"Russell House" in Chestertown

This house was offered by the property owner, but apparently she received no calls on it. I looked it over a few days ago and it seems someone is scavenging flooring and whatever else. The house was rather nastily modified when converted into apartments some decades ago.

I can put people in touch with the owner.

August 24, 2006
Kent County News
By Craig O’Donnell

CHESTERTOWN – House to go. One way or another: elsewhere for a new lease on life, or in pieces to the dump.

A 100-year-old High Street house with a small claim to fame could escape the wrecker’s claw if someone will haul it away.

Behind big maple trees, on a slight rise, and inside old cement shingles like a suit of armor is a 2½-story frame house built about 1909 by J. Waters Russell.

Russell was, said the May 29, 1909 Kent News, "the largest real estate broker of Kent."

Its original form, with two front dormers, is akin to older houses closer to the river. Over the years many additions – more like blisters than wings – were added. This is typical of Eastern Shore houses that had to get indoor plumbing somehow. The front porch was enclosed.

Some decades ago, it became apartments with 70’s-style grooved paneling and floor coverings. How much original interior is under the wall paneling is not clear.

The Russell house also has a mudroom-rear hallway connecting to a trailer in back. That architectural feature can only be called "unique."

If the main section is moved, the rest can be demolished. Either way, it has to make way for a new 3-story physical therapy and rehabilitation center.

At the Planning Commission meeting Aug. 16, the town board praised architect Ed Dunning for the new structure Chestertown Wellness Center will build.

Among various preliminary site plan recommendations on landscaping, lighting, walks and access from High Street, Chairman Jim Gatto also requested that the Russell house get moved, if possible, not torn down.

That depends on an interested person stepping forward to contact the new owners.

Gatto said in an e-mail last Friday that he thinks overhead wires pose the main obstacle to a would-be mover. He said his preference as planning commission chairman is to see old buildings recycled.

Dunning, of Media, Pa., said Tuesday that a structural engineer has looked the house over and it can stand up to the stresses of relocation.

Planners call rehabbing, converting and possibly adding to an old building, "adaptive reuse." In this case, it isn’t possible to incorporate the old structure into the new wellness center.

Moving a building to another spot is sometimes the only fix. Planted elsewhere, it could become a home, apartments or offices.

For example, Chestertown’s police department once was part of the stables at the long-gone county jail. The small brick building was moved about three blocks and remodeled.

Size is not an obstacle. According to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, some elaborate Victorian houses have been sawed into one-story sections and, once reassembled, given new life.

Vickers Estate

The Russell house is on land once owned by Sen. George Vickers, who donated the lot for next-door Chester Cemetery in 1862.

In 1844, he bought two lots plus another two acres "adjoining the upper end of Chestertown" at a sheriff’s sale: the lots "on the East side of the Main road leading from Chestertown to ‘Whalland’s Mill’ " came to "three acres, three roods, and one perch, more or less." They had been owned by Samuel Mansfield, a relative of Vickers' wife.

After Mansfield’s death they were sold to Rev. Samuel L. Rawleigh (or Rawley), who apparently died soon after.

Two small plat maps are in the dusty 1844 court papers. One shows a tiny "house lot," on the side closest to Chestertown. Rawleigh’s widow was allowed to live there for life. Today the site is either under Dixon Valve, or the cemetery.

The 1860 Martenet map of Kent indicates a house in the general location. It may have been widow Rawleigh’s home, abandoned, since there is no owner’s name next to it. Had Vickers built a barn, shop or factory there, his name would have been next to the tiny dot.

The 1877 Lake, Griffing and Stevenson map shows the cemetery; no houses at all line the east side of High Street as far as the mill. John L. Stam owned a building across High Street from the cemetery. Chestertown ended at College Avenue.

The 1907 Bird’s-Eye Map still shows no house. By 1908 the land was about to leave the Vickers family.

Sen. Vickers had accumulated dozens of properties. While the largest were in Quaker Neck, land records show holdings in Locust Grove and Georgetown Cross Roads, and half a dozen Chestertown properties.

The county building at 400 High Street stands where Vickers’ mansion and "pleasure garden" once stood.

