A Journal, An Old House & A Matter Of Time

As stewards of an 1867 Italianate mansion and carriage house in rural Vermont, we choose restoration over remodeling. After all, the fi rst owner is watching.

- Nancy Tompkins

We weren’t house hunting. Ron had a year to go with the fire department in North Hudson, New Jersey. He was reading a real-estate magazine when a snapshot all but grabbed him, and within days we were driving to the village of Saxton’s River, Vermont. The locals call the Victorian Italianate house The Blue Mansion; in two hours it was ours, following a handshake and a binding check for $1,000. That was ten years ago.

Stone abutments on each side of the river are the remnants of a covered bridge that was the eastern gateway to the village. A new bridge went up downstream around 1900; we’re grateful for the quiet. This once robust village that supported several mills now has a population of around 500. Keep in mind the “ain’t” in quaint: there ain’t no banks, no ATMs; ain’t no gas stations, food chains, or stoplights. There’s still a post office but no delivery; you pick up your own mail from a P.O. box during hours. The town was a shock for transplants from Jersey, but we were touched.

Ron is passionate about reviving dying relics, and here he found himself only the third owner of the Alexander Mansion, which was built in 1867. The builder’s daughter Hannah had remained single; she stayed and lived to be a hundred. Before her death in 1969, she picked the next owner from among five interested parties, simply because they loved the house as it was. Thirty-six years later, we bought it from them for the same reason. This time, numerous lookers had toured the house’s 7,000+ square feet only to speed away at full throttle: the house had no real kitchen, a plastic shower stall, an old clawfoot tub. It needed some magic.