The stately 10,000-square-foot red brick mansion at 38 S. Sixth St. in New Bedford is a shell of its former self.
On the outside, scaffolding flanks the Federal-Greek Revival and plywood remains on what were the home’s 64 windows.
The interior is a maze of wooden frameworks and staircases, giving few clues about what it will look like when it is completed in November.
Standing on the ground floor, construction superintendent Phil Pereira points to the charred beams of the John Howland Jr. house.
“They’re like this all the way up all the way into the roof,” he says.
The initial damage caused by a three-alarm January 2005 fire has been compounded over the years by exposure to the elements and neglect, and there is little left of the building’s interior but studs and flooring. F&S Enterprises Inc., a Rhode Island company, bought the home after the fire in 2005 and stripped it of its architectural details, including the mantelpieces.
In fact, so much had been stripped that the house was on the verge of collapse, says Patrick Sullivan, the city’s director of Planning, Housing and Community Development. The city, together with the Attorney General’s office, in 2008 started pressuring the owner to make repairs or sell.
“It was stripped, that’s true,” says Michael Galasso, of nonprofit developer The Resources Inc. (TRI). “When we got involved, everything was gone from the interior — no plumbing, no doors.”
F&S applied for demolition in April 2010, but the city’s Historical Commission voted 5-0 that December that the building was architecturally significant and preferably preserved.
The Waterfront Historic Area League bought the home in 2010 for $237,000. WHALE stabilized the property, including a new roof, putting back the original roofline seen in historic photos.
Over the years, TRI, WHALE and architect Christopher “Kit” Wise have worked on plans and have pieced together the $2.9 million it will take to restore life to the Howland house. D.F. Pray has been hired as general contractor.
ABOUT THE JOHN HOWLAND JR. HOUSE:
- Built in 1834 for John and Sarah Howland Jr.
- Exceptional example of transitional Federal/Greek Revival style architecture and the substantial wealth that was
made in the whaling industry in New Bedford. - Contributing building in the County Street National Register Historic District.
- One of a complex of three remarkable and extremely rare, brick mansions built for the Howland family
on South Sixth Street.
ABOUT THE HOWLAND FAMILY:
- The Howland family was among New Bedford’s most prominent and wealthy families. A native of New Bedford, John Howland Jr. partnered with his brother James in “J & J Howland Merchants” on Middle Street and he was one of 15 original trustees of the New Bedford Institution for Savings. The Howland family, unlike many of their Quaker counterparts, chose to build their grand mansions and fine homes along Sixth Street. The County Street Historic District Nomination states that, of the city’s wealthiest men, only members of two branches of the Howland family – George Howland Sr. and Jr. and John Howland Sr. and his sons John Jr. and James II – did not build on County Street. One of Howland’s relatives even “warned his children that building a house on County Street would expose them to ‘pernicious influence’.
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/news/20170708/howland-mansion-coming-back-from-brink-of-destruction