The senator died in 1879. He willed 818 High St. to his wife Mary. After she died sixteen years later, it was among properties left in trust to her three children. After a lawsuit the lands – two in town and a 350-acre Quaker Neck farm – were sold by Harrison Vickers, trustee, to wind up the trust.

When advertised in 1908, 818 High St. was called "a desirable building lot … next to Chester Cemetery" on the "N.E. Side of the public road or High Street extending to Whaland’s or Toppings Mill."

Broker Russell bought it for $500. He paid $1,200 for a second "building lot" at "High and College on the N.E. Side," a neighborhood still called by some Vickers Park.

So it seems Russell built the house. His 1910 deed to the Rouse family calls the property "improved" (meaning there were buildings).

Kent News bound volumes from 1908, 1909 and 1910 take no notice of the new home on upper High Street, but almost every edition had a ¼-page ad listing the farms and houses Russell was selling throughout the county.

Yet it was certainly the most substantial house between downtown Chestertown and the Vickers family’s Victorian manse, Lauretum.

In 1927, Ida Rouse, widow, and heirs sold it to the Stauffers. In 1938, Esther Stauffer, widow, sold it to Alfred and Winifred Hodgson. The Lee family bought it in 1944; in 1995 it passed from the Hallie Joiner Lee estate to Thomas Mench, who sold it last December.

Julia Bainbridge, of owner J&B Land LLC, said Tuesday that anyone interested in moving the house should contact her.

Too Late ...

This article won a first prize in the Chesapeake Publishing editorial contest 2006.

March 23, 2006
Kent County News
By Craig O’Donnell

CHESTERTOWN – If these walls could talk, they’d sing the blues.

And across the Eastern Shore, once-grand houses would swell the chorus.

Faint, rattling rhythms would come from the dry bones of Deptford, Hopewell, and Maple Grove, and the many farmhouses now in the records only as: “Site.”

On Saturday, March 11, Queen Anne’s county firefighters were permitted to burn down the 150-year-old Cahall Farm house, just south of Church Hill.

Unknown to many, under what looked like white clapboard siding was a mansion of brick.
That afternoon, after the house was burned, new owner Bill Sharp said that he had considered trying to rehabilitate the house, but that termite damage and an engineer’s report that the brickwork was unsound led him to conclude he could not afford the project.

So, he said, he “jumped through the hoops” to get a county burn permit. He plans to build at least one single-story, modern dwelling on the property.

“How can a house that wonderful get torn down?” said Elizabeth Watson, executive director of the Stories of the Chesapeake Heritage Area, Monday. “All too easily. By the time someone applies for a demo permit, it’s too late.”

Amanda Apple, Queen Anne’s County heritage coordinator, said Tuesday “all that’s on the books is a demolition permit re-view … to document the building that is going to be demolished.”

She feels the clock is ticking. “There are about 500 structures in the county that are not documented. We’ve got about 30 of them documented. They’re being demolished faster than we can get to them.”

In Kent, demolition permits do not even require review.

The Cahall Farm was first assessed by the Maryland Historical Trust in 1980.

At the time, surveyor Orlando Ridout V wrote that the farm “is one of the most carefully preserved mid-19th century houses in the county … (it) remains virtually untouched, and the few changes have been minor. Details of particular interest include … the slate roof Victorian meat house and a very well preserved wind mill with cistern.”

Ridout also noted a “granary with flanking cribs dating to the latter part of the 19th century.”
The house and nearly 214 acres on the east side of Route 213 belonged to Zebulon J. Brodie until late last year.

Property records show that Brodie paid $605,000 in 1988, when Charles M. Cahall sold it. Sharp paid $1,850,000 on Nov. 22

Outbuildings were removed during the Brodie ownership. The house itself became a B&B.
But now melted plastic sagged along the remaining brick walls. According to local historian Marge Fallaw, vinyl siding was applied in the 1990s. Sharp said the siding was suggested to Brodie by “an engineer, to protect the brick.”

Watson is well aware of the effect that losing old buildings can produce.

Keeping the traditional working landscape intact in the four-county heritage area – it encompasses Kent, Queen Anne’s, Tal-bot, and Caroline – is one of her organization’s priorities.
She said, “Protecting our heritage is the greatest conservation challenge we’ve got. This loss shows protecting land will not necessarily protect the character of our countryside.

