The pillars rise again

LINCOLN -- At this time last fall, the Brown family had a house-size jigsaw puzzle on their hands. Literally.

They were the new owners of the venerable Pillar House, a beloved Newton Lower Falls landmark. But it was in thousands of pieces of wood and hardware, piled under tarps and in a storage shed on their 9-acre farm in south Lincoln.

Today, the landmark Greek Revival building is upright again, pillars and all, just 12 miles from its former perch at the junction of routes 128 and 16.

It is being reincarnated as a private home, as it was for 100 years before the highways sprang up and the Larsen family took it over in 1952. Until it closed in 2001, its imposing columns were synonymous with the restaurant, known for its gracious service and long-stemmed roses presented to female diners.

There is still at least a year of interior work yet to be done on what will become the Brown family's main living quarters, connected by a dining room and hallway to their existing 1,800-square-foot, 60-year-old Cape-style house.

Chris Brown and Margaret Coffin Brown, along with their two children, spend weekends working on the house and employ restoration contractors, architects, and other specialists to work during the week.

''We felt the house was right for this location, and it has always been our goal to have the house look like it originally did," said Chris Brown, 49, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and a hearing researcher at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

To that end, the Browns have conducted intensive research, trying to match period paint colors as closely as possible, studying charred woodwork that survived a house fire in 1948, and scouring Internet sites for window panes made of crown glass, so-called because it was spun into a round, mostly flat and even plate made by the Redford Glass Co. of Redford, N.Y., which went out of business in the 1850s.

No detail about the house is too small for the Browns, said Newton History Museum program consultant Alice Ingerson. Chris and Margaret Brown gave a well-attended presentation to museum members in the spring and will conduct a private tour of the construction site next Sunday.

''They are treating the project as above-ground archeology, all the things you can learn from a building only by taking it apart," Ingerson said.

While some Newton history buffs were understandably sad to see the building leave, Lincoln has turned out to be a fitting site for the house, Ingerson said. The Browns' farm is quite similar to the cow pastures and meadows of pre-Civil War Newton Lower Falls, the era when the Pillar House was built, she said.

Julie Kann, a preservation carpenter hired by the Browns, has spent months patching rotted-out spots on the bases of the four 26-foot-high Ionic-style columns and replacing decaying wooden trim.

''The Browns have been so enthusiastic about saving it and restoring it and have made the building stronger and fixed a number of [internal] problems," Kann said. ''It's been exciting to see it come together here."

The emotional pull of the Pillar House has not been lost on Kann, a Maynard resident. She has become so attached that she may hold her wedding reception there next September.

The Browns' young children have even caught the restoration bug themselves.

Amelia, 7, went to Medfield last week to watch a crew from the ABC-TV program ''Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" rebuild a turn-of-the century farmhouse for the family of a child who uses a wheelchair. She proudly sported fading marks from where two of the cast members, Michael Moloney and Ed Sanders, autographed her arm.

Amelia, and her brother, Austin, 9, may be enlisted by the Newton History Museum as it prepares a ''history detective" program to teach children how to hunt for clues to the history of their homes, Ingerson said.

The Brown family won the rights to the Pillar House in 2003, after the state seized the property at the junction of routes 128 and 16 by eminent domain. At first it seemed big-name bidders like Newton-Wellesley Hospital or PBS's ''This Old House" television program would snare the house, which was offered for the token price of $1, provided that the buyer would move and rebuild it. But the other deals fell through, and the state offered the Browns the building.

The state offered $75,000 toward the demolition of nonhistorical sections of the building, and the family paid the rest.

They can't say how much they have spent so far or how much more they expect to spend, said Chris Brown. ''It's a big unknown. I honestly haven't added it all up."

Upright again, the Pillar House has attracted a steady stream of visitors. Some, such as former owner Tom Larsen, were invited. A few months ago, the now-retired restaurateur came bearing a charcoal portrait of the original owner, Newton paper mill operator Allan Crocker Curtis, and a skeleton key to a second-floor closet. Both will go into a parlor museum of memorabilia when the work is complete.

Often the family notices cars full of nostalgia-seekers creeping by, craning their necks for a glimpse of the building.

''They are usually a little embarrassed, but just so curious," said Margie Brown, 41, a specialist in historic landscape architecture at the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation in Brookline. ''They say really quickly: 'I used to eat here. Thanks for saving the building,' and jump back into their cars."

One Sunday afternoon, Phil Preston, 67, made an unannounced visit, approaching the house tentatively. ''I didn't know if I'd really stop until I got here," he confessed.

A Newton native who now lives in New Hampshire, Preston was a childhood friend of Walter Taylor, whose family owned the house in the 1940s. He hadn't been inside since he was a small boy. He happily accepted the Brown's invitation to take a closer look.

''Wow, what a project," he murmured, first examining the columns and then the exposed wooden rafters and beams inside. ''I never thought I'd see this place again."

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.