Town halts work on house after facade demolished

Part of Vita Serena a protected Estate Section house once owned by Jean Flagler Matthews has been demolished without town permission, after construction workers uncovered termite damage and rotten wood that threatened the buildings integrity.

The two-story center portion of the front or east-facing wall of the home at 105 Clarendon Ave. was taken down in recent weeks.

On Thursday, building officials ordered all work on the 88-year-old house to stop, a day after Landmarks Preservation Commission chairman Bill Cooley brought the issue to their attention.

It was evidently a life-safety issue, project architect Harold Smith said Friday at the site after an inspection by building officials.

Extensive renovation and expansion plans, including a new loggia and two-story addition, were approved by the Landmarks board in October, two months after auto dealer Chuck Schumacher bought the 1926 Palladian-style house. The house was designed by Marion Sims Wyeth and designated a town landmark in 1990.

Those plans allowed for reconstruction, but not demolition, of the facade.

But structural damage has made it unsafe to preserve all sections of the house, Smith said.

When they went to cut out some openings in the hollow tile, I guess the structure started crumbling, and the contractor determined at that point that that center section just had to come down, safely, Smith said. So, its an unfortunate thing, but its just the condition of the structure.

Problems first arose in January, when he and a colleague told the Landmarks board that newly discovered structural problems would require rebuilding the roof on the eastern side of the house and partially reconstructing the homes western-most two-story portion.

Six months later, Smith and contractor John Rossi returned to the board with news that the southwest corner of the homes main-living area had partially collapsed because of horrible termite damage and deterioration. The collapse compelled the team to rebuild one wall of the new loggia, one wall on the southeast corner of the house, and the stairs, they said.

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Town halts work on house after facade demolished