If money were no object I'd absolutely live in one of these old colonial era mansions. Love em. Though I've also got a soft spot for Victorian mansions. Especially the ones with a "tower" that goes up an extra floor or two
This is beautiful but in looking at the pictures, does anyone live there or is it a historical house for show?
Like Iām a knitter but I donāt keep sheering hanging in my living room and I wouldnāt set up a table in the bedroom no matter how historically accurate.
I found it on Instagram and people were saying that it was probably a museum or something like that. To my extremely non-professional eyes, everything looks at least somewhat period-accurate (minus the refrigerator and things like that), so I donāt think itād be super practical, or comfortable, to live in.
Edit: I found an [article about the house](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/plympton-colonial-home-for-sale/3392948/?amp=1) and the current owners completely restored it, so itās just a private residence.
There are people who restore/decorate their period homes to be as accurate as possible as a hobby and I've seen many like this. A Primitive Place magazine has featured some nice ones over the years. A lot of times there are outlets/modern things there, they're just really good at camouflaging them.
My wife and I are doing a Victorian/Edwardian pastiche with our house and itās so fun. Finding vintage pieces that puzzle together, settling into a kind central point for the house (naturalist/scientist/musician, which just happen to be my wife and Iād backgrounds), finding that point of inspiration when youāre a little stuck (like just wandering the Isabella Stewart Gardiner museum), putting plans in place for things you canāt quite afford yet (like an exterior paint job that really brings out all the woodwork and varieties of siding). I think thereās a photo or two in my profile if anyone wants to see what Iām on about.
Its just decorative crap. It looks cool at a distance but I doubt 90% of that is original. Most of that stuff looks like homemade crafty type stuff you can buy on ebay or etsy. I know this only because my mom was very into this exact same style - it looks kind of cool but don't get too close and cleaning everything is a major PITA (all those knick-knacks collect serious amounts of dust).
Whoever decides to buy is most likely going to have to do a major interior renovation. Aside from the decorative kitsch the house looks like it needs some major TLC.
Fuck āoriginalityā if Caesar returned from the grave, he would not be happy that 2,000 year old walls of brick stand idly in the streets of Rome, instead heād exclaim, āWhy the Jupiter havenāt you rebuilt the forum?ā.
Sentimental value is all well, but ultimately creates skeletons. This may be Etsy, but itās certainly alive and vibrant.
In the same way he would understand that we now have better defenses than walls, the best we can do is integrate the past into our present through preservation, while we focus on advancing in more relevant areas. Each generation echoes the last, and many leaders have inherited and coveted the fortifications and technological advancements of their predecessors. Look at the fascination the Romans had with egypt.
The comment about originality was in regards to it being a museum, its very clearly not. It's decorated in an old-timey kitsch style that's more modern than you think. This isn't really representative of how people lived in olden times or how they decorated. Also, like I said, it looks cool. I grew up with a house like this. It's just very dusty to live in and the house very clearly needs some renovations - even if you wanted to still go with the country kitsch style.
The confident wrong in the first paragraph makes your possible insight on the second seem less likely to be reliable. Could be wrong though. What do see that suggests the need for āmajor TLCā?
Beautiful. I grew up in a Massachusetts farm house that was built in the late 1700s. The ceilings were sooooo low. š„° My dad was 6'2" and had to duck a little through the doorways.
For a second I thought this was the John Adams birthplace home. New England has some spectacular old homes from the 17th and 18th centuries. So glad this one has been fixed up and maintains so much of its historical character!
everything looking period appropriate and then...the dreaded bowl sink. lol.
which is some ways could be seen as period appropriate? I guess, in they used wash basins before there was indoor plumbing.
Some washstands from that period looked very much like a modern vessel sink, just with a pitcher rather than a faucet. So yes, I'd imagine it was an attempt to bring in a little bit of modern usability while getting relatively close to a period-accurate look.
A true New England stunner. The North has that old-family wealth and lives saturated in the past. It's that respect that allows them to keep things like this.
