MORRISVILLENew start for historic home
Scott Embler of Levittown works to repair the wall of a 177-year old building being converted into a home along Union Street in Morrisville Borough. According to owner Chris Welborn the building, built in 1834, originally served as a field hospital then the town mortuary, church, and most recently as a paper foundry.
Posted: Tuesday, October 4, 2011 6:10 am | Updated: 6:11 am, Tue Oct 4, 2011.
The once-shabby, 18-inch stone walls of the old McGarity Book Bindery building have seen a lot.
Their history stretches back about 180 years, from days as a Civil War rehabilitation hospital to time as a local mortuary. And soon, the fieldstone walls will see something new.
Business partners Tom Gerace and Chris Welborn are reviving the old structure, which sits along the Delaware Canal, into a single-family home with five bedrooms, three-and-half bathrooms, a formal dining room, a breakfast room, a den, a living room, a kitchen and an extra room that not even the contractors can figure what to do with — all totaling almost 5,000 square feet, Welborn said Monday.
In 2007, a fire heavily damaged the building. A short time later, Welborn and Gerace purchased the building from owner Tony Lynch.
The men have been working on it ever since and hope to have the new home completed by the first of the year, Welborn said. He expects it will be appraised in about two weeks and believes it could sell for about $400,000 in today’s market.
“We are slowly bringing the building back to life,” Welborn said. “You can tell it’s historic.”
Beneath all the stucco, which easily chipped away, Welborn and his construction crew discovered four stone walls that they believe are the only original walls of the entire structure.
Throughout the decades, three additions were made to the structure, one of which the contractors tore down. And the other two additions will house the kitchen, breakfast room, and a large living area. Contractors decided to leave the original stones exposed and paint around them.
Although some of features will be Colonial, such as the blue paint shade of the exterior, the house really doesn’t have a specific style, Welborn said. But if he had to describe it, he said it’s more of a farmhouse.
Before the contractors started chipping way, the old structure was a community eyesore. It became code enforcement officer Robert Seward’s mission to make it eye pleasing. So Seward, who also serves as the borough’s fire marshal and assistant manager, reached out to developers and pitched the idea of a single-family home because he wanted to highlight the structure’s history.
The fieldstone building was built around the time the Delaware Canal was completed in 1832. The exact year is unknown, very much like most of the structure’s history. Summerseat Historic Morrisville Society President Sharon Hughes, Morrisville historian James Murray, and former owner Lynch know little of the structure. And much of what they do know is based on town memories and stories since little is documented.
It’s believed that it was used as a stable for the mules that worked the canal’s coal-filled barges because of the building’s proximity to the canal and its design. It might have been one of many stops along the 60-mile-long Delaware Canal, which stretches from Easton to Bristol Borough.
Then, from 1859 to 1861, it was home to the First Presbyterian Church before the congregation moved to Trenton Road and Pennsylvania Avenue, Lynch said. The church added two extra feet to its walls, Hughes said.
And some time during the American Civil War, the building was used as a hospital, according to Lynch.
From then on, it served many other purposes such as a bleachery, mortuary, paper mill, paper ruling and finally a bindery.
According to Lynch, the McGarity family purchased the fieldstone building in the 1960s to work on the family business of paper ruling. And when that type of technology was outdated, their family business became book binding.
In 1987, Lynch purchased the McGarity Book Bindery from the family’s estate, he said Monday. There was no family heir.
After the 2007 fire, which was caused by an electrical mishap at 3 a.m., Lynch said he tried to rebuild and move back in the building to resume his business, but it would have cost half a million dollars to rebuild up to the new building codes. Lynch relocated McGarity Book Bindery to Falls.
“I didn’t walk away from it,” he said. “I did everything I could to rebuild and go back. ... It would have been financial suicide for me. ... There’s a lot of history there. Mr. Gerace is doing a good job with the building and keeping its historical value.”
