By Megan V. Williams
Wilmington, NC – On a weekday afternoon, this little corner of downtown practically seethes with construction: old buildings being refurbished and new ones going up. In the middle of it all, sits John Ganey's yellow house.
Ever since I was a kid I've always been attracted to it. I've just always loved this house.
Ganey bought the century house a decade ago for $100,000. In recent years, he says, he's been offered many times that amount by developers whose lots surround his.
But it's hard to put a price on history as far as I'm concerned. And a lot of people might not agree. The house is not something you can replace. My theory is, eventually the money will be gone and the house will be gone. You won't have anything left. I'd rather see the house stay here. There's rewards in restoring the house and leaving it where it's at, financial and monetary rewards in preserving it.
These days, the big Italianate house at 205 Grace Street is hard to miss. It sits alone in a sea of construction sites and parking lots. It's on the ghost tour, although Ganey's never heard who's supposed to be haunting it. But he does hear a lot of comments from the Cape Fear Community College students who frequently pass by.
College students love it. They've asked me what the future is for it and how they hope it stays here. They really seem to appreciate what our forefathers did and the art, the craftsmanship and the artistic ability they had. They were, I think, artists in their own right.
The house on Grace street is a private conservation battle for Ganey. He's only now getting around to doing the paperwork for a historic designation. But he's committed to restoring as many historic touches as possible, although the building will never again be the single family home it started as.
The building's zoned commercial at this point and Ganey hopes, when the restoration is complete, to rent it as offices, or possibly a jeweler's shop.
Right now the building looks more Jed Clampett than Jacques Cartier. Ganey replaced half the porch with plywood after code enforcement complained. And the other half is crowded with worn-out treasures salvaged from other historic homes. Ganey does try for some homey touches, with lace curtains on the windows and neatly mowed lawn out front. But this house hasn't been a home for nearly 30 years.
Instead, Ganey leads the way into the building's cavernous interior, thick with dust and mildew. Many of the building's internal walls are gone, along with all the plaster. The outside world enters in bright slashes through the bare wood siding. Ganey meant to fix up the place years ago, but unemployment slowed him down. Discouraged, he almost sold the place.
Things got really tight. Did put house for sale and nobody showed any interest in it for six months and I was going to sell it for what was in it. And the day it went off the market, I went to get the keys back and there was somebody really interested in it, but I'd already, things had gotten better and I'd taken it back off the market and still own it.
Since then, the 200 block of Grace Street has joined the North Side building boom in a big way. As he stands on the front porch, Ganey can point to the eight-story condominium development planned on one side of his house. On the other, backhoes push piles of sand around. Construction cranes loom overhead. Ganey says he's excited about the new construction, and although he speaks diplomatically about its developers.
One thing I want to quote is my plans here go back long before they showed up. We're not interfering with either one of our plans. I have plans, too. Mine might not be as grand as theirs in some aspects, but it's still my plans that I've carried on for almost 10 years now.
And what of those developers, who've played such a careful game of monopoly to consolidate much of the rest of the block?
It's going to be uniquely out of place in a block that is completely commercial, according to Todd Toconis, the largest parcel owner.
Toconis says he gave up trying to buy the yellow house more than a year ago. Although Toconis declined to say how much his offer was, he does say he's heard that some went as high as a half-million dollars.
And what he's doing by not recombining that with other properties to make a larger parcel, he's just diminishing the value of his own property. He's fully cognizant of that, he's very happy with that house and I applaud him for sticking to his guns."
Ganey denies it's stubbornness that's kept him clinging to the house, but he says his personality does has something to do with it. More than stubborn, he's just determined to fulfill his plans. Like the house, Ganey says he's a survivor.
Ironically, in the long run, the block's development is the best guarantee of the yellow house's continued preservation. Once the other lots are built out, Ganey's parcel will be too small to build anything else on.
Megan Williams, WHQR News
Additional resources: Librarian and local historian Beverly Tetterton talks about the architectural history of downtown Wilmington, and preservation battles won and lost in the city.