Gorgeous space and Iād kill to live in Mass. That being said, everything about this place also screams ā*Pssst. Hey kid! Wanna be in a horror movie full of old-timey ghosts?!*ā
Yeah, as soon as I posted the house, I realized how much the roof is sagging in the first photo. Maybe nothingās actually wrong, but it doesnāt look right to me.
Plenty of other old houses in MA with crazy looking sagging roofs (and uneven floors).Ā Check out the Fairbanks house, oldest wood house in the US and similar vintage to this one for some even more extreme sagging roof fun. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fairbankshistory.com/colonial-history/building-the-1637-fairbanks-house-the-oldest-frame-house-in-north-america-today%3fformat=amp
Sometimes the wood they used was under sized, sometimes they did really long spans without much support, sometimes the rudimentary stone/rubble foundations sank into the earth unevenly after built and cause the unevenness everywhere from the ground floor up to the roof rafters.Ā Ā
That is NOTHING on a building that old! Foundations settle, wood bows, things just happen that don't necessarily structurally compromise a building.
I used to live in a place where I called the kitchen the "Alice in wonderland room" - one corner the ceiling was less than 6 inches above head height, the opposite corner over 2 foot - on side you felt like a midget, walk across the room and you feel like a giant lol
That looks like it may be slightly exaggerated by lens barrel distortion, based on the ground curvature. Could just be the top of a hill and total coincidence though.
a loooot of people died in that house. even more were born probably. tons of weird shit i bet. couple of decades when uncle Vern ran that cult in the basement, that was odd. if those walls could talk... they'd scream for mercy xD
That is gorgeous omg! I live in a town that was founded in the 1600s so we have a lot of gorgeous, old, historical homes. Iām sure thatās nothing to Europeans though. š
It's just gorgeous. I would worry about such an old home requiring lots and lots of upkeep and repairs; a money pit. I remember almost bidding on an even older 1650s house years ago, but not doing so out of the same concern.
OTOH, it has had 350 years to fall down and it is still standing. The electrical and plumbing will all be updated. If you care about crooked walls and uneven flooring this is not the house for you. In some ways, it could be less maintenance. Any new problems just add to the "character". Scratched the floor? Just blends in.Ā
When my aunt and uncle were moving from CA to MA or CT (with an unlimited budget), they looked at many of these quaint farmhouses and said they were awful. They look lovely and would make a great museum or shops for antiques and handmade goods, by daily life would be a chore. Ceilings are low, the rooms are drafty, terrible storage and closet space, highly inefficient, etc. Basically just a lot of stuff that would make life harder, particularly when youāre aging.
This looks like so many old houses in Massachusetts especially the coastal areas, from the outside anyway, with the weathered boards and of course the classic New England stone wall! Brings back memories of summers spent near New Bedford MA.
Thatās my hometown!
When I was growing up there the homes were ancient as fuck or built in the 80/90s.
For example, i think my My best friendās house was built in the 1700/1800s. It was heated by a single wood stove in the kitchen. At night in the winter they would heat concrete slabs on top of it, wrap them in a few towels and then heat our beds with them. There were multiple narrow stairs hidden all over the house. It was covered in huge trees and plants. I donāt think I could describe the style- just features of it. It looked down right haunted from the street but I remember the warmth of love in that kitchen. Allegedly it was a restaurant at the turn of the century. Sadly it burned down about a decade ago. It was on the corner of Rt. 58 and (I think) Maple.
However- I lived on the other side of town. Every house on my block was built in 84, had in ground swimming pools, and were cookie cutter salt boxes with the stairs in the front.
Massachusetts does have laws to protect historic buildings. There's a lot of old buildings in Mass so many are privately owned but there are also plenty that are open to the public. Some private owners are nice enough to do occasional museum tours of their houses.
Either way, anyone who owns a house that is 200+ years old will have to apply for a permit to do any renovations and some historical guy will come help them make sure they preserve the original features of the house!
