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Regular readers of this blog may have noted a (perhaps unhealthy) fascination with abandoned places and ruined buildings on my part; past entries have included photographic explorations of the “exclusion zone” surrounding Chernobyl, blighted portions of Detroit which are being reclaimed by nature, the abandoned mines which litter California or creepy deserted Japanese amusement parks.
Now I can add to that list a place close to my own heart: the 18th-century farmhouse that had been in my family since the 1940s, until it was sold to a conservation group a few years ago. I recently returned to the Eastern shore of Maryland to visit family I hadn’t seen in awhile, and also to see what the conservation group had done with the old place. To my great surprise, the answer was nothing. All the furnishings, mirrors, carpets and knickknacks had been removed, leaving the enormous, rambling place eerily barren. I had assumed they would turn the house into an office for the local Department of Natural Resources, as had been mentioned, but no one lived there, and it stood there empty, doors unlocked, slowly crumbling. It was both heartbreaking and enthralling, and I immediately grabbed my camera and began framing shots.
Built more than 200 years ago, it’s been added on to many times since then, giving the whole place a grand — if a bit ramshackle — profile. There were so many rooms in the place that many were rarely used, like this one. It had been used as storage for many years, and apparently before that had been the “servant’s quarters.” (The farm was once an enormous plantation with nearly farmable 1,000 acres; servants were no doubt useful.) By the way, I like that they left the curtains up.
Above: a spot on the attic wall where my late father had scrawled his name as a boy. (An evocative and unsettling discovery, to say the least.)
My mother found this old picture of my cousin — now in her 30s — on top of a radiator in a neglected portion of the attic — one of the only personal items left behind. A little creepy?
This huge, rambling basement isn’t somewhere you want to spend more than a minute or two. Aside from the garter snakes hiding in every crevice, it’s littered with yellowed newspapers from the 70s and bricks fallen from the wall which are returning to dust. But the weirdest thing is the layout: it’s clearly arranged into rooms, several of which have their own fireplaces. Why would you need to heat several rooms of a basement? Same reason those rooms would need chains and ankle cuffs affixed to their walls. That’s right: at one time, Bloomfield Farm was that kind of plantation. (Not while my family owned it, of course. We came from the North, and only moved south of the Mason-Dixon line in the 1940s.) The existence of said slave chains are disputed — two of my aunts swear they’ve seen them, while two of my uncles say they were never there — and despite extensive, creeped-out searching, I didn’t find any.
The cavernous, impossible-to-heat master bathroom. Someone left a bottle of toilet cleaner and a can of hair spray behind. Poison ivy crawls up the outside of the window.
This is happening to a lot of the ceilings. If you hang out in the most affected rooms for long enough, you can hear the wind whistling through the holes. Anybody know a good plaster guy?
This is the never-lived-in third floor attic, which if you look at just the right angle, looks kinda like a face.
You gotta respect the bold color choices. (In fact, it’s a little like my bathroom.)
At least the place has beautiful doorknobs.
Ugly, cookie-cutter housing developments encroach on every side of the farm’s land. If those had sprung up on our property, I think I’d have to ritually disembowel myself.
Just to prove it’s not all decaying, here’s the driveway. Not bad, huh?
If you want to see more, check out my Flickr page.
And if anyone has any bright ideas about how to convince a government agency to spend millions restoring the house you sold them … uh, let me know.
I’m originally from the Western Shore of Maryland, but went to college on the Eastern Shore. I remember driving by some beautiful old farm houses that were crumbling before my very eyes. I found this to be quite a shame. I read, somewhat recently, in the New York Times about a project where private citizens will move into one of these old homes and restore it for the government while living in the house rent free. I think one of the catches was that the home had to be on the National Register of Historic Places, but I could be wrong about that. It might be something to look into if you know anyone that would be interested.
posted by Robin on 10-31-2007 at 8:24 am
I’ve found abandoned houses while exploring the woods around New England from time to time. One, in Alton Bay, NH, still had all the furnishings and everything left in it. There was even an old Victrola and a stack records for it; it looked like somebody just got up and left in the middle of the night. My brothers and I always referred to them as “witch houses”.
posted by Andrew on 10-31-2007 at 9:05 am
Wow, that is such a shame. What exactly are their plans for the estate? Very sad, but very beautiful pictures. I love that purple doorknob.
posted by mrs.djs on 10-31-2007 at 9:22 am
Interesting stuff - I’ve always had a weird gravitation toward abandoned structures. My college had an old dorm on campus that hadn’t been lived in for about thirty years; a couple of us managed to get in one evening and we took about three rolls of film. The college started renovating it the very next year, so in a way we were doing a good deed for the historic record. They completely gutted the old structure, and it’s interesting to think I was among the last to see it in its original state. Also, in retrospect I’m probably lucky I didn’t go crashing through three stories to meet an untimely demise. (Although there aren’t many historians who’ve died in the line of duty, so I suppose there would have been something to say there).