“The farm has an easement on it -- the land will remain open no matter what building might occur on the 10-acre home site.

“But the quality of the view and the visitor experience on that stretch of the National Scenic Byway is gone forever -- historic buildings are irreplaceable.”

Maryland’s 20-percent rehabilitation tax rebate might have helped save the Cahall house. It is the poster child for farmhouses in outlying areas of Kent, Queen Anne’s and Caroline counties, threatened because of the rehab cost. But the tax rebate rules are strict: a property must be on the National Register of Historic Places; or there must be a local historic district in place. Cecil and Talbot counties have both opted for local control.

Apple said many people do not understand what a National Register listing is. It can be costly to prepare the nomination, yet it does not protect a property from demolition, she said.

Nor did the National Scenic Byway, passing just yards from the house, provide protection; it does not ease the route to reha-bilitation rebates for abutting property owners.

Jennie Schmidt, scenic byway coordinator, said in a March 15 e-mail, “I was aware that the private property owner had been granted permission to burn the building. The scenic byway board is sensitive to the qualities along the byway and try to work with each byway county who have different ordinances and permitting processes.”

She did not reply to followup e-mails.

Apple said that the byway “is only for tourists – but preservation doesn’t start with the visitor.
“Queen Anne’s County may be the gateway to the Eastern Shore but we don’t want to look like the western shore. We have something special, and we need to cherish and nurture it.”
Interviewed last fall, Martin Sokolich, Talbot County long-range planner, said the 30-year-old preservation district there is nothing more than a zoning overlay.

“Listing a property is voluntary,” he said, “and generally it’s been on the house, say two acres out of 50.” There are 30 county historic districts in Talbot; most are individual structures. Because it’s voluntary, he said, there have been few problems.

"Spanish House" (1890) in Chestertown

Two pieces by Peter Heck from recent editions of the Kent County News (Chestertown). Used by permission.

March 29, 2007
Kent County News
By Peter Heck

CHESTERTOWN – Washington College plans to feed its students in a temporary structure while renovations go forward on Hodson Hall, the college’s student center and dining hall.
At the Chestertown Planning Commission meeting on March 21, Louis Stettler, the college’s vice president for finance and management, and Reid Raudenbusch, director of physical plant unveiled the college’s plans.

... [snip] ...

During construction, students would be fed in a temporary building seating 368 students, slightly more than the current capacity of Hodson Hall, built in the 1930s. The premanufactured building would include a full kitchen, serving areas, and bathroom facilities in addition to the dining area. The college cited safety issues as its reason for closing the dining hall during construction.

To make room for the temporary structure, the college plans to demolish or possibly move Spanish House, located west of Washington Avenue just north of Cater Walk, near the mid-campus pedestrian crossing.

Commission members raised a number of questions about the plans. They expressed a concern that the temporary dining hall’s proximity to Washington Avenue would reduce safety at an already busy crossing. Its appearance also caused questions: in architects’ renderings, it resembled a large tent.

Several commissioners spoke against the possible demolition of Spanish House, a white three-story building that Town Manager Bill Ingersoll described as “typical Victorian.”
Spanish House and another building immediately to the south – now gone – were erected in 1890 as homes for college Princi-pal Charles W. Reid and Vice-principal James Roy Micou. The two officials and their families had until then lived in East Hall.

Micou, a native of Chestertown, was the first resident of Spanish House, where he and his wife Catherine lived until he re-signed as vice-principal in 1904. A professor of Latin and Greek, he was remembered by students for constantly flipping a coin during class.

For a while during the ’30s and ’40s, the building served as a fraternity house. Vicky Sawyer of the Career Development de-partment recalled seeing fraternity symbols and initials carved in the attic walls when her department was housed there from 1985 until 2004. She also recalled that the floors sloped and the ancient radiators clanked. “It used to scare students who came in,” she said. “The radiators would make a sudden noise and they’d jump.”

The building housed another campus legend in the 1950s, when former coach and athletic director Ed Athey and his family occupied it.

“We were there from about ’51 to ’64,” he said Monday. “There were about six houses there, a sort of faculty row. It was great being right on campus.” He said he was offered the chance to buy the house and move it, but found it was cheaper to build a new home. After he left it was converted to faculty offices.

