Video: An extraordinary reassembled Pilgrim house, 350 years old
"I travel all over New England, and I don't know of anybody who puts any more time and effort into finding special old properties and restoring them."
That's artist David Bradstreet Wiggins introducing Doug Towle of Gilmanton, New Hampshire, in the first video below. Wiggins isn't exaggerating. The care and love that Towle, now 71, put into his most recent -- and perhaps last -- restoration goes beyond meticulous. And it was at great personal expense, too: He poured more than $2.4 million into it, yet he has had to lower his asking price to $1.5 million.
[Click here to read the backstory and see a slideshow. | Click here to see the listing on Yahoo Homes.]
The centerpiece of the project is a saltbox home built in 1665 and occupied by 12 successive generations of the Farley family in Massachusetts. In recent years, the family sought to sell the land that the house sat on -- but not with the house, which would probably have lowered the land value -- and won legal permission to take the historic saltbox apart and store it.
Towle eventually bought the home and carefully put it back together in Gilmanton, near his workplace. It's now one of the oldest homes standing in America.
You can click here to read more about it and see about three dozen photos. Or you can watch the videos below, which are, appropriately, very highly detailed (that is to say: long) but delightful. They were produced by Geno Geng, a video producer from Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, who talks with people from the area for a local cable show called "What's Going On Around Here?"
