ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 17, 1997 TAG: 9704170011
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR THE ROANOKE TIMES
A Roanoke woman loved the Old Southwest building so much that she was willing to buy half but couldn't find a partner.
Ten years ago, Dilys Scott fell in love with a house down the street from her Highland Avenue apartment in Southwest Roanoke.
She loved its slightly crumbling reddish brick, its weathered white shutters and the big old crab apple trees that blossomed pink and white outside it each spring. It reminded her of the gracious homes in her native England - a mixture of her parents' little cottage and her friends' stately homes with high ceilings.
So last year, Scott, 55, pounced on an opportunity to house-sit the old home for one year, with the understanding that it would be sold at the end of that year and she would have first option to buy.
As the end of the year approached and leaving the much-loved home loomed closer, she was desperate to find a way to buy the house.
Scott, who teaches home-bound students in Roanoke County, couldn't afford to buy the house, which was appraised at $95,000. But she could afford half.
So she placed this ad in last Thursday's Roanoke Times: "Communal or separate living in gracious Old SW, brick, $47,500 or $18,000 PA [annual salary] would qualify mature, non-smoker to split purchase of this 6 BR, 3 ba. home."
Scott got two responses, but neither worked out.
Scott admitted her request was unusual. "It was somebody else's house I was selling - or trying to purchase," she said. "I was trying to buy a house I didn't own but I needed someone else to help me buy it."
Scott and her son moved into the neighborhood in 1987 - taking an apartment at Highland Avenue and Fourth Street. She said she'd always admired the house at 366 Highland, if only from the outside. She had no clue what it looked like on the inside.
"It was always a little bit of a mystery," she said. "But I never got the feeling that the house was really lived in."
Through neighbors, she found out that for 23 years, the owner - a woman named Evelyn Gardner who had moved to Smith Mountain Lake - had people house-sit rather than rent the house for money. Gardner and her husband had bought the post-Victorian house in 1936.
Scott met with Gardner last February. She agreed to let Scott house-sit for a year, Scott said. A month later, Scott moved in with her now-13-year-old son, their dog and two cats.
Evelyn Gardner died a month after Scott moved in. Gardner's grandson - Salem lawyer Scott Gardner - honored the verbal agreement his grandmother had made with Dilys Scott and allowed her to live in the house for 12 months. But he told Scott that the house would be sold at the end of that 12 months.
Scott's year was up at the end of March. She persuaded Gardner to allow her until April 15 to find a way to buy the house. If she couldn't by then, she would move.
And she couldn't.
So Scott is moving Saturday - to an apartment across the street, close enough that she can gaze at the house whenever she likes.
She was packing boxes Tuesday, the few items she and her son had brought with them when they moved in. The house was fully furnished with Evelyn Gardner's possessions - sofas, tables, china, towels. Photographs of Gardner's family still hang from the walls and rest on dresser tops.
Scott shuffled through a stack of photos she'd taken several weeks ago, when the big old crab apple trees in the front and back yards were in full bloom.
She lingered over one, a "kind of romantic" photo, she said.
The house - with its six bedrooms, high ceilings, bathrooms with the bawdy wallpaper that made Scott laugh and rooms full of someone else's memories - is so grand, so wonderful, Scott said, pressing her palms against her cheeks.
"We've been living like kings," she said. "Now we have to get back to reality."
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CARY BEST THE ROANOKE TIMES. Dilys Scott says she enjoysby CNBlooking through the windows at big old crab apple trees in the front
yard at 366 Highland Ave. color.