The town common of Chelsea, VT is lined with historic residences and civic buildings, making it the sort of place where you picture farmers’ markets, kids playing, festivals and good small town American life. Yet, there’s an anomaly sitting on the edge of this green – something you not expect to find within an active village or historic district.
This house in Chelsea faces the town common.
View from the side of the house.
Second floor window.
The gutter is partially intact.
A view into the house from the front window.
What do you make of this? It’s a beautiful large house sitting on the edge of a town common, surrounded by well-kept buildings. This building isn’t exactly abandoned; as I found out, the next door neighbor owns this house. Over the years he had neither the financial means nor desire to maintain this house, and does not plan to.
So the question for discussion that comes from this edition of Abandoned Vermont is: what do you do when there is a historic building in your town (historic district or not) owned by someone who refuses to cooperate in conversation about the importance of his building? Are there cases in which you have to just let it go? When do you reach that point?
Preservation in Pink 