My First B&E

All my life (okay, since I was nine) I wanted to get into this house. My camera phone doesn't do it justice, but when I was a young kid running around in the woods at the end of my street, It seems like a mansion. Something about it was mysterious but approachable, and I always had the secret desire to peek inside. It wasn't always in this state of disrepair. In it's glory days, it had a perfectly manicured lawn and smoke from a warm fall/winter fire billowing out of the chimney. 

The house sits on a nine-acre estate with another farm house and was owned by the late Judge John E. Holt-Harris. It's been uninhabited for quite some time, and both time and weather have taken their toll on this once stoic residence in the woods. 

Well, the university near my parent's home recently purchased the estate and with that, they are demolishing the homes (there's a barn house on the estate as well.) Upon hearing the news, I saw my childhood dream of sneaking a peek inside, flash before my eyes. So I did what any law abiding citizen might do, I planned a little B&E (breaking and entering, for all of you squares.) 

I won't go into the logistics of the "breaking and entering" so as not to self incriminate, but what I will say is that I caught wind that the local fire department had been granted permission to practice search and rescue and begin interior demo. I SO wish that I had this brilliant idea prior to the interior demo, but unfortunately, that's not how it went down. 

Here are some photos I took while snooping around. While it might look like something out of a horror flick at this point in time, I could appreciate what this residence would have been like in its heyday. The great room with the gigantic fireplace, adjacent to the three season room with windows all around, a wood-paneled piano room with built-in bookshelves. I can only imaging the sunlight flooding through the huge living room windows on a spring morning, sitting in a big leather chair with and a cup of coffee and a good book in hand. If only I could turn back time, win the lottery, buy the property, restore it and bring it back to it's full potential... 

Alright that's enough of my daydreaming, check out more photos below. 

Guys, the hardwoods... honestly, the amount of money in this flooring alone and it's in perfect condition... someone needs to get in there and salvage this place.

This is what a lot of the ceilings looked like. Time, moisture and humidity had lead to peeling and dangling paint throughout the home.  

The creepiest deep freezer to ever exist. No, I did not have the courage to look inside...

I think the most surprising thing about this exploration was the amount of personal "stuff" still in the house. I couldn't believe the clothes, shoes, paperwork, books, etc. that still remained there. In my mind ,all of that would've been cleared out years prior, but no, it just sat there... waiting. I found the uncontrollable urge to grab some pieces of history from this place, just so that after the building was gone there would be more than just faint memories. I found some old photos, some art, I grabbed a few leather bound books and an old liquor bottle. None of these things are worth anything, but for some reason taking them, instead of leaving them behind to be crushed, destroyed and shoveled into a dumpster, seemed like the best plan. Here's a toast of cognac to my first successful B&E. 

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