Heartbreak House

Real estate fever seized my brain last week. I fell in love online after I saw the pictures of this 1770 house with four acres of land for $144, 900! My pulse raced and I would wake up in the middle of the night and plan: We'd take out a mortgage on our house near Boston and spend spring and summer weekends in New Hampshire near family. The house and outbuildings needed what they call "work." When I saw it, I thought, The work would kill us. It turned out someone had already made an offer.

The pictures on the agent's website did not show the atmosphere of lost promise, rotten sills, animal nests, and falling-down decay. Originally the house must have been built on acres and acres, a huge pre-revolutionary-war land grant, most of which has been sold off, a few parcels at a time. The air of sad rottenness and beauty was the New England version of the postbellum South. Hundreds of thousands dollars could bring the house back more easily than restoring a cotton planter's mansion.

What was the purpose of this little Greek revival temple? Was it used as church or a theater? Or both? Is it 19th century or a 20th century version of Greek revival?

I would guess the "bathing pavilion" was built in the 1920s.

A version of pastoral with chubby legs and feet, and shawl to keep off the chill.

The barn/garage/shed is much larger than it looks in the picture and needs to be rebuilt.

The mess in the shed.

Animal nest in the tool box.

Overgrown pool.

Garden urn atilt.

Rooms and rooms.

There are five fireplaces in the house.

I'll never go back.

Stripping Down

A few blocks away, workers are stripping a house as if they were stripping a sofa to be reupholstered. They've ripped off the siding, exposing these wide boards, which have been hidden since the nineteenth century, when the house was built. Inside they smash plaster, which gives off clouds of white powder as it falls into the dumpster. They tear out ceiling fans, stoves, cabinets, white metal medicine chests with big globe lights. The workers wear masks. I watch from across the street.

If we were stripped down, we could not be rebuilt. We'd be soul-less, lifeless. Have you seen those flayed, embalmed bodies on exhibit in museums? They are processed: "A human specimen is first preserved according to standard mortuary science. The specimen is then dissected to show whatever it is that someone wants to display. Once dissected, the specimen is immersed in acetone, which eliminates all body water. The specimen is then placed in a large bath of silicone, or polymer, and sealed in a vacuum chamber" (Boston Museum of Science website). Ghastly! I saw the exhibit in the Boston Science Museum. Lifeless. Macabre.

The house is full of life. The more the workers strip away the more beautiful the house appears. It's girdled in granite, which has blackened from the steam engine trains that used to speed by, and an iron fence, which I hope they will restore.