An Ornament of a house

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Looking at it today, one would never suspect that the stately Greek Revival building standing at the corner of Church and Park streets in Belfast was ever anything but a well-kept testimony to the city’s rich past.

For the two Belfast women who took on the task of remodeling the historic home just shy of a year ago, the restoration has been a period of rediscovering the beauty and luster of one of the city’s architectural treasures.

In August 1996, Marla Stickle and Jessica Jahnke bought what is now the Alden House, at 63 Church St. Just nine months later, they opened it up as a fully remodeled bed and breakfast.

Stickle turned in her career as a mental health counselor, and Jahnke her career as an academic dean, for the lives of innkeepers.

“I’m fond of saying that I switched mortarboards for a mortar,” Jahnke says. “It truly was a quality-of-life decision for me. It was time for a change. We love renovating, we love entertaining, so it was a perfect fit.”

The B&B was built in 1840 by Hiram Alden, a prominent man of the city at that time.

“This house was built on a parcel of land that was a plantation of some 40,000 acres,” Jahnke says. “Alden was what I would call a precursor to today’s developers. He spent his adult life selling off parcels of land — and you can see that in the deeds; I found it when I was doing research on the house.

“He was a lawyer and he was a judge, a bank president, a newspaperman,” she says. “He was responsible for the Maine telegraph coming through. And he probably had most of his money in shipping rights.”

“About the only thing he wasn’t was a sea captain,” Stickle adds. “But he didn’t need to be a sea captain, because he owned all the ships,” she says with a laugh.

Having owned and remodeled three homes before the Alden House, Stickle and Jahnke are no strangers to the downsides of gutting and restructuring an old house. Still, the repairs needed for this building were much more extensive than they had anticipated, and at times, the project was a trying one.

“We knew it was run-down, but we didn’t know how badly run-down it was,” Stickle says about the initial inspection. “We knew that we wanted to have our business here, so when we first looked at it, we were looking at it from the point of view of would the space allow us to do what we wanted to do. Things like, `Did it have the necessary charm?’

“And it certainly had the architectural features we wanted. It had the historical significance, which was important to us. It had the characteristics, and we could see through the rubble that they were there. It was just a matter of bringing them out.”

Bring them out they did, but not without a lot of diligence, hard work and focus. More than 2 tons of plaster were removed from the house; doorways were boarded up to create partitions, walls and bathroom space; and walls were torn out and framed in to create doorways.

When the house was completed, Stickle and Jahnke had created a first-class renovation, complete with period furnishings and plentiful with conversation pieces. Of the nine months spent renovating, only about 35 days were used to focus on the furnishings, Jahnke said. Some of the smaller pieces which make the house distinctive, such as end tables and decorative glassware, were purchased at local antique shops. Much of the larger period furniture was obtained from Irish Acres of Ashland, Ky.

“[Irish acres] is just a phenomenal antique place,” Jahnke says. “It’s a huge building, three stories high. It’s like going into a museum. It’s unbelievable. [The owner] buys only from Europe, from estates. So most of [our furnishings] originally came from Europe.

“We did a lot of buying literally over the phone, through descriptions of color and ambiance, and that sort of thing,” she says. “We actually made some decisions from just looking at pictures.”

The first story of their Greek Revival has two parlors, a library, a dining room, a kitchen and one guest bedroom. Most of the furniture in the parlors and the library was obtained from Irish Acres.

A burgundy love seat perfectly accents a bay window in the library, while two matching high-back chairs offer welcoming rest in front of an Italian marble fireplace. A floor-to-ceiling, built-in oak bookcase pleasantly dominates the decor. The bookcase was stripped 20 years ago, but no finish was applied to the wood at that time. When Stickle and Jahnke encountered it, it was badly in need of moisturizing. Now the oak gleams, the simple light brown understating its elegance. Molding in the library is of ornate, plaster-covered wood. Lace curtains provide a delicate finish.

The fireplaces in the north and south parlors are of variegated Italian marble. Stickle and Jahnke replaced the tiles edging the two fireplaces, bringing out their rich coloring, white with black in the north parlor and black with brown in the south parlor. When they purchased the home, the marble was dingy and lackluster, and though they’ve scrubbed and polished endlessly, the two women are still searching for a product that will bring out the true beauty of the stone.

