Anyone who drives down Shore Road in Port Washington cannot deny the grave risk the Baxter House is currently facing.
As noted in recent media coverage, the house is over 300 years old and is willfully being neglected by its owner, who lives elsewhere, because she wishes to demolish the house and build something else.
The loss of a historic house is irreversible.
Once the bulldozers arrive, there is no going back.
We can tell our children that we used to have a home whose owner fought alongside George Washington, that quartered Hessian troops during the Revolutionary War, but we let it be torn down because that’s what one person wanted and no one else felt like speaking up.
Knocking something down and destroying it and then replacing it with a “replica” is never just as good as the original, particularly where, as here, the proposed plans are quite vague and give the owner wide latitude to do what she wants when and if she rebuilds.
If you were getting married in your mother’s antique lace wedding gown and someone offered to replace it with a replica, would you consider that to be the same as the original? I doubt it.
To propose rebuilding a copy of a house built in the 17th century in exactly the same manner as the original with the same materials is bogus.
Does anyone seriously expect Ms. Wu to be able to find colonial craftsman who would nail together a duplicate house using the same techniques and care that were used to build the original house when it was built in the late 1600s? The idea is just plain silly.
We must to stop treating our historical buildings like they are some sort of renewable resource that will just grow back again even though we knock them down.
Little by little all of these buildings are disappearing. Once they are all demolished, our local history goes with them.
The Landmarks Commission will be holding a hearing in February (a date has not yet been set) to determine the fate of the Baxter House.
For those who would like to try to save the house, you can help by sending a note to SavetheBaxterHouse@gmail.com<mailto:SavetheBaxterHouse@gmail.com>, finding the group on Facebook (SavetheBaxterHouse) or writing a letter to Save the Baxter House, PO Box 937, Port Washington, N.Y. 11050.
It is not yet too late to save the house, but soon it will be.
Imagine the Baxter House restored to its former grace and beauty — or driving by another bland, anonymous suburban building in its place.
We can have a town that embraces history or bulldozes it.
It is up to you.
Alison Kent-Friedman
Port Washington