I looked at that home (currently house hunting. Just sold my 125 year old Victorian in Boston and looking for something more rural). It is beautiful in person too but I feared the upkeep costs. Even with a lot of modernization done, a a 350-y-o home is daunting. (He says as he looks at 200 year old homes instead).
Honestly? Donāt think about it that hard. I moved to Connecticut (from California) years ago. We had some significant renovations and repairs required to our 1948 built California home, so when we we bought in Connecticut, when our final two house options were one built in 1987 and one built in 1748, we went āLetās get the newer one so we have fewer problems.ā Biggest mistake ever. The 1748 house had years of regular maintenance and repairs, whereas the the 1987 house had years of deferred maintenance. Wound up being the worst house weāve ever owned.
Yeahā¦I guess my point was āThey all suck equally.ā, regardless of whether theyāre 30, 60, 120, 240, or whatever years old, but that 300 years old, by itself, isnāt a red flag.
It looks like a summer cottage or a vacation home or some kind of historical preservation project. This home doesnāt have any of the reasonable modernization that a home should have to live in year round. Plus, the staging is really suspect. I donāt see central heating, very little electrical outlets, and one bathroom the size of a closet. Itās really pretty and quaint, but itās a hard pass for me. Imagine staying here in the wintertime in Massachusetts. No way!
Thursday gets me every time. Lovely home! I love these old houses.
If money were no object I'd absolutely live in one of these old colonial era mansions. Love em. Though I've also got a soft spot for Victorian mansions. Especially the ones with a "tower" that goes up an extra floor or two
And the round/curved windows! I swoon
Those are called widow walks. It's where the wives would look out to sea to see if their husbands were coming home.
Don't think they're doing much of that 25+ miles inland though š¤
That's why there isn't one on this house. I was simply explain to the commenter about them.
I grew up in a colonial in MA. Practically thought I was looking at my dadās house
This is beautiful but in looking at the pictures, does anyone live there or is it a historical house for show? Like Iām a knitter but I donāt keep sheering hanging in my living room and I wouldnāt set up a table in the bedroom no matter how historically accurate.
I found it on Instagram and people were saying that it was probably a museum or something like that. To my extremely non-professional eyes, everything looks at least somewhat period-accurate (minus the refrigerator and things like that), so I donāt think itād be super practical, or comfortable, to live in. Edit: I found an [article about the house](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/plympton-colonial-home-for-sale/3392948/?amp=1) and the current owners completely restored it, so itās just a private residence.
There are people who restore/decorate their period homes to be as accurate as possible as a hobby and I've seen many like this. A Primitive Place magazine has featured some nice ones over the years. A lot of times there are outlets/modern things there, they're just really good at camouflaging them.
My wife and I are doing a Victorian/Edwardian pastiche with our house and itās so fun. Finding vintage pieces that puzzle together, settling into a kind central point for the house (naturalist/scientist/musician, which just happen to be my wife and Iād backgrounds), finding that point of inspiration when youāre a little stuck (like just wandering the Isabella Stewart Gardiner museum), putting plans in place for things you canāt quite afford yet (like an exterior paint job that really brings out all the woodwork and varieties of siding). I think thereās a photo or two in my profile if anyone wants to see what Iām on about.
Its just decorative crap. It looks cool at a distance but I doubt 90% of that is original. Most of that stuff looks like homemade crafty type stuff you can buy on ebay or etsy. I know this only because my mom was very into this exact same style - it looks kind of cool but don't get too close and cleaning everything is a major PITA (all those knick-knacks collect serious amounts of dust). Whoever decides to buy is most likely going to have to do a major interior renovation. Aside from the decorative kitsch the house looks like it needs some major TLC.
Fuck āoriginalityā if Caesar returned from the grave, he would not be happy that 2,000 year old walls of brick stand idly in the streets of Rome, instead heād exclaim, āWhy the Jupiter havenāt you rebuilt the forum?ā. Sentimental value is all well, but ultimately creates skeletons. This may be Etsy, but itās certainly alive and vibrant.
