. The style is very recognizable in large Southern plantation mansions with 2-story, Greek columns on the facade.

What to look for:

Perhaps the most prominent feature of the Greek Revival style was how the building, itself, was oriented – with the gable to the front. This way of building was called the “temple form” in Greek Revival because it mimicked the Grecian temples that inspired the design. Also common is a lower pitched roof, a departure from the more steep roof on Georgian and Federal homes. This style usually includes a wide band of trim on the cornice beneath the roof, representing Greek entablature carvings.

Most Greek Revival buildings have porticos or porches with Greek-style columns, as well as a front door surrounded on three sides by narrow rectangular sidelights and transom lights. Also, for the first time, shutters became popular (called “blinds” at the time). In Cape Cods built during that era, it is common to observe frieze band windows — “half” sized windows in the half-story upstairs. Another major change arriving with the Greek style was that WHITE paint became very common, which mimicked the light-colored marble of Greek temples.

The house above exhibits a high-style of Greek Revival, especially for its rural location.  The gable end of the building faces forward, with large Greecian columns propping a portico facade.  The small windows in the band of trim under the roof line are referred to as “frieze-band windows” because they are located in the frieze-band of trim that mimicked the entablature of Greek temples.  These are also referred to as simply “band windows” or cornice windows. Similar windows are often found in the half-stories of shorter Greek Revival houses, such as Cape Cods influenced by the movement.  A good example of this feature can be seen in the story-and-a-half house below:

 For more about the Greek Revival era, check out the Wikipedia article here.

The house was built about 1901 from a mail-order architectural plan for Gustav Rhienhold Jacobi (1866-1949) and his wife, Amelia.  Its construction likely reflected the Jacobi family’s prosperity during what was called the Second Dakota Boom, a period of rapid growth for banks and other institutions in the Red River Valley as mortgage-seeking immigrants swarmed into the state. 

And one of the Jacobi’s daughters was Geraldine, mother of the famous actress Jane Russell.  Russell apparently lived in the house when she was a young girl, and she was actually born in a lake cottage the family also owned nearby.  For more info, visit this article at [Grand Forks Herald].

The long-awaited restoration of Flushing’s historic Bowne House could be completed by 2012 after the city acquired the property last week, making it the 23rd home of its kind to join the city’s Historic House Trust.  Described as “the best-preserved example of Anglo-Dutch vernacular residential architecture in the country,” the house still sits on its original site, and will undergo a $2.3 million restoration.  For more info, visit:  [NY Post] [Bowne House Historical Society] [Queens Courier]

In the desirable town of  Barrington, Illinois, that is exactly what has happened.  Three old houses were slated for demolition unless a buyer (or buyers) saved them from the wrecking ball by promising to pay just $1.   However, there WAS a catch . . . the buyer would also have to pay to move the house(s) to another location, which could cost $50-$100K per house.  Apparently, no one thought the total cost was worth it to save the old houses from demolition.

The “historic-ness” of the houses– or lack thereof– may be a bit of an issue for some potential buyers.  The house on Main Street (left) is clearly the oldest & largest of the three.  The other two, both located on West Station Street, are small 1920s Crafstman houses — one more quaint & attractive than the other (right).  So perhaps the architecture or history associated with the houses just wasn’t appealing enough to rally support.  All of that said, it does seem surprising that no one thus far has taken the town up on its offer.  It raises the same question we discussed recently in the post about when to save, and when to demo.

However, there is still hope:  town officials have delayed plans for demolition, and are going to give the houses more time to sell before making a final decision.  And Barrington— a suburb of Chicago— has a median home value of $385,000 and median income of $85,000.  Surely, someone must have the means, sense of mission, or investment impulse to save these old houses? 

For more info, visit this article and the town website.

(Almost) every week on this blog, we highlight a historic property that captures our attention. Each Listing of the Week is currently offered for sale and listed on our sponsor website, www.HistoricHomesMarketplace.com. We hope that you will not only enjoy a look at a beautiful antique property, but you might even pick up some marketing ideas for selling your historic listing. Today, we feature “SawMill”- an 18th Century Pennsylvania Stone House.

This one caught my eye right away . . . what curb appeal!  If you love the charm, character and mystique of the 18th century, but still want all the upscale amenities and convenience of a modern lifestyle, then 3314 Saw Mill will not disappoint!

The owner/contractor of this stunning home has painstakingly preserved the “Old World “craftsmanship of the original 18th century farmhouse and seamlessly blended in the updated designer touches that today’s buyers crave and expect.  The farmhouse and its “Wrap Around” addition feature over 4500 (A) square feet of living space. The main floor features an “Open Floor” plan with a seamless flow between the “Grand” kitchen, cozy living room, dining room and the light filled five sided breakfast nook. The upper floor features 4 bedrooms plus an oversized “Master Suite” complete with a walk-in tumbled marble shower and an exceptionally large walk-in closet. The finished lower level contains a granite topped bar, wine cellar, game room and media area.

At $849,900, 3314 Sawmill is one of the best values in Newtown Square today.  This property is listed by Dan Krzywicki of Fox & Roach Realtors.  To see more photos of this unique property, get links to a virtual tour of this home, to contact Dan Krzywicki, or just to browse other historic homes for sale, please visit this property listing on our sponsor website, www.HistoricHomesMarketplace.com.