Linda Cades, Director of Career Development, said that the building’s current name stems from its use in the 1970s as a resi-dence for students majoring in Spanish, where they could speak the language full-time and learn it by immersion. During her student days in the ‘60s, it housed the infirmary; she recalled going there with the flu in her senior year. More recently it’s been home to the Public Safety Office, as well as faculty and administrative offices. It currently provides space for the Diversity Affairs Office and the Office for International Programs.

The commissioners spent some time trying to suggest alternate sites for the temporary dining facility. Commissioners Pam Ortiz and Chris Cerino asked whether the temporary building could be placed near the new dorms being built on the north side of campus. Raudenbusch said that the presence of heavy construction equipment and plans to excavate a geothermal field for the new dorms ruled out that alternative. Other suggestions had similar drawbacks.

The commissioners then proposed rotating the orientation of the temporary dining hall by 90 degrees to avoid having to de-molish Spanish House, a solution Brawer said might be workable. Commission Chairman Jim Gatto called for a more attractive façade on the side of the temporary building visible from Washington Avenue. And Ingersoll responded favorably to architect Brawer’s suggestion that the college could plant trees or shrubbery to help screen the temporary building.

At the end of the college’s presentation, Gatto summarized the sense of the commission: it opposed the demolition of Spanish House, and was disturbed by both the placement and the obtrusive appearance of the proposed temporary structure.

The commissioners had no specific objections to the proposed renovations of Hodson Hall itself.

May 3, 2007
Kent County News
By Peter Heck
CHESTERTOWN – Want an old house for practically nothing? If you’re a charity or nonprofit organization, Washington College may have a deal for you.

Spanish House, the 1890 frame building that has served over the years as the residence of the college vice-principal, fraternity house, home to former coach Ed Athey and his family, office building and infirmary, must be moved or demolished to make way for a temporary dining hall.
Reid Raudenbush, the college’s physical plant director, said on Tuesday that the school is seeking a charity or nonprofit or-ganization to accept the building for the cost of moving it off campus. He said the college had consulted house moving experts, and that the move was feasible. “There’s possibly one group interested already,” he said.

“It’ll cost about $50,000 to raise it and put it on wheels,” Raudenbush said. Beyond that, the cost to move the house will de-pend on the distance and the exact route it needs to travel. “A couple of blocks on Washington Avenue would run $7,000,” he said. One limiting factor is the width of the building: its smallest dimension is 30 feet, too wide to fit through some town streets.

Another cost factor is the number of places on the route where utility wires would have to be raised to let the house pass. “If we were going straight to Route 291, we could take it across campus without any wire work,” Raudenbush said. A college-owned house was given to a town employee and moved along that route out to Flatland Road back in the early 1990s, he said.
When plans for remodeling Hodson Hall, the school’s 1930s-era dining facility, were presented to the Chestertown Planning Commission in March, the actual renovations met no objections. But the idea that a building from the 1890s might be demolished to make way for a temporary structure struck a nerve.

Raudenbush said he was surprised that the issue arose. “It’s an old frame house that needs work,” he said. Considering all that needs to be done on campus, “I’m not spending on it.”
The Hodson Hall remodeling is “an important piece” of the college’s plans, Raudenbush said, with more than 150 additional students expected on campus after the completion of dormitory expansion. Work is scheduled to begin right after graduation, when the need for full-scale dining facilities is at a minimum.

While the college examined ways to reorient the temporary dining hall so that Spanish House wouldn’t need to be moved, the available space was too small for the structure, Raudenbush said. He described the location of Spanish House as a “prime spot for another building.”
He also noted that the appearance of the Victorian building clashed with the newer brick structures on campus. “I’ve seen photos from when there were four or five houses there, and it looked pretty good,” he said, but added that a single building in a contrasting style was “sort of an orphan.”

Raudenbush said the college had approached the town to see if it wanted the building, but that it had expressed no interest. Now the search has turned to charitable or nonprofit organizations. “The college may be willing to sweeten the deal,” he added, suggesting that it might help with some of the cost of the move.

Athey said in March that when he moved out of Spanish House in 1964, he had been offered the structure if he was willing to pay to move it. However, the price of building a new home was less than the cost of moving the old one would have been, and he declined the offer.

Now Spanish House is on the market again. Any takers?

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.