Brownie Crumbles
“Brownie’s Castle,” a 330-year-old single-family residence on Academy Hill Road, was torn down in a few hours Jan. 26.
Move the slider in the photo to the left and right in the photo above to see a before and after.
The house was highly visible on the busy road, and its demise triggered an outcry from Valley Indy readers on Facebook and Twitter.
It was one of Derby’s oldest houses, but was privately owned by Evelyn P. Provost.
The house may have been built by Samuel Bowers, the son of one of Derby’s first ministers, according to the Electronic Valley. Dr. John Durand, a physician from France, later purchased the house.
It was nicknamed “Brownie’s Castle” after it was purchased by a man who worked in a Derby bank whose last name was Brown. It wasn’t a castle.
Why Was It Demolished?
“Brownie’s Castle” has been in the Provost family since 1940.
Provost built a new house next to her old salt-box house in 2010, then decided to get rid of the old house because it was crumbling, according to Dominick Thomas, her lawyer. The insurance on the house was set to expire in February because of its poor condition, he said.
Thomas has been representing Provost and her brother for years, and helped her secure demo permits from the city’s building department.
Thomas shared a Jan. 16 email from Amabel Chan of Marvin Gardens U.S.A., a Wilton-based garden center/antiques shop.
The store’s representative had several clients look at the house, including the owner of a saw mill, a person restoring her house, and a general contractor who contacted an architect.
Many floorboards in Brownie’s Castle were not original. Some dated back to the 1800s. Others were installed in 1940, according to the email.
“Many 20th century repairs/renovations have been made to the existing wallboards, floors and ceiling,” Chan wrote.
Chan also noted the basement was moist and the support beams were rotten. Attic beams were filled with powderpost beetles.
“The front wall of the house is in extremely poor condition and (is) literally falling off the building,” Chan wrote.
Restoring the property would have cost upward of $300,000. Moving it somewhere else was also too expensive, Chan wrote.
‘Sad Day’
City officials and John Poole, who is restoring his circa 1750 house on Hawkins Street in Derby, said in recent months they tried to work with Provost to save or salvage the property.
“It’s a sad day,” Mayor Anita Dugatto said after a Derby Board of Aldermen meeting Jan. 28. “We connected Derby Historical Society members to speak with the owner in the hope they could work out an agreement. I knew they were working on an agreement, but when I heard it had been taken down, I assumed they didn’t work it out.”
Thomas said Provost had reached out to the Derby Historical Society several years ago to see if the organization was interested in the property but never heard back.
Thomas said his client talked to Derby City Hall recently about deconstructing the structure and moving it, but the city said it was not possible.
Poole, the local preservationist, said the home’s demise underscores the need for new regulations in Derby.
“Unfortunately, this home had no legal protections as an historic resource,” Poole said in a statement widely circulated on Valley social networks.
“It was not situated within an historic district, nor listed on National or State Registers, nor subject to any preservation easements,” Poole said. “The City of Derby now has some work to do it if it’s serious about conserving its remaining historic building stock, including implementing a demolition delay ordinance, as well as a municipal-wide historic preservation ordinance, similar to the one recently enacted by the City of Milford.”
Click here to read Poole’s full guest column.
Poole and local history buff Randy Ritter left comments at the bottom of this article saying the demolition is a shame, and that the owners were clearly not willing to work with anyone to save it.
Dugatto said she wants to hear more from Poole and the Derby Historical Society.
“Recommendations from the historical society would be great,” Dugatto said.