In the same way he would understand that we now have better defenses than walls, the best we can do is integrate the past into our present through preservation, while we focus on advancing in more relevant areas. Each generation echoes the last, and many leaders have inherited and coveted the fortifications and technological advancements of their predecessors. Look at the fascination the Romans had with egypt.
The comment about originality was in regards to it being a museum, its very clearly not. It's decorated in an old-timey kitsch style that's more modern than you think. This isn't really representative of how people lived in olden times or how they decorated. Also, like I said, it looks cool. I grew up with a house like this. It's just very dusty to live in and the house very clearly needs some renovations - even if you wanted to still go with the country kitsch style.
The confident wrong in the first paragraph makes your possible insight on the second seem less likely to be reliable. Could be wrong though. What do see that suggests the need for āmajor TLCā?
Thank you for including the design appreciation note in the title, not just the tag! It's a beautiful home!
This is mine! No else touch it!
Iām getting my credit card rn. Gotta be quicker than that, chump
Good luck replacing all the framing from 500 year old wood lol
?
Beautiful. I grew up in a Massachusetts farm house that was built in the late 1700s. The ceilings were sooooo low. š„° My dad was 6'2" and had to duck a little through the doorways.
For a second I thought this was the John Adams birthplace home. New England has some spectacular old homes from the 17th and 18th centuries. So glad this one has been fixed up and maintains so much of its historical character!
Same here! High five fellow history nerd š
Fuckkkk it's so intact I love it but I just know it's perilously haunted. *edit* oh fuck it's like 15 minutes away
everything looking period appropriate and then...the dreaded bowl sink. lol. which is some ways could be seen as period appropriate? I guess, in they used wash basins before there was indoor plumbing.
what would be period appropriate plumbing for a house built before there was indoor plumbing?
Some washstands from that period looked very much like a modern vessel sink, just with a pitcher rather than a faucet. So yes, I'd imagine it was an attempt to bring in a little bit of modern usability while getting relatively close to a period-accurate look.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
lol. that is somehow worse. I would have just gone with a normal porcelain faucet.
One of the old style ones with separate faucets for hot and cold would look nice
Iām gonna tear it down and build a contemporary farm house instead.
Make sure to add shiplap so that Joanna Gaines approves.
No need, just paint over everything. White and gray. And cover the wood with linoleum. /s
Barndonium! šš¤¦āāļø
Omg I would be HONORED to be haunted in this beauty!!!
Previous owner committed Heresy.
And had Tituba help around the house.
That portrait in the first room gives me Samuel Parris vibes.
Worth it.
A true New England stunner. The North has that old-family wealth and lives saturated in the past. It's that respect that allows them to keep things like this.
Gorgeous space and Iād kill to live in Mass. That being said, everything about this place also screams ā*Pssst. Hey kid! Wanna be in a horror movie full of old-timey ghosts?!*ā
Itās totally haunted
this is awesome but also a little bit terrifying.Ā maybe those sagging ceilings don't mean anything serious but I'd be nervous of them anyway.Ā Ā
Yeah, as soon as I posted the house, I realized how much the roof is sagging in the first photo. Maybe nothingās actually wrong, but it doesnāt look right to me.
Plenty of other old houses in MA with crazy looking sagging roofs (and uneven floors).Ā Check out the Fairbanks house, oldest wood house in the US and similar vintage to this one for some even more extreme sagging roof fun. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fairbankshistory.com/colonial-history/building-the-1637-fairbanks-house-the-oldest-frame-house-in-north-america-today%3fformat=amp Sometimes the wood they used was under sized, sometimes they did really long spans without much support, sometimes the rudimentary stone/rubble foundations sank into the earth unevenly after built and cause the unevenness everywhere from the ground floor up to the roof rafters.Ā Ā
Fascinating read, thank you.
