Pre-Civil War House for Sale.

6 years ago

This thread is an offshoot of "Historic Home selling tips, sites?"

Background: the house is pre-Civil War on a one-block quiet street of other pre-Civil War houses. It was last bought in the 1970s, the systems were updated at that time (and newer HVAC power plants may have been done since). It was decorated soup-to-nuts in the 1970s and then not touched.

It's likely that in the 1970s the house had no air conditioning, a single, very old bath and maybe a toilet in the basement, and an old kitchen possibly in the basement. I looked at an older (1810) house that never had a modern bath or kitchen until 1968. So the house was more outdated in 1970s than it is now.

The house appears to have a sound roof and be structurally sound. Since the decor is from the 1970s that is very worn out. The house was lived in until quite recently, there is a bracket for a TV over one of the fireplaces. There is superficial plaster damage but it doesn't look like its from the roof. The room arrangement is intact with baths inserted in former bedrooms. The stairway and cornices are intact.

This was cut out in the 1970s \/

Featured Answer

palimpsest
Original Author

6 years ago

last modified: 6 years ago

The main reason we play the Powerball is because of houses like this. We would buy houses like this and restore them to prevent them from essentially "disappearing" inside.

I really think the last wave of people who tread lightly on historic houses and was really interested in restoring historic houses was my parents' generation and those a half generation younger. Even in my generation people are not that interested in restoration. Okay, maybe MCM houses, but they aren't really doing those right either--it's just not as noticeable.

The house from 1810 that I looked at was not completely intact, but its' essential plan had never been changed, and the kitchen and bath were in an addition built to the side of the stairs in the old house, so the old house was "intact". No more. The house survived for 200 years relatively unscathed and the people who bought it instead of me gutted it (including complete removal of the stair ell). It now has an Arts and Crafts kitchen front and center as well as Arts and Crafts stairs and millennial baths. People just don't get it.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (15)

palimpsest
Original Author
6 years ago
palimpsest
Original Author
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
So what do you think people said at the open house? Keep in mind that most people who looked at it, most people who live in the area, including a few lookers who lived on this street, live in houses of similar eras.

"What a charming house, and so intact"

"What a lot of original detail it has"

"Just take down the wallpaper and redo the baths and it could be very nice"

NO, NO, and NO.

How about.

"It's one step above a teardown, I suppose"

"These old wood floors are horrible, horrible"

"The price would have to come down so you could afford to gut it"

"What is the possibility of dividing this into a duplex?"

"Did you see the gut renovation they did of the house just like this up the street? It's really nice, so I guess this has potential" (The house up the street might as well be a millennial McMansion inside. Theres not anything but drywall, hollow doors, stacked stone and all the rest inside).

