Brackets Back, Carbuncles Lanced at Morpurgo House

[caption id="attachment_57584" align="alignright" width="319"] Anthony Vermandois with a bracket from the Morpurgo House. Douglas Feiden photo[/caption]

By Douglas Feiden

It wasn’t exactly show-and-tell, but architect Anthony Vermandois brought a prop to a meeting of the Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review on November 10 to illustrate his plans to restore and salvage the crumbling Morpurgo House.

It was a bracket from the dwelling’s porch, an architectural component, both decorative and structural, which he dates to the period between 1840 and 1870. That bracket, which may once have projected from a corner and been used to bear weight, will soon be going back to where it belongs.

“As you can see, it fell off the house and the paint fell off, but all it really needs is to be sanded and primed and repainted, and it’s good to go,” Mr. Vermandois said. “There’s a lot of features like that in the house, and we want to salvage as much as we can.”

Of course, not all the home’s historical elements can be saved. And though its once-graceful profile on Union Street will return, along with the original look of its western facade bordering the John Jermain Memorial Library, a handful of significant changes are now on the drawing boards.

The three development partners, who purchased the property at auction, are injecting new life into a residence that had been all-but left for dead. They’re also making it habitable and bringing it up to code, and in his presentation, Mr. Vermandois spelled out how he would carry out that ambitious mission:

* Tear off a “one-story carbuncle on the side.” That’s how he described an eyesore he wants to remove to get a small piece of lot coverage back. The extension once housed a little bathroom that jutted out and had served the seven or eight, cubicle-sized apartments that dated from the property’s boarding house days.

* Erect a “second-story bump-out.” That would be a rear addition, in an area where the back wing of the existing house has literally collapsed, which would create more occupiable upstairs space by adding on to the second floor. The back of the house wasn't part of the original building but was added on at a later point.

* Pull down the “rear two or three bays of the wraparound porch.” Mr. Vermandois cited three reasons for what would become the third significant transformation of the home’s exterior:

“We don’t have all the columns,” he said, noting that a few of the columns are still standing, two have fallen down but are still on the site, and two have completely vanished from the property.

“We would also pick up lot coverage by not having that porch,” he added. “And if we’re able to retain part of the foundation —I’m hoping we can — there’s some really nice older foundation wall there, and when we do the re-grading, we might be able to leave some of that exposed.”