A gem worth the saving

Couple revive Ipswich Colonial and its neighborhood

Grace and Craig Hanson have spent the last four years restoring this house on North Main Street in Ipswich, built circa 1737. (David Kamerman/Globe Staff)

The impact of restoring a historic home doesn't always stop at the property line.

Often it creates change in the neighborhood, as the circa 1737 house on North Main Street in Ipswich.

"Before we renovated it, it almost looked like a tenement house," Grace Hanson said. "It was in very, very bad condition."

Four years after they started their home restoration, Hanson and her husband, Craig, have had an impact on the town's most historic neighborhood.

"We've revitalized the neighborhood, and stabilized the neighborhood as well," said Mat Cummings, the Ipswich-based architect on the project, who specializes in historic homes and has also worked on others nearby. "People can see what their homes could be. They see a piece of what the neighborhood once was, and its beauty."

For that contribution, the Ipswich Historical Commission recently presented the home with the Mary P. Conley Award for Historic Preservation.

The late Conley was once the town historian, and the award is made to promote restoration in Ipswich.

"We try to give it when there's a worthy house," Historical Commission chairman Peter Lampropoulos said. "These are the gems of Ipswich. Once you lose [a historic building], it's gone forever."

Historical Commission member Marjorie Robie, who lives nearby on High Street, said the restoration has added to the charm of an area that features a large number of 100- and 200-year-old homes.

"It's wonderful for the neighborhood because instead of looking at a sad building that has a wonderful history - and is an important part of our collection of early houses - now we have something that looks wonderful and has been made livable for contemporary people, even though it was built 200 years ago or more," Robie said.

When the Hansons purchased the house in March 2004 for approximately $450,000, the house was more than showing its age. Jim Whidden, the master woodworker on the project, recalled from his first inspection of the home that "in some places I was surprised it was still standing."

But the Hansons were lovers of antique homes - they had restored three before, while living in New Orleans - and they understood that restoration of a classic old home means embarking on a journey.

"The original asking price had been somewhere in the $900,000s, and we watched it come down over eight or nine months," said Grace, who said she and her husband made the same offer twice - six months apart - before it was accepted.

"We went in with a blend of purposes," said Grace, an insurance executive. "First, we were very committed to doing it correctly from a historical perspective, but at the same time we're very human and we wanted to have the house be pleasant to live in, to satisfy the needs of a modern home. We felt that someone even 300 years ago would have done that. They would have taken the house and made it what they wanted it to be. We did our best to do that, at the same time as we tried to preserve the historic character of the house."

In fact, Craig Hanson, an archeologist, mentioned that when homes such as this were originally built, they would often add large sections over the years. In the case of this house, some of the additions were taken from houses that were actually built before the original home. One of the fireplaces dates to the 1600s.

Although the town has few restrictions on what an owner can do with his or her historic property, the house included covenants that restrict some changes.

With Cummings, the Hansons worked within those restrictions in creative ways. For instance, they expanded the indoor living space and added a staircase to the upstairs rooms, but they also incorporated the exterior façade into the interior of that new space, an unusual touch.

"The moment I walked into that house, it just spoke to me," Grace said. "I can't even explain it. The house has such a great feeling, and a very modern feeling, even though it's an old house. There are nice spaces, and a kind of openness to it."

Craig Hanson estimated that the family spent close to $1 million on the restoration of the 4,500-square-foot home, and Grace noted that they got a lot of support from people in town, notably the local cooperative bank. The couple is working with interior decorator Will Cady Perkins and Essex antique dealer David Nelligan to furnish it and provide the finishing details, such as exposing some of the wooden beams in the new living space.

There is still work to do on the house, including finishing an apartment in the building, and a wooden stand-alone building on the property that was at one time the oldest cordwainer's (shoemaker) shop in the country. It was given to the Hansons by another family in Ipswich, on the condition they move it. Craig said he and his wife aren't quite certain what it will become.

"Maybe a ping-pong room, maybe a dry goods store," he mused. "We're not sure what we're going to do."