Ransom - don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there’s an excellent fairly recent book called The World Without Us. It’s a sort of speculative science work on how long it would take the environment to reclaim itself in the absence of humans. It’s well written, and parts of it are along the lines of this and some of your other posts.
www.amazon.com/World-Without-Us-Alan-Weisman/dp/0312347294/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-4635023-7671304?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193845320&sr=8-1
posted by Roger on 10-31-2007 at 9:42 am
What a beautiful home. I can almost see what it would have looked like in its heyday.
If I ever hit the big lottery I would love to buy it back from the gov and restore it to its former beauty. Loved it. Thanks
posted by JaneM on 10-31-2007 at 10:32 am
I believe that you should post a piece in the local newspaper regarding the purchase of the home and the fact of it just wasting away. It is indeed a beautiful home, many people in this world are homeless and would love to have a place to lay their heads at night. Seriously, if you approach the company that purchased the home, you can probably buy it back for just pennies on the dollar of what they paid you for it. Something should be done. Its a shame that the beautiful home is wasting away–not to mention the memories it holds for your family and the tax dollars of citizens that was used to purchase the home for no reason.
posted by Lillian on 10-31-2007 at 10:39 am
My god, what a treasure. Ransom — please go win big at the casinos, move in, and restore this thing immediately.
posted by Mary on 10-31-2007 at 11:13 am
Wow, the place is beautiful. I own a 170 year old home myself.
Regarding plaster repair work: it’s frankly not very difficult (even on supposedly hopeless cases). People just have to be willing to take the little effort to learn how. The worst thing possible is when a moron moves in and guts the place, replacing it with garabe drywall, because “the plaster was shot”. Inevitably, they destroy the place forever and fill it with lead dust in the process. Nice work, morons…
Don’t get me started on idiots who replace old windows… also easily restorable and retrofittable to good energy conservation capability.
Hopefully, they are at least maintaining the roof. As long as that is maintained, a house can be largely ignored for years without too much long term damage. Once the roof goes, the building can soon become a total loss. NOTHING is more important that keeping the roof leak free (even if it means temporarily installing something cheap & ugly).
Not to rag on your family (I don’t know the specifics of their situation), but this is what happens when 1 generation “drops the ball” as far as preserving a long time family heirloom. Teach your kids your family history, record whatever you can, and don’t sell off long time heirlooms if at all possible. Once gone, they are gone forever…
posted by Sid Morrison on 10-31-2007 at 12:35 pm
Having worked for MD DNR at one point, I’m aware of a lot of properties that the agency has purchased over the years and never improved. What they really wanted when they made the purchase was the land that the home sits on. While this is a worthwhile effort in and of itself, it is a shame to let such a beautiful home waste away.
It’s sort of the same attitude as the old chicken houses on the Shore that are abandoned and left to go back to the soil from which they sprouted!
Often these properties are rented to State employees, but it would take a lot of salary just to heat that property and none of the State employees I know make that kind of money.
It’s sad, but Sid is right. When you sell it, the buyer gets to do what they want with it. At least it hasn’t been replaced by a strip mall, or condos, like so many other beautiful places on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
posted by Gloria Owens on 10-31-2007 at 2:52 pm
I went to college on the Eastern Shore too, Robin! Where did you go?
Where is this awesome farmhouse located? It is gorgeous. If I had a million plus dollars, I would love to find an old place like this and pour all my love (and new plaster) into it.
posted by Molly on 10-31-2007 at 2:54 pm
Lovely post and pictures, sir. For what it’s worth, those doorknobs are often resold/recycled to folks fixing up their old places. I’m just sayin’. (Of course, if someone eventually plans to save the building, I guess stealing their doorknobs would be sorta mean.)
posted by Higgins on 10-31-2007 at 6:08 pm