Photograph by Robert Scheer
Only the front porch and two walls remain of the home where Hannah McCarty, widow of one of Saratoga's founding fathers, once lived.
By Clarence Cromwell
A decision to rescind the landmark status of a little white house that stood on Lomita Avenue for roughly a century is expected at the March 20 City Council meeting.
Only the porch and two walls remain of the former home of Hannah McCarty. A prominent Saratoga businesswoman and landowner, she was the wife of Martin McCarty, the man for whom McCartysville--now known as Saratoga--was named.
When Mike Ingster bought the house from a McCarty descendant four years ago, he planned to expand it, but hoped to keep as much of the original house as possible. His designers drew up an addition that mirrors the architectural features of the old house.
While planning the addition, Ingster gave up on saving more than the facade and one side of the McCarty house. The city required Ingster to bring the remainder of the building up to current building codes; otherwise, he was told, he would not receive approval for his plans.
But the house was built before the area had building codes and had spent about 100 years rotting.
"Once we tore away the backs of walls, there was no frame there," Ingster said.
The exterior wall framing consisted of one-by-four timbers with clapboards nailed on the outside and lathe and plaster attached on the inside, Ingster said. The timbers would have to be replaced with two-by-fours to meet modern building codes.
The house lacked insulation. Floors sagged, and the wiring didn't meet current codes.
Ingster decided to keep the facade of the house and build his 3,000-square-foot home where the 1,400-square-foot McCarty house used to stand.
"It's costing me more money to do what I'm doing than just to tear down the whole house," Ingster said.
The face of the building, with eight distinctive pillars outlining the porch, is still in place, but behind its five unglassed windows, naked studs of the new building await sheetrock and nails.
Robert Peepari, who was chairman of the Heritage Preservation Commission when it reviewed Ingster's project, voted against the plans. The commission, which reviews projects affecting the city's inventory of historical buildings, ended up approving Ingster's drawings on March 14, 1995 by a 3-2 vote.
The city can't block the project, although the landmark status gives it authority to halt demolition for 30 days. After that, Ingster could, if he wanted to, tear down the entire house.
Eight months after its original vote, the commission sent a letter to the City Council asking it to revoke the house's landmark status.
"The reason we wanted to remove that," Peepari said, "is it wouldn't any longer resemble the original house as far as the architectural details and the size. It no longer had any historical significance."
"It's kind of a dilemma," Peepari continued. "If I voted to approve it, then I felt we weren't protecting the heritage landmarks. What's happening is we're losing more and more all the time."
To rescind the landmark status it gave the house, the council must pass an ordinance to cancel the 1989 ordinance granting landmark status. The process requires a public hearing.
The city has never before revoked the landmark status of a building, nor has a city-designated landmark ever been demolished.
Though history books disagree on the exact date, Hannah McCarty built the little white house about two decades after her husband's death in 1864. The house once sat in the middle of a vineyard; McCarty also owned a commercial building on Big Basin Way.
She was born in Ireland in 1834 and came to the United States in 1852, according to the book Saratoga's First Hundred Years by Florence Cunningham.
Her husband, Martin, was a partner in the local lumber mill and owner of 230 acres of Saratoga land. McCarty built the Toll Road where Big Basin Way now lies and put up a toll gate across it approximately where the intersection of Third Street and Big Basin Way is today. His efforts to name the town after himself were frustrated by the town's nickname of Toll Gate.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, March 20, 1996.
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