April 2, 2004

Razing the roof

       Even though people who worked on his house told him it was possible, Lowell Nichols never put his home of more than 20 years on the National Register of Historic Places.  Now he wishes someone could buy the home on Bluff Road in Greenwood and move it to safety.  As new housing developments go up every day in White River Township, the old house at 775 N. Bluff Road is one of the few older homes still standing, until the end of the month.  Mount Pleasant Christian Church, the current owner of the house, has donated it to the White River Township Fire Department.  The department will burn the house down at the end of the month to give firefighters a hands-on training experience.  “I just think it’s a shame,” Nichols said. “It’s an old house. It’s got a lot of history, and instead of burning it down, someone ought to move it somewhere else.”  Nichols sold the house and surrounding land to Mount Pleasant about six years ago after his health began to decline and he and his wife decided to travel.  The church owns about 50 acres on Bluff Road, and officials are still trying to decide how the land will be used.  But one decision has been made.  The house on the property is too old and expensive to keep up, and donating it to the fire department is a way of serving the community, said Alan Baumlein, executive pastor at Mount Pleasant.  In the past, the church’s ministry interns have lived in the house, but Baumlein said it no longer wants to invest money in the structure.  “Sooner or later, if we decide to do anything there (on the land), it would have to come down anyway,” he said.  While Baumlein sees donating the home to the fire department as community service, Nichols said preserving the history of what he thinks may be one of Johnson County’s oldest homes would be good for the community.  According to Nichols’ research, the house was built in 1859, but the county assessor’s office merely lists the home as “old,” which means it was built before 1930.  The 3,354-square-foot home also is graded by the assessor’s office as being in average condition.  The grade is based on how a home was built, including what type of wood, windows and flooring were used. A prefabricated home is also given an average grade.  To Nichols, the house has many features that are not just average.  A white oak and walnut staircase built from wood on the property is one of many gems in the home Nichols and his wife spent years restoring, he said.  Had they chosen to remove the aluminum siding and paint the house, they could have registered it as historic, but keeping up with painting every few years was too expensive, Nichols said.  No one has lived in the house for about eight months.  “We’ve come to a point where it’s cost prohibitive to maintain the house,” Baumlein said. “We thought giving it the fire department was a great opportunity to serve the community.”  See related story by clicking HERE.

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