Lexington’s Historical Commission voted to impose a 21-month demolition delay on the house at 25 Moon Hill Road, a historic mid-century modern property listed on the National Register of Historic Places, during its meeting on Wednesday.
Yvette Beeman, a Lexington resident, and her business partner Krassi Diehl, a general contractor, are buying the property. They requested a permit to demolish the house after Rene Mugnier, a structural engineer, deemed its foundation and wood siding beyond repair, making it more expensive to restore than build new.
Despite his assessment, residents of Moon Hill Road and industry experts disapproved of demolishing the house during Wednesday’s meeting. They argued the house only needs common, albeit expensive, renovations and that preserving the neighborhood should be prioritized over saving money.
“We understand [building new] is cheaper — we would have all demolished our houses and rebuilt a new house, but that’s not the point,” Nilanjana Bhowmik, a resident of Moon Hill Road, said during Wednesday’s meeting. “The point is to retain [Six Moon Hill] and for 75 years we have been doing that…and we would like to see that tradition continue.”
By rejecting Beeman and Diehl’s request for a permit to demolish and imposing a 21-month demolition delay, the Historical Commission is giving others the opportunity to buy the house so it can be restored. If nobody steps up to renovate the property in the next 21 months, Beeman and Diehl can demolish the property and build new.
Beeman told LexObserver she and Diehl originally intended to renovate the house at 25 Moon Hill Road. But after Mugnier looked at the house, which was abandoned by its owner, Martha Segal, approximately ten years ago, they learned restoring it would be far more expensive than building new. (The house is co-owned by a family trust).
“It’s extremely unrealistic to think that someone can rehabilitate this house given the significant structural issues,” Beeman said during Wednesday’s meeting. “It’s simply wishful thinking to persist in the idea that this house can be renovated.”
Mugnier examined the house’s exterior and its slab — the concrete pad that serves as the foundation and floor of a house — which are the most important parts of a building alongside its roof, he said. Because there was snow on the roof at the time, he could not get a good enough look at it to give it a fair assessment. But from what he could see, he deemed it “impossible to assume” the wood paneling on the house’s exterior could be repaired after years of water penetration, and the slab unsafe.
“The slab is absolutely unacceptable, not only for me but for any other engineer,” said Mugnier. “An engineer [that] would accept that slab would be exposed to lose his license and I would make sure he does if he argues with me.”
The house’s siding and slab were also of concern to Matthew Thenen, founder of M.A. Thenen & Co., who inspected the house. He noted that the Six Moon Hill houses were built inexpensively to serve as “very basic abodes[s]” for people in the 1940s. “It was actually supposed to be very simple,” he said during Wednesday’s meeting.
“These houses were not built to a very high standard of quality when they were initially built and because of this they deteriorate if they don’t get attention pretty rapidly,” said Thenen. “And this one…the interior is a complete disaster, there’s trash everywhere, there’s animals living in it.”
Segal, who now lives in Plymouth, echoed Beeman and Diehl’s argument that building a new house would be better than renovating. Whenever the house needed a repair while she lived there, “it was always complicated… and always cost more,” she said.
“If it were easy to do, I would have done it,” said Segal.
But Scott Kyle, founder of Kyle Restoration, a Waltham-based general contracting company, disagreed with Mugnier’s assessment of the house, though he has not been inside. Many of the issues regarding its exterior siding, slab, outdated windows, and water damage are all “common repairs,” he said.
“I keep hearing the word ‘impossible’ when it comes to rebuilding or restoring this structure…I’m not here to advocate either way, I just find that the word, ‘impossible to renovate’ is not really accurate,” said Kyle, who lived in Lexington for 22 years and was on the Historical Commission for 5 years. “I think it is possible because I’ve done every one of these steps highlighted by the engineer.”
Kyle also noted that the trash throughout the house, as shown in the photos Beeman and Diehl included in their presentation, “cloaks the condition of the house” and is not “a reflection of the house.” He argued that “a much more accurate assessment could be made just by getting rid of the trash.”
The new house Beeman and Diehl imagine building, which is designed by Chris Johns, an architect and cofounder of ThoughtCraft, a Somerville-based architecture firm, is a two-story mid-century modern that would be located in the same footprint as the current house on the property.
“Our focus here is really maintaining the spirit of architectural integrity and honoring the essence and the principles of the historic design rather than clinging to the improbable preservation of the neglected physical artifact which is unsafe, deteriorated, and far past its useful life,” Johns said.
Moon Hill Road neighbors, including Bhowmik, Matias Stella, Alex Whitney, and Rajive Chaudhry spoke up during Wednesday’s meeting to express their opposition toward demolishing 25 Moon Hill Road’s existing house.
Chaudhry said people in the neighborhood are “willing to take on this project to preserve [the] house.”
“There is no reason why this house should be demolished and a new structure should come up…I completely disagree with the whole notion that the house should not be saved,” he said. “If these people are not willing to take care of it, I think there are others who are.”
Bhowmik said that demolishing and building new goes against the ethos of the neighborhood and the responsibility bestowed on someone when buying a historic Six Moon Hill property.
“We understand the responsibility to preserve [Six Moon Hill] and it’s a project of love,” she said. “Every one of the 28 [households] on this street have taken on a project of love and they understand they’re the custodians of [Six Moon Hill].”
Beeman told LexObserver that she and Diehl are in the process of buying the property but don’t fully own it yet. Before Wednesday night’s meeting, she said they can still back out from buying the property if they choose to.
As an owner of a historic mid century myself, I understand the neighbors but given the condition of the home, it seems reasonable to approve a similar style mid century on the same footprint guided by a sensitive architect. It preserves the look of the neighborhood. What if they agreed for the exterior to be identical? I guess I don’t see the problem. Temples in Japan are rebuilt over and over and yet still are considered ancient and original, as they keep the design.
Edited for typos.