Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Spring on High Street in Ipswich, Massachusetts

It was an unusual sighting on Monday when I happened to be giving a grand tour of the Daniel Lummus House to an interested party. Spring was in the air because neighbors of the slowly deteriorating first-period house started to come out and cross the street to say "hello" to the potential prospective owners, giving a piece or two of nostalgic or historic "town legend" information. All in the hopes of saying something so poignant, that it would send people running to sign on the dotted offer line.



Van Buskirk -- one such resident --revealed that the Victorian portion of the house was actually the old freight station and subsequently the Union Telegraph office, which was located originally "around the corner" on Mineral Street. At some point, according to Buskirk's recollection of the town legend, the structure was moved and attached to the Daniel Lummus House.



Mat Cummings and I considered it but when more of the ceiling was pulled away between the union of the two houses, it did not seem to be able to be corroborated....as the roof structure just above indicated a much older frame.