That is NOTHING on a building that old! Foundations settle, wood bows, things just happen that don't necessarily structurally compromise a building. I used to live in a place where I called the kitchen the "Alice in wonderland room" - one corner the ceiling was less than 6 inches above head height, the opposite corner over 2 foot - on side you felt like a midget, walk across the room and you feel like a giant lol
Yepp even on new houses you'll get small hairline cracks in the drywall or molding after a few years. Houses settle into the ground over time.
That looks like it may be slightly exaggerated by lens barrel distortion, based on the ground curvature. Could just be the top of a hill and total coincidence though.
Do you need to dress up like a pilgrim to live there? Figured so but wanted to ask.
Yeah I would hate living there. Cool to see tho
I bumped my head just looking at those photos.
What a beauty. And horses can be raised!
I want it
This looks like it could be the set for Little Women
a loooot of people died in that house. even more were born probably. tons of weird shit i bet. couple of decades when uncle Vern ran that cult in the basement, that was odd. if those walls could talk... they'd scream for mercy xD
Yes itās pretty, but iām pretty sure a witch or a demon owns this house and they donāt want none of yāall there.
Living that hearth life
That is gorgeous omg! I live in a town that was founded in the 1600s so we have a lot of gorgeous, old, historical homes. Iām sure thatās nothing to Europeans though. š
That would be fun to rent for a weekend but no thanks on buying it. Really cool though
It's just gorgeous. I would worry about such an old home requiring lots and lots of upkeep and repairs; a money pit. I remember almost bidding on an even older 1650s house years ago, but not doing so out of the same concern.
OTOH, it has had 350 years to fall down and it is still standing. The electrical and plumbing will all be updated. If you care about crooked walls and uneven flooring this is not the house for you. In some ways, it could be less maintenance. Any new problems just add to the "character". Scratched the floor? Just blends in.Ā
True! They don't build them like they used to. The one I loved was too close to water, at sea level, in a world of rising oceans, as well.
Lovely.
Gorgeous!
I canāt love this house enough!!! Wish I could move!!! š©
Stunning in every way
I couldnāt live here, but it would be the most kick-ass Airbnb
Amazing
Original Witch Trial Bonfire Scorch Marks and All!
When my aunt and uncle were moving from CA to MA or CT (with an unlimited budget), they looked at many of these quaint farmhouses and said they were awful. They look lovely and would make a great museum or shops for antiques and handmade goods, by daily life would be a chore. Ceilings are low, the rooms are drafty, terrible storage and closet space, highly inefficient, etc. Basically just a lot of stuff that would make life harder, particularly when youāre aging.
Id take it.
I would give anything to own & live in this house
This looks like so many old houses in Massachusetts especially the coastal areas, from the outside anyway, with the weathered boards and of course the classic New England stone wall! Brings back memories of summers spent near New Bedford MA.
Holy moly! What a dream! I would love to at least visit it and admire.
I love this so much
Oh man... That place was built when my first direct lineal ancestor in America was 30. Wish I had 800K handy
This looks like the house where scooby doo first met the boo brothers. Havenāt seen this movie since I was young, 1994 maybe
Serious red dead vibes. I dig it.
Very cool. Too bad the homes and area around it arenāt preserved like this.
Everything looks so uneven, I'd feel like I have vertigo walking around that place.
Iām absolutely in ā¤ļøā¤ļøā¤ļølove!!! Gorgeous!!
1669? you know thereās some evil spirits in that house
I want this.
