Save/Move/Salvage/Recycle

Following a meeting at the Delaware State Archives last night (May 9'07) about early house survivals in Delaware, I thought I would create a blog and a Google Group that would allow people to get in touch whenever a specific old building on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Virginia, or in Delaware needs someone to help.

Can you save it? (through purchase)

Can you move it?

Can you salvage, for example, interiors?

Can you recycle structural members?

We should be talking about doing all these things.

There's no problem with people posting about restored houses that are now for sale, for whatever reason.

So the Google Group is open to all comers: http://groups.google.com/group/Delmarva-HouSOS/

This is the companion blog which I will maintain as time permits.

For example, is there a house "free but must be moved"?

-- There's a late-1800s house on Washington Avenue in Chestertown, MD, called "The Spanish House", that Washington College would like to give away.

If no one acts, here's what happens:

-- it's too late now, but in Pocomoke City, MD, there was the "Jane Jones House" with an attached storefront. The Jones House was one of the two or three oldest remaining houses in Pocomoke City (which has a National Register Historic District, but no local oversight body) dating to ca 1850-60. Attached was a unique one-story storefront.

The Episcopal Church bought the property, apparently because they want to have a church facing Main Street like the competition has.

The Episcopal Church didn't give a damn about the house, and despite efforts to buy a little time and find a taker for either or both, the Episcopal Church and the rest of the townsfolk could chave cared less.

-- a brick farmhouse ca 1850, just south of Church Hill MD, was burned down about a year ago by someone who "wanted to use the land to build a one-story house".

The farmhouse and buildings were largely an intact 1850s-1870s farm when surveyed about 25 years ago. Subsequent owners let everything fall down or bulldozed the outbuildings.

The house was a twin to one just north of Sudlersville that has been restored and is for sale.

Queen Anne's County has no preservation ordinance and no complete historic houses inventory,

-- the early-1900s "Russell House" on High Street in Chestertown is being dismantled for its floorboards and whatnot. Inside an accretion of ill-advised add-ons and a carapace of asbestos siding is a house dating to about 1910, 2-1/2 stories, and a very good example of its era.

The owner offered if free to anyone who'd move it, through the local newspaper; apparently no takers.

Eventually this house will be torn down.

-- my wife and I offered to move the "Stoltzfus Plant Farm Barn" at the corner of Route 667 and Coventry Parish Road, Somerset County, after the land was sold by State Senator Lowell Stoltzfus to Skipper Cox, a local developer. We would either jack it up and cart it off or disassemble it, at our expense.

My wife thought that there was a handshake agreement that we would move it after they had used the building for a while as a sales office.

We came back from 10 days out of the county last fall to find the developer had burned it down. The developer's wife claimed they tried to contact us, but strangely, there were no e-mails or voicemail messages.


All of these things are so sad, that I thought there must be a better way for a group of people interested in these old structures to communicate in advance of the very last minute, so the e-mail group and the blog are now available.