One of South Portland’s oldest homes, one of only six said
to pre-date the birth of the nation, changes hands
SOUTH PORTLAND — Webber Associates agent Clay Ryder, who brokered
the sale, calls it a “once-in-a- lifetime” property transfer. That’s no small
statement, coming from someone who’s been in the greater Portland real estate
game for more than three decades.
“As far as anyone knows, it’s probably one of
the oldest homes in South Portland,” said Ryder, on Friday. “A property like
this, especially with the acreage involved, may never come along again.”
The lot, located at 108 Stillman St., is 1.89
acres. That alone made it shine alongside the usual residential fare seen in
South Portland real estate listings. And, given the site’s location astride
Kimball Brook, abutting 40-acre Hinkley Park, it’s not surprising Ryder fielded
more calls into the possibility of splitting off the 1.5 acres closest to the park
than for the house that sits by the street.
But the house is what makes the sale so special.
It was described in real estate listings as the “Capt. Stillman Dyer” property,
but Edward MacCarthy Jr. of Windham, who inherited it upon the 1998 death of
his mother, and sold it Nov. 28, says that’s not correct. The building actually
belonged to another Dyer along his great-maternal line, he says. Still, he
insists, the home was built, as listed, in 1775.
It sold to South Portland residents Virginia
Smith and George Weaver. He’s an English teacher at Bonny Eagle High School,
she edits reports on children and teen titles for Kirkus Reviews. The couple
declined to say what they paid for the property, but the listing price was
$503,900 and the mortgage filed at the Cumberland County Registry of Deeds is
recorded at $255,000.
“I think it could have probably gone for more
than it did, but because of the market, they got a very good price for what is,
really, a one-of-a-kind property,” said Ryder.
According to data run by South Portland Assessor
Andrew Kriger, that makes the home one of only six examples of residential
construction in the city purporting to pre-date the American Revolution.
Of course, all early dates in the city’s
assessing database are estimates, taken from 1972 tax cards, says Kriger.
According to Kathryn DiPhilippo, executive director of the South Portland
Historical Society, there are still “two or three boxes” of material at the
city library from research done in the 1970s, when the city won a grant to
conduct its first, and to date only, survey of historic property.
“Unfortunately, if you wanted to know how old a
home was, a lot of times that meant simply asking the owners,” says DiFilippo.
“The problem is, what people believe about their homes isn’t always necessarily
true.”
Proving when a house was built can be difficult,
says DiFilippo. City Councilor Tom Blake, himself an avid fan of local history,
agrees. Both say it’s not too hard to trace the history of a parcel back to the
area’s original 160-acre lots. But by the time a deed changes hands with the
words “and buildings thereon,” a home could have been standing for a generation
of more.
And all of that doesn’t even being to account
for the number of buildings those ‘70s-era researchers simply never got around
to. In many cases, “before 1900” is the best guess the city has.
“There are some things that are just difficult
to prove,” says DiPhilippo.
Still, of the 10,000-plus lots in South
Portland, 7,288 are residential properties consisting of four units, or less.
Of those, just 396 claim to have been built before 1900, and a mere 16 lay
claim to ante-federalist status. That alone puts the “Stillman Dyer” home in
rarified company.
Blake says its not surprising that, among South
Portland’s oldest homes, many are in the area of the Stillman Dyer house,
located just a stone’s throw from Town House Corner, where the original town
hall was located, at the corner of Ocean and Sawyer streets, leading up to
South Portland Heights, at 176 feet, the highest point in the city. Back in the
18th and into the 19th century, waterfront property was
not highly valued, as it is today. Back then, it was the strictly the poor,
working class that congregated to the coastal commercial centers. Everybody who
was anybody took the high ground and open farmland.
Those folks still held a fair amount of
political power by the late 1930s and early 1940s, when South Portland enacted
its first zoning laws.
“This was the most affluent area when that was
happening,” said Blake. “Back then, the nicer homes were in this area.”
So, while much of the city was zoned at that
time to allow up to 19 housing units per acres, the area around South Portland
heights was limited to between two and four units per acre.
That, says Blake, as much as anything else,
probably accounts for how the Stillman Dyer home survived the development boom,
between the establishment of the state’s first shopping center at Mill Creek in
1956 and the creation of Hinkley Park in 1977. With so much property primed for
the picking, it simply wasn’t worthwhile to try and develop the parcel.
It also helps that in 1954 the home passed into
the hands of MacCarthy’s father, Edward MacCarthy Sr., who descended from the
Dyer line though his mother, Mary. At the time, the elder MacCarthy was the
Atlantic coast regional manager of General Motors’ Chevrolet division and he
appears to have spared no expense in renovating the home.
Originally a modest, three-room home, with a
kitchen connecting it to where a barn is presumed to have been, the front,
“great room,” previously expanded, was paneled with mahogany, variously listed
as having come from Honduras or the Philippines.
Smith and Weaver display some angst over owning
a home made over with wood from the rainforest, but it’s hard not to appreciate
the craftsmanship.
“It’s clear that he used the very best of
everything,” said Weaver, taking particular note of the hand-hewn shingles that
protect the outer walls of the home. Although part of the 1950s renovation,
they appear to have been crafted with the original look of the house in mind,
somewhat unlike the interior.
Although the dining room appears to have been
untouched, the original bedroom was made over to resemble a captain’s quarters
aboard ship, apparently in the belief that, if not Stillman Dyer himself, than
some other of the original owners bore a nautical heritage – a safe bet
given the Dyer family history in South Portland.