The main focus of the north parlor is a parlor-grand player piano which was built around the turn of the century and which was a gift to Stickle and Jahnke from a close friend. A first-floor guest room is named in honor of this friend, Elizabeth Waller.

As is common with many historical structures, the Alden House was pieced together over time. According to Stickle and Jahnke, the original part of the house was built in 1840. The bay windows and an ell used as maids quarters were added around 1860. The tin ceilings in the dining room and formal parlor were added then, too, reflecting Victorian tastes.

Some time later, shutters were put up on the outside, again reflecting tastes of the time. A birthing room, centrally located between the two chimneys, was converted to a walk-in pantry.

“We’ve been told that the birthing room was something that was typically found in old homes of this size,” Stickle explains. “One person told us that a lot of these old homes that were owned by sea captains were actually occupied by multiple families when the men would go off to sea. The womenfolk would come together and then, therefore, there would be a necessity to have a birthing room, a place designated.

“Given that Hiram Alden wasn’t a sea captain, I’m a little confused as to why they would have had a birthing room, but anyway — they had one,” she says. “And at some point — probably some time in the late 1800s — it was converted to a walk-in pantry. It still has the original tin sink in it.”

The house is equipped with several of the original marble sinks as well. Annie Partridge, a wealthy woman who owned the estate around the turn of the century, had them installed in the home. These marble sinks are now found in several of the guest room bathrooms.

Central to the house’s beauty is the hand-carved cherry newel post and banister of the spiral staircase in the foyer of the inn. Also in the foyer, Stickle and Jahnke made a surprising midwinter find — engraved German silver hardware hinges and knobs on the front and parlor doors. This discovery has proved to be a real show-stopper to those who have paused for a moment to contemplate the architectural details of the house.

“Somewhere around January, we were thinking, `Oh my God, what have we gotten into here?”‘ Stickle recalls. “The whole place was a mess. There wasn’t a room that wasn’t in some stage of demolition at that point. We were just exhausted. We wondered if we’d ever get through this project.

“That’s when Jessie found a can of brass cleaner. … She cleaned it up and came running in to find me. We had no idea we had this kind of hardware, they were so dingy.”

“At that point I said, `We bought a nice staircase and some nice hardware — that’s what we have,”‘ Jahnke says, laughing.

But it’s evident that they have a lot more than that.

On the landing at the top of the inn’s one-of-a-kind spiral staircase, Stickle and Jahnke have created a restful retreat which features a love seat and two matching chairs reminiscent of the Rococo Revival. The deeply grooved, hand-carved cherry mantel with inlaid porcelain tile is found in the Hiram Alden Room on the second floor, and is yet another of the house’s treasures.

All of the guest rooms are charming, each with a unique, warm and welcoming touch. The Emily Alden Room showcases a small collection of antique children’s books in a built-in hutch. The Penobscot Room is elegant with its four-poster bed, crocheted bedspread and antique glassware. The Annie Partridge Room is cool and quiet, with a desk and a journal in which an overnight visitor might write some meditations, as Ms. Partridge may have done.

All in all, Stickle and Jahnke are two in a long line of people who have made their impression on this historical home. Given the relatively short period of time in which they made the dramatic changes in repair and decor, these women have left a mark that most Belfast area residents won’t soon forget.

According to the innkeepers, one key to the spirit of their success has been the support shown by people in the community. With the renovation finally complete, more than 400 people toured their home in an open house at the end of May. Stickle and Jahnke were taken aback with the kindness shown by residents who had watched and were curious about the work they had undertaken during the winter.

“What was really touching about the whole thing was that people genuinely cared about what we were doing,” Stickle says. “They watched the metamorphosis of the place from the outside. They came to the open house things like potted plants from their garden, jams and recipes.”

“People would drive by slowly, watching us throw the plaster out the window,” Jahnke says. “They have been very supportive, very appreciative. We realized that improving the place was being looked at as a community contribution.”

At the open house, one gentleman commented that “his heart sang” the day he drove by and saw that the Alden House sign that had been nailed to the columns on the front of the house had been taken down and put out front.

“Just little comments like that from people,” Jahnke says. “They really surprised us.”

For more information about the Alden House, call 338-