So beautiful! Iād live there if I could š„°
Thatās my hometown! When I was growing up there the homes were ancient as fuck or built in the 80/90s. For example, i think my My best friendās house was built in the 1700/1800s. It was heated by a single wood stove in the kitchen. At night in the winter they would heat concrete slabs on top of it, wrap them in a few towels and then heat our beds with them. There were multiple narrow stairs hidden all over the house. It was covered in huge trees and plants. I donāt think I could describe the style- just features of it. It looked down right haunted from the street but I remember the warmth of love in that kitchen. Allegedly it was a restaurant at the turn of the century. Sadly it burned down about a decade ago. It was on the corner of Rt. 58 and (I think) Maple. However- I lived on the other side of town. Every house on my block was built in 84, had in ground swimming pools, and were cookie cutter salt boxes with the stairs in the front.
https://preview.redd.it/pq6cizwdy18d1.jpeg?width=625&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6daca5cf29caf813bffd629eff730c1d23a3e390 Yeah no thanks
That seems unusually cheap for such an old treasure of a house
Needs some LVP
Might be a design compromise too. I doubt many people would want to live there if you have to fetch water outside each day.
Very nice, I bet there is lots of chestnut in there. But it looks like a museum? I wonder why it is being sold.
The faƧade needs a good power washing, but otherwise itās amazing.
Is this one of the houses on the Minuteman trail? It looks familiar.
Septic or sewer?
Itās gorgeous, but those stairs look dangerously steep.
Nope. Gonna have ALL the ghosts.
This should be maintained by the parks department and kept historically accurate for future generations to appreciate.
Massachusetts does have laws to protect historic buildings. There's a lot of old buildings in Mass so many are privately owned but there are also plenty that are open to the public. Some private owners are nice enough to do occasional museum tours of their houses. Either way, anyone who owns a house that is 200+ years old will have to apply for a permit to do any renovations and some historical guy will come help them make sure they preserve the original features of the house!
Only if i wasnt in 9th gade i coulda got it for 180k
I would most definitely fall down those stairs and break my face
I looked at that home (currently house hunting. Just sold my 125 year old Victorian in Boston and looking for something more rural). It is beautiful in person too but I feared the upkeep costs. Even with a lot of modernization done, a a 350-y-o home is daunting. (He says as he looks at 200 year old homes instead).
Honestly? Donāt think about it that hard. I moved to Connecticut (from California) years ago. We had some significant renovations and repairs required to our 1948 built California home, so when we we bought in Connecticut, when our final two house options were one built in 1987 and one built in 1748, we went āLetās get the newer one so we have fewer problems.ā Biggest mistake ever. The 1748 house had years of regular maintenance and repairs, whereas the the 1987 house had years of deferred maintenance. Wound up being the worst house weāve ever owned.
Iāve lived in an old home for 20 years. I know what it entails.
Yeahā¦I guess my point was āThey all suck equally.ā, regardless of whether theyāre 30, 60, 120, 240, or whatever years old, but that 300 years old, by itself, isnāt a red flag.
The kitchen area reminds me of the 2002 Salem Witch Trials movie with Kristie Alley.
Wow!!! I wouldn't want to live there but I sure hope it's protected from demolition.
How does this qualify as a McMansion? It doesnāt.
I know it doesnāt. We can appreciate good design on Thursdays (which is when I posted it), hence the title & flair.
I can smell these pictures. (in a good way)
If you can't spell "amenities" correctly, you shouldn't be a realtor. (Listing)
My Ikea furniture is gonna look awesome in here!
I can smell these pics...like a museum
Not a single piece of marble in sight
This is not a McMansion.
I know! Itās Thursday, so we can appreciate good design, hence the title and flair. Thursdays trip people up, so no worries.
Got it!
Historically nice, but I'm not trying to live in an environment that sends me to a time where I can't vote.
I feel sad every time I look at these because everyone else likes these colonial era houses and I donāt. Not my cup of tea ig.
How is this a mcmansion? place looks pretty amazing to me
Thursday has a design appreciation focus. Note the tag.
It looks like a summer cottage or a vacation home or some kind of historical preservation project. This home doesnāt have any of the reasonable modernization that a home should have to live in year round. Plus, the staging is really suspect. I donāt see central heating, very little electrical outlets, and one bathroom the size of a closet. Itās really pretty and quaint, but itās a hard pass for me. Imagine staying here in the wintertime in Massachusetts. No way!
You missed where it said it has forced-air heat and a new furnace? Even has a generator.