83 Maple St. - Inside & Out
In a follow-up to my original blog story, "I Need An Owner," I took a look inside this beautiful old house, built way back in the year 1841. Tagging along to take her own photos was intrepid Advocate blog reporter Heather Brandon.Its former occupants left the interior of the house in somewhat of a shambles. Around the back, outside, there is a new porch. Some of the rear, upstairs rooms appeared to be much more modern in both structure and design. The video tour runs about 3-and-a-half minutes. I've also included several photographs that I took at the site.
March UPDATE: The realtor has been cleaning out much of the trash from inside the home this past month. This house, with its seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, two staircases, and modern kitchen, would make a very good bed & breakfast inn.
APRIL UPDATE: Heather Brandon now has over 80 photos of the property available at the click of this link.
The living room.
The dining room, with little cast iron stove.
The modern-looking kitchen.
The mysterious green room.
The attic.
One of two stairways in the house.
Newer upstairs hallway. Notice the ghostly spheres - photo artifacts from the light coming through the window.
Down in the basement, this ghostly mist greeted my camera. It kept asking me where Heather was. I told him I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.
The new back porch.
All-in-all, it was an interesting tour. It was a little disorientating going through all the rooms. There were some Halloween decorations in the basement, including a headless woman prop. I brought it upstairs and tossed it at Heather, but boringly, she didn't even flinch. It was extremely cold inside - colder than the outdoors. Some of the upstairs windows are broken, and the cold, wet air has adversely affected the paint in those rooms. The longer it takes to sell this house, the worse things are going to be for it. The exterior does need some work - the porch and balcony need repairing, the windows need replacing, and some of the framework & trimming needs to be replaced or repaired. The structure of the interior, however, appeared to be sound.
It was difficult getting the history of this house. It's been said that a former mayor of Springfield (Ansel Phelps, Jr - mayor, 1856-1858) once owned it, but that has not been verified. If anyone has any useful information on this house, leave a comment here or e-mail me at neroguejournal@aol.com. Anyone interested in purchasing this historical treasure can call Marty's Real Estate, at (413) 543-6766.
Home stats and price, as of 03/10/07:
MLS ID: 70521453
Price: $159000
City/State: Springfield, MA
Bedrooms: 7
Bathrooms: 4
Living Area: 4356 square feet
Lot Size: 0.2 Acres
Labels: house historical landmark springfield, massachusetts
posted by Bill Dusty @ 3/09/2007
2 comments
2 Comments:
hSojourner,
I've since looked up Phelps, and I found his marriage record. He indeed lived in Ware when he married Lydia Paige, also of Ware. Thank you very much for confirming he owned the house!
- Bill
Unfortunately, this building is still boarded-up. The owner, according to GIS, appears to be C. Perreira.
This is an historic property and it should be well taken care of -- not boarded up like some crack den!
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