
DATE: Monday, July 14, 1997                 TAG: 9707140055

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY REBECCA MYERS CUTCHINS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:  114 lines

PAIR TO RESTORE 1880S OLDE TOWNE HOUSE THE CIVIC LEAGUE FIRST RESCUED THE RELIC, THEN SOLD IT, HOPING IT'S THE FIRST OF MANY.

The house still sags a little in the middle, and much of its 19th-century ornate woodwork has been stolen.

Missing, too, are the eight fireplace mantles and most of the balusters on the front porch railings. Even the inside walls are gone.

It's a mere shell of a house, yet the sign outside reads ``SOLD.''

Rick Young and Ken Johnson, new owners of the Queen Anne duplex at London Boulevard and Washington Street, seem downright excited by the challenge as they walk through with a contractor.

They see a beauty behind the flaking paint and broken glass, and have in their minds a showplace they will unfold for family and friends by Thanksgiving.

``I've been interested in old houses probably since I was a kid,'' said Young, a 36-year-old assistant manager of Super Kmart in Norfolk.

``There's a lot of history there,'' said Johnson, 49, an assistant principal at Ocean Lakes Elementary School in Virginia Beach. ``That's the exciting part, just knowing that years and years ago, somebody lived there, that somebody put their life into it. There's a lot of beautiful work there.''

There's also a story of a community that came together to save this relic from Olde Towne's past.

Vacant for years, the building was scheduled for demolition by the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority until the Olde Towne Civic League stepped in to save it about two years ago.

``There were a lot of people who felt the whole block should have been torn down,'' said Les French, past president of the civic league.

The civic league made a deal with PRHA, buying the house for $1 in return for a commitment to pay property taxes on the house and take care of the necessary structural work.

Olde Towne residents gathered for what they called ``plaster parties,'' days set aside to rip plaster off walls and haul debris away.

``The first one we had, two people fell through the floor,'' French said. ``Nobody got hurt, but that's how rotten some of the flooring was.''

In the 14 months in which the civic league owned the home, the members completed a little more than half of what they had intended.

``The new owners were eager to get ahold of it themselves and felt that they could finish what we wanted to do in their overall project cheaper than they could buying it from us once we had done the work,'' French said.

Young and Johnson bought the house from the Olde Towne Civic League two months ago for $72,500 and plan to spend up to $65,000 restoring it.

French, who was instrumental in saving the house from demolition, says the home has architectural trim ``that you don't find anywhere else in Olde Towne.''

``Of all the houses in that block, that house is the most unique,'' French said. ``Number one, it's a duplex, and not a lot of effort has gone into preserving duplexes.''

The 2 1/2-story structure was built around 1880. Civic league members named it the ``Wright House'' in honor of the family that owned it the longest, from 1912 to 1943.

``Although it was originally built as a duplex, we're opening up some walls and making it a single-family home,'' Young said.

The men are financing the home and its renovation through a loan that incorporates the cost of rehabilitation into the monthly mortgage payment.

The buyers hope to receive favorable tax incentives from both the state and city.

The civic league recouped all but about $1,000 of the $70,000 it spent on the house, a third of which was used for a new seamed metal roof like the one that was originally on the home.

``I think it's very significant that a civic league would take on a project like this,'' said Mary Ruffin Viles, an architectural historian with the state Department of Historic Resources in Portsmouth. ``We're excited that it's a public-private partnership because that's really what we see, from our statewide perspective, as being sort of the next wave of real preservation successes.''

The civic league is exploring the possibility of establishing a foundation to take on similar projects in Olde Towne.

As for the civic league's first such venture, the two new owners plan to restore the home as close to its original state as possible. In the two months since they've had the house, Young and Johnson have spent nights, weekends and some vacation days ripping down plaster.

``As we were tearing out walls, we found a box with one of those old doorbells in it,'' said Young, who found the box hidden above a window. ``It was purchased for 75 cents in, I think, 1914. We have the newspaper it was wrapped in. It's in mint condition from Boston.''

In the end, they plan to have a four-bedroom home with three full bathrooms, two living rooms, two dining rooms, gas logs in all the fireplaces, a den, a study, a laundry room, a linen closet and a central landing between two staircases.

``Everybody laughs and says `That's a big house,' but you wouldn't believe the amount of furniture we've collected,'' Young said.

In the next few weeks, French will be placing a new sign in front of the house, introducing Johnson and Young as the home's new owners.

At the owners' request, the sign also will contain the quote, ``Fortune Favors the Bold and Scorns the Timid.''

``And certainly nothing could be more appropriate to that house than that quote,'' French said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

GARY C. KNAPP

Ken Johnson, left, and Rick Young, right, listen to contractor John

LeClair as he points out work needed on the Olde Towne restoration

project. Johnson and Young bought the house from the Olde Town Civic

League and plan to spend nearly the purchase price in renovation

costs.

Color Photo

GARY C. KNAPP