That's what I thought when I heard that the landmark stone house built in the 1940s by John Facchin next door to the Kellogg School is on the market for $775,000. (My other thought was that I was hallucinating.) There was an open house yesterday, and the house is much more eccentric (and smaller) than I ever imagined. It is no doubt "special" and has great potential but it will take a special person to buy it and want to call it home.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Are They Stoned Out of their Minds?
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The house actually has a far more complicated history. Underneath all that stone is an old fashioned Falls Village kind of house. The land was once owned by a man named Oscar Sabin, one of four blacksmiths in town more than a hundred years ago. Pat Egan, the most recent former owner, said she used to find metal work around the property--remnants of its blacksmith past. In 1918, it was described on a deed as a “...certain parcel of land with a blacksmith shop thereon standing..." After the blacksmith, there are two deeds of sale on record (one in 1918 for $112.50) before it was purchased by John Faccini (who later changed his name to Facchin) in 1933. Between that time and 1977, when Mr. Facchin was taken from the house, he made many additions and changes to the house and (in my opinion,) transformed the property into something that probably felt much more like his native home of Tramonti di Saptra, Italy. In 1981, the late great Patricia Egan purchased the property for $80,000--and eventually deeded a portion of the land to the town.
Thanks for the great background, Betsy! Dan, I am intrigued by the link you supplied to the realtor's description ("what an amazing deal!)... it says the buyer is also purchasing beachfront and docking rights.
Betsy is right; it MUST have a complicated history!
Actually, if you ever had the opportunity to see the basement of that house in Spring you'd know where the beachfront is and it would be clear where you would put your dock.
The property has a series of canals running through it. Facchin was an amazing stone mason and understood water and its want to flow in a downward direction...and that he lived on a hill... Unfortunately, and I'm speculating here, his original design is not in perfect working order some six decades later.
Facchin actually built a lot of the viaducts up and down Route 7. The stone work around the waterway on the triangle across from the library was built by Facchin... or so I've been told.
John Facchin was an amazing workman. He built the ranch houses directly opposite Kellogg School, singlehandedly. I watched him from my fifth grade classroom, in 1955. He did the basement masonry, framing, roofing, interior work, all by himself in a very short time, working a very long day and with hardly any breaks.
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