7 comments:
It look like they're doing a nice job, and it sure beats a burned-out empty hulk sitting there.
You mean like MR Reiter?
Come to think of it, yeah, I guess so.
I love this home, cannot wait to see it completed. Great to see renewal in our town.
Great preservation effort!
Many thanks to the people that bought and renovated it.
Here's a situation where an historic house in the area barely avoided the wrecking ball - for now. I applaud those who worked to save Summerseat from a similar fate.
William Tennent House safe for now
October 2, 2011
By Rich Pietras
Staff Writer Calkins Media, Inc.
After a week’s worth of historic drama, an agreement in principle has been reached between Christ’s Home and Warminster Township officials not to demolish what historians say was the home of William Tennent.
According to a press release issued Friday morning, representatives of the township and Christ’s Home met Thursday for discussions on the township’s acquisition of the historic property.
Although the release said the parties agreed the home will not be demolished and the property will be transferred to the township, terms of the transfer are still being worked out.
More details are expected to be submitted to the Warminster supervisors next month.
A group called Friends of the Tennent House recently brought the matter to the attention of the board as well as the Bucks County Commissioners.
The offshoot group of the Millbrook Society, including Sybil Johnson, Ed Price, Pete Brunner and Wendy Wirsch, discovered in August that Christ’s Home wanted to raze the home.
Supervisor Ellen Jarvis also took up the cause with chairman of the board of supervisors, Frank Feinberg.
William Tennent established Log College in 1727 on what is now York Road. A marker is located off York Road near the house in question.
His influence in Warminster led William Tennent High School to take his name. Johnson said the entire 2-acre site is important because Tennent considered his students “family” and built the home close to the school for just that reason.
Log College later helped give birth to other educational institutions, including Princeton University.
With the township celebrating its 300th anniversary this year, Jarvis said at the last supervisors meeting it would be a crime to raze a house with such history during the tricentennial.
Christ’s Home CEO Richard Smyth, who, according to Jarvis, attended Friday’s meeting, said last week the nonprofit wanted to raze the dilapidated structure because it is located close to the organization’s children’s campus.
Smyth previously said the organization did not want to donate the land to the township.
Christ’s Home began in Philadelphia as a nondenominational Christian ministry in 1903, working to aid children and adults who lived in the slums of the city. It moved to Warminster in 1907 and the retirement community began in 1923 to provide affordable, quality living for residents with a variety of needs.
According to Jarvis, Christ’s Home acquired the lot from a Warminster family in 1962 for $15,000.
Christ’s Home is in the midst of a $35 million expansion project that will include 56 new continuing care retirement cottage homes, two wings containing a total of 24 assisted living apartments and a new 90-bed health care center.
Smyth said the initial decision to demolish the house was not related to any expansion.
The Friends group and Jarvis have pointed to a series of studies that researched deeds and records, as well as the house itself, that they say prove the house was in fact Tennent’s. While parts of the house have been modernized over the years, researchers have found pieces they say date back to around 1720.
One of the local historians who believe the house was most likely inhabited by Warminster’s most celebrated educators is Jeff Marshall, the chief preservation officer of the Bucks County-based Heritage Conservancy.
Marshall said this week while there is room for doubt, there is a substantial amount of evidence pointing to the home being Tennent’s.
Marshall has been researching old houses for 30 years and, as part of a conservancy study conducted in 1986, has reviewed deeds, wills and land transactions involving Tennent.
...the last bit of the article...
Another study conducted on the actual structure, Marshall said, was later executed by Tim Noble, an architectural historian and material conservator.
Commissioned by the Millbrook Society to look at the building, he found “a very unusual construction technique that was common at the time” but would recommend more studies be conducted on the house itself.
Marshall, however, is a bit more convinced.
“Really, it comes down to how many pieces of evidence do you need to be sure,” Marshall said. “Based on what I have seen, a lot of information is pointing in that direction.”
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