At home amid history
Former wax museum converted to luxury condos on Plymouth waterfront
PLYMOUTH - With Plymouth Rock a stone's throw away and what some consider the oldest street in America around the corner, 15 Carver St. in downtown Plymouth is a home with history.
The six-unit, three-story condominium building sits atop Cole's Hill, overlooking Plymouth Harbor and the world famous boulder.
The hill is where the Pilgrims buried their dead in the first winter, when half of the colony died. Carver Street runs into Leyden Street, where the Pilgrims built their first homes.
Three hundred years later, the building at 15 Carver served as a memorial of sorts for the settlers as it housed the Plymouth National Wax Museum. It featured 180 carefully arranged wax figures that told the Pilgrims' story in 26 scenes.
Now it's gone condo.
"This is a unique project," said Jeff Chute of Chute & Payzant Real Estate, the Plymouth broker handling the property.
"There is nothing like this address."
Bob Wollner, a Plymouth builder, and Barrie Young, a retired accountant also from Plymouth, have converted the building into six two-bedroom condominium units, four of which are already sold. The pair is just now putting the finishing touches on it.
Each unit has two bathrooms and a large open kitchen and living room. All of them overlook the Plymouth waterfront and Cape Cod Bay.
"The sunrises are spectacular," said Barbara Heyde, a resident of one of the two third-floor units. "The sunrises alone make it worth living here."
The building also has an outdoor spiral staircase from the third floor to a roof deck where the views are even more stunning. On a clear night, the lights of Provincetown are visible.
The wax museum held up as a small tourist attraction for four decades before falling on hard times and closing in 2004. The animated wax figures of Pilgrims and Native Americans were sold, some to Los Angeles conceptual artist Sam Durant, who used them in an exhibit that has been shown in major US galleries.
Durant, who graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, used the figures to provide a different interpretation of the Pilgrim history than tourists at the museum experienced. He titled one exhibition, "Scenes from the Pilgrim Story: Myths, Massacres and Monuments," and used "doubt-inspiring wax museum scenes," as he called them, to suggest how Native Americans experienced and viewed the Pilgrim history.
Although the building is part of Plymouth's official downtown historic district, it is actually not very old. It was built as a wax museum in 1967 on the former site of a small hotel.
Wollner and Young purchased the property from the trustees of the estate of the former owners in 2006. Since then they have transformed it. They converted what had been two stories into three and renovated the museum's administrative offices in the basement into a 10-space underground parking garage. When it was a wax museum, the building had only 14 windows. Now it has 105.
All of the exterior changes to the building had to be approved by the town's Historic District Commission. To make the building seem more historic, antique touches were added, according to Wollner. He pointed to the keystone trim on the window sill moldings and balconies that look like they are made of wrought iron but are actually of more durable aluminum.
While the building now blends in better with the 18th- and 19th-century structures in the historic district, the developers took advantage of modern building materials and technologies.
The exterior is made of a cement board material that resists peeling or deteriorating despite being next to the water.
"The fact that it is a modern building allows us to use modern materials," Young said. "It makes it an affordable building to maintain."
The units all have hardwood floors - oak on the third floor and Brazilian cherry on the first and second - granite counters in the kitchen, ceramic tile in the bathroom, and in-unit washer and dryer. There is a gas fireplace in each living room.
The units are all about the same size. Of the two that are unsold, one is 1,640 square feet and the other 1,934 square feet. Both are on the first floor and are listed at $699,900.
The building's first residents were Heyde and her husband, Walter, who moved in about a month ago with their two dogs. They are empty-nesters who moved from a larger suburban home in West Plymouth.
Wollner and Young are each taking a unit, and another pair of empty-nesters from West Plymouth, Joe and Joan Gniadek, recently purchased and moved into a second-floor unit.
One block from the building is Plymouth's Main Street, a lively downtown with many restaurants and shops. On Water Street, just below 15 Carver St., are Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower II replica, which attract around a million visitors a year.
In the summer, concerts are held in the park next to the rock, and on July 4, Plymouth Harbor has one of the most popular fireworks displays in Massachusetts south of the Charles River Esplanade.
"This is the hub of town," said Joe Gniadek. "Everything happens here in the summertime."
Added Barbara Heyde, "I love being able to walk to everything. Our goal is to hit all of the restaurants."
Robert Preer can be reached at preer@globe.com.