Not a single person said anything about the original details of the house out of a dozen visitors to the open house.And these are people that are surrounded by 19th c. houses.
Related Discussions
Memories pre-Dr. MLK/Ms. Rosa Parks
Q
Comments (16)
I grew up in a small town in Texas & started school in 1958; my school was an old red brick building, & we first-graders got the "new" annex, a special building with 3 classrooms & our own bathrooms, built to accomodate the flood of boomers. (We got "new" books when the more affluent schools got brand-new books & we got their old ones!) I went to school with kids from the state home, a vast institution where children were housed when their families couldn't take care of them (such as when mom's boyfriend assaulted the kiddies, dad was in prison for bank robbery, etc). Some of the kids were there because their families simply couldn't feed all those hungry mouths. Our school was the one where the "Spanish" kids went, "Spanish" being considered the polite description in 1958, & we never had a black schoolmate until we were in the 7th grade, when our school district was faced with the decision to integrate or lose federal funding. The school board decided to integrate the 7th graders rather than the 1st graders for some reason (my cynical adult self thinks it might be that they felt that 7th graders' attitudes were already jelled; we were less likely to accept black children into our groups & maybe, horrors, date a black boyfriend, than kids who by 7th grade would have been in the same classrooms for 7 years). In elementary school, Spanish kids hung out with Spanish kids, state home kids hung out with state home kids, rural kids who rode the bus hung out with rural kids...etc. Junior high was different. It was 1964; change was in the air, (& we were 7th graders for heaven's sake; adolescent rebelliion loomed large), & those of us who weren't in the elite group saw ourselves, I guess, as social pioneers. We, black & white, were the first ones to do so many things; first to have classmates of the "other kind" first to hang out in the lunchroom & compare notes & be kids together first to (heatherns that we were) have gym together & spy in the showers to see how those very "other" girls looked; We were the first to see each other, in that little town, as individuals & not stereotypes. Example: The "main" high school was heavy into college prep, since it was the "white" one, attended by affluent college-bound kids as well as every other white kid in town, & the other high school, the "black" one, was heavy into teaching hairdressing & other trades. If you were a white kid & you weren't academically inclined & you wanted to learn a trade, you were out of luck. If you were an academically inclined black kid & you wanted to be an accountant or a lawyer, you were out of luck. (I threw a fit one summer & told my mother I wanted to go to Jackson High so I could learn to fix hair. She forbade it. To this day I don't know how to fix hair.) Until the mid-sixties, there were separate fountains in the courthouse & in some but not all of the stores. The main divisive factors, I think, were schools & housing-in the past, family & societal conditioning would have been main factors, but with Civil Rights being a hot issue & us being boomers & all...) Until my generation, black kids went to school on the East Side, white kids on the West Side, & black folks lived on the East Side, white folks on the West Side. People didn't interact with each other, didn't *know* each other. When people rub shoulders every day, they see each other as peers & treat each other as peers.
...See More
Pre-Civil War Incense Cedar and Sequoia in Georgia
Q
Comments (20)
I'm going to check with the U of MD about this. The people in their libraries are always enormously helpful when I've used that library, even though I didn't go there. (Unlike using the National Agricultural Library, which is truly like a scene out of the 1985 film "Brazil") So hopefully that will extend to the groundskeeping staff. Do you have any idea where it was? It could be languishing there without horticulturalists knowing about it! I was told about 10 years ago there was a 45' one in Silver Spring, I need to contact the person again to get its exact location. At the time he tried to get Hines to micropropagate it but they weren't interested. (Hines did briefly sell some of his other discoveries, before they went under) I'll be the first to say some HAVE been known to die on the East Coast, but the overall success ratio is high enough to safely say the species is growable there. Unlike monkey puzzle, where the majority of them clearly die from our steam heat. If W&M had planted a grove of them and only 2 had remained, it would be fair to be more skeptical. They planted 2 and they lasted 50 years until their tops became targets for hurricanes and lightning, as we would expect. This post was edited by davidrt28 on Sat, Dec 1, 12 at 15:07
...See More
Civil War Era heirlooms?
Q
Comments (16)
This should be of help to you, tumblingtomatoes: http://www.westville.org/documents/Pre-1850Substitutes.pdf Another helpful website is Old House Gardens for the bulbs Here is some help with herbs. I make many of the herbal items found here: http://www.civilwarinteractive.com/Herbs.htm (not that I have a particular interest in civil war gardens, but I am interested in historic gardening of all types and eras). This is interesting too: http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_cuisine.htm since so many people crave foods from their homelands or what they grew up with, it is natural that African Americans had some favorites I have gotten a lot of information from reading historical fiction. It seems to be a great source (the author has done all the work for me!) of information to research. I take it with a grain of salt, and use the information to seek out more concrete information for myself. At the same time I often have a great read! Happy Gardening, girlgroupgirl
...See More
Been to the Nat'l Civil War Museum? Or other C.W. site?
Q
Comments (24)
If you visit Gettysburg, check out Devil's Den, Little Round Top, Pennsylvania Momument, and the Peace Light Memorial on the battlefield. You can also tour President Eisenhower's house and farm while you are there in Gettysburg. You get the tickets for the tour at the Gettysburg National Military Park Visitor Center. Then a shuttle bus takes you to the farm. On the square of Gettysburg is the David Wills house. At that site, you can visit the bedroom where Lincoln stayed and wrote the Gettysburg Address. Check the Dobbin House while in town. This building is the oldest building in town. The Dobbin House Tavern is in the basement. The servers dress in period costume. The main floor is a restaurant. Another interesting place to see is the Shriver House on Baltimore Steet. The tour shows you what it was like to be a civilian in Gettysburg during the war. You get to visit all four floors of the house. This historic home is furnished the way it would have looked at the time of the war. The tour does a great job of showing how the war personally affected the Shriver family. The Adams County Historical Society at the Lutheran Theological Seminary has many interesting items from the Civil War. This is a gem that many tourists miss when they come to town. It is free. These are my favorite spots in Gettysburg. This post was edited by dmickey on Fri, Jan 4, 13 at 23:12
...See More
cpartist
6 years ago
I'd renovate it. It's beautiful.
nancylouise5me
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
It's a wonderful house. Granted, I don't care for some of the wallpaper and trim paint choices. I would strip the paint off of the trim anyways and re stain the wood. But it is a gem. Do you have pictures of the bathrooms and kitchen?
palimpsest
Original Author
6 years ago
I do, but I will be at work for 12 hours so will post them later. They are 70s looking although the baths and kitchens both have marble counters. The kitchen cabinets are purple.
Debbie Downer
6 years ago
How sad.... I guess I might classify this as yet another symptom of Affluenza which afflicts not only the wealthy but all varieties of middle class wanna bes... at least the ones who think normal American life is what they see on TV. One would think that in this era of dwindling resources and economic decline that frugality would be making a comeback but no - if anything the opposite.
summersrhythm_z6a
6 years ago
It's a charming house. What's outside the French door? Do you have a whole house photo? Really want to see its style.
PRO
Sombreuil
6 years ago
It's move-in ready as far as I'm concerned. But I do make allowances for age, obvs.

