Please don't tear more of them down!
It’s heartbreaking when a beautiful old home gets torn down. This happened in the historic Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle last January. I missed it in the news then, but it made the front page of this morning’s paper. Residents of Queen Anne are pushing to have the city create a special review district. It would create guidelines for renovation, but wouldn’t be as restrictive as a full-fledged historic district. I’d vote for the historic district status, but I think that may be too difficult to get passed, so their going for the middle of the road.
Here’s the house that was torn down last year, and here’s today’s article.
4 Comments
Jeff the Beast·March 31, 2005
Someone tore this house down? Absolutely insane! And furthermore, unless there was some significant structural problem, unjustifiable.
I have no problem tearing down a house if there’s no true value to it. I tore my own house down, but it was 825 SqFt and, while it was on a great piece of property, it was put together with bubblegum and tape. (Fir example, when studs weren’t long enough to reach a top plate, they just nailed a little more wood to the side of the stud to make up the distance. Brilliant eh?) But this house appears to be perfectly fine. So what was the excuse?
Derek·March 31, 2005
That sucks! They tore down an arts and crafts about 2 blocks from us a while ago, and replaced it with a stucco box. They should at least have to replace it with something that suites the neighbourhood. Looks like it was a beautiful house.
merideth·March 31, 2005
argh! that just breaks my heart!
Trissa·March 31, 2005
The man that bought it said that there was mold and aspestos in the house and it would have cost $3 million to renovate it and he could spend that much on a new house. They talk about it in the first article I linked to.