Meanwhile, the kitchen area, separated from the
main house by a vaulted door, was made over with the best brushed-stainless
appliances of the era. The stove was built into a space where the original
hearth was, using the flue of to the colonial-style chimney as a vent. Although
made of all-new brickwork, some of the original bicentennial brick can still be
seen on the floor in from the other stove.
A new slate-floor sun porch was added on what
was originally the front of the home, where the main door is still accessed
with a brass, skeleton key. Finally, the barn, if it was still standing at the
time, was torn down and a back section added, where two modern bedrooms, an
office and the home’s bathrooms are now located, the original privy lost to
history.
Weaver says he admired the Stillman Dyer home
for a long time before it went on the market, passing it on his daily commute.
“I often thought, what a neat-looking piece of
property,” says Weaver, as the family spent Boxing Day packing up their
belongings for the big move. “It made me think of a little Dutch streamside
building. Then one day I drove by and there was a for sale sign on it.”
A lot of others also took note of the sign.
“There were 30 people at the open house during
the 45 minutes we were here, and I guess me must’ve known most of them,” joked
Weaver.
The quirky nature of Colonial construction
caught the couple’s eye – “It was like every door you opened was a surprise,”
said Smith – but many appear to have been more interested in the landscape.
According to Blake, “a couple of people from the
neighborhood” approached the South Portland Land Trust, on which he sits, in
hopes it might buy the property. The expressed fear was that somebody would buy
the lot and put up one more new house at the entrance to Hinkley Park.
“We had an interest [in buying the property],
but not the money,” said Blake, adding that concern abated once Weaver and
Smith emerged as the probable homeowners.
‘’We come from families that are not utterly
unfamiliar with antiquity,” said Weaver, who grew up in Guilford, Conn., in a
circa-1785 home.
“I like old houses,” said Weaver. “They’re
better built. They may not be more efficient, but in a lot of fundamental ways,
they’re better built.’’
Because much of the home has been redone, Weaver
and Smith do not plan to remake the home with historical preservation in mind.
But the house will be preserved. MacCarthy first sold the house to his son,
Maine guide Edward MacCarthy III, in 1999, but took it back in 2009. During
that time, at least, the house appeared to have fallen into some disrepair.
Already, Weaver and Smith have added new roof, to stop the leaks.
“It also remains to be seen how well the stove
works,” said Smith, “but we like it. It’s a very charming design. We’re not
necessarily going to go to the expense of restoring things to their original
design, but we also don’t plan any major renovations.
“It’s kind of funny how, in the kitchen, you
have to ‘cross Siberia’ to get from the stove to the sink, but we have no
immediate plans to turn the kitchen into a so-called chef’s kitchen.”
Despite all the period charm, the feature most
favored by Smith, who works out of the home, is that she’ll no longer have to
climb a high, narrow staircase to her office – a decided plus when
“hundreds of books” flow under her editorial eye every week. Daughter Lucy just
likes that the move means a bigger bedroom in the newer, back half of the
building.
And even if the Stillman Dyer house never
becomes a feature on the historic tours of South Portland that Blake leads,
maybe that’s OK. After Edward MacCarthy Sr. died in 1970, Edith MacCarthy lived
alone in the home for 28 years. Her grandson only appears to have stayed
periodically over the last several seasons. But now, the Stillman Dyer home
once again has a family living and working within its walls. And after all,
what more could a 236-year-old-house ask for?
A CLOSER LOOK
According to data provided by the South Portland Assessor’s Office, these 16 homes, the oldest in the city, are all the remains of pre-1800 residential construction. However, Kathryn DiPhilippo, executive director at the South Portland Historical Society, points out that many of the dates given are “pure conjecture.” The first is particularly dubious, she says, given accounts of all area homes being burned to the ground in a 1703 Indian raid, and not rebuilt until 1717, at the earliest.
Address Year Style Condition Map/Lot
1. 667 Sawyer St. 1700 Antique Good Map 12/Lot 97
2. 42 Beach St. 1725 Family Conver. Average Map 2/Lot 226-C
3. 445 Preble St. 1750 Cape Cod Very Good Map 2/Lot 43
4. 27 Pillsbury St. 1751 Conventional Excellent Map 10/Lot 365
5. 913 Sawyer St. 1760 Cape Cod Good Map 23/Lot 46-C
6. 108 Stillman St. 1775 Antique Good Map 23/Lot 11-A
7. 510 Preble St. 1780 Antique Excellent Map 1/Lot 170
8. 24 Myrtle Ave. 1780 Cape Cod Excellent Map 2/Lot 95
9. 325 Preble St. 1780 Cape Cod Excellent Map 2/Lot 193
10. 33 Myrtle Ave. 1780 Cape Cod Excellent Map 2/Lot 224
11. 26 Beach St. 1780 Conventional Good Map 2/Lot 226-E
12. 254 Cottage Rd. 1780 Antique Very Good Map 13/Lot 220
13. 995 Sawyer St. 1780 Antique Good Map 23/Lot 36-A
14. 145 Fickett St. 1785 Antique Good Map 37/Lot 11-C
15. 96 Willow St. 1790 Family Conver. Excellent Map 2/Lot 34-A
16. 6 Pine St. 1790 Colonial Average Map 6/Lot 11
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