Casey
Fori
6 years ago
The 70s stuff is pretty tasteful, for 70s stuff.
palimpsest
Original Author
6 years ago
Yes it really is move in ready, technically. Someone lived in it until just recently, and they were renters.

You could spend $250,000 redoing the kitchen and baths and polishing things up so to speak, while still treading very lightly and making the house look just like it does now only fresher.

But several of the people who said it needed to be gutted were talking about spending $250,000 on a complete rehab. That would get you a series of drywall box rooms and middling millennial style kitchens and baths, and not much more. It would look like middle of the road new construction. It would be middle of the road new construction--it would not be nice.
mercurygirl
6 years ago
It's just amazing. My grandma used to say of such people, "all their taste is in their mouths".
Milly Rey
6 years ago
I...like the wallpaper. Oh dear. Probably less if I lived there!!!!
User
6 years ago
My kind of house. And older than the 1880 house I live in. It looks to be in better shape than mine. These threads make me cringe both because I so want each house and because I know they are going to be destroyed.
PRO
Anglophilia
6 years ago
That staircase! And the overmantel (if it were painted white)! It's a gem. I've always wanted to do a house like this, but never could afford to do so, plus in my town, old houses are in slightly marginal areas that still have very high crime. At my age it's never going to happen, but a girl can dream.

I agree that it's a generational thing. I adore looking and dreaming over UK real estate, and I could cry when I see the very soul ripped out of 200+ yr old houses, some even Stately Homes. The big ones apparently are bought by footballers and US hedge fund managers, and they think they're very au courant when they rip out all the fabulous molding and decorate it in something super modern and utterly garish. So long as it's not a Listed house, they can do this.

It's just criminal and sinful to destroy so much beauty and wonderful workmanship.

Pre-Civil War House for Sale.

palimpsest
Original Author

Comments (15)

palimpsest
Original Author

palimpsest
Original Author

Related Discussions

cpartist

nancylouise5me

palimpsest
Original Author

Debbie Downer

summersrhythm_z6a

Sombreuil

Fori

palimpsest
Original Author

mercurygirl

Milly Rey

User

Anglophilia

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

Pre-Civil War House for Sale.

palimpsestOriginal Author

Comments (15)

palimpsestOriginal Author

palimpsestOriginal Author

Related Discussions

palimpsestOriginal Author

palimpsestOriginal Author

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

palimpsest
Original Author

palimpsest
Original Author

palimpsest
Original Author

palimpsest
Original Author

palimpsest
Original Author