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If you ask Melissa Brassbridge about the house at the bend of Route 1A in Frankfort, she can rattle off the owner’s name, address and phone number from memory, even though he lives in Kentucky. The town clerk knows it by heart because every summer, dozens of tourists and locals stop by the town office wondering about the mansion.
Some ask her if it’s haunted. That’s the rumor, but her answer is always “no.”
Others want to buy it and turn it into a bed and breakfast or a vacation home.
Still others just want to know what happened to the most asked-about house in this neck of the woods.
It’s a long story. And a short one.
“It’s such a big part of Frankfort’s history, and it’s one of the first things you see [when you drive into town],” Brassbridge said. “It’s just kind of sad.”
Architecturally, it’s a stunner, even if its beauty is fading. Built in the Second Empire or “wedding cake” style, the home features curved windows with eyebrows, dental molding, an arched porch, and a granite stair leading to double doors with etched-glass windows.
Though much of the inside has fallen prey to vandals and pigeons, not all is lost. At least one of the Italian marble fireplaces has been cracked, but a flying staircase with a maple banister, wide wooden trim and intricate plaster molding hint at the home’s original grandeur.
“That house is massively built,” said Daniel Harrison of Stockton Springs, a history buff who restored the property in 1988. “It’s extremely ornate. … The cellar is deep enough to play basketball in.”
Franklin Treat, a wealthy shipbuilder, built the home in 1864. The following year, his first wife, Hannah, died. Nearly a decade later, he sold the house to Louisa Peirce and moved to Rhode Island.
For years, the Treats and Peirces lived side-by-side, in the mansion and in what is now known as the Waldo Peirce Reading Room (which was, to make things even more confusing, built by a Treat). As the Treats were known for shipbuilding and lumber, the Peirces were known for their involvement with Mount Waldo Granite Works, which supplied granite for projects as large as the Washington Monument and as small as the foundation of the Treat-Peirce house, which is hand-etched with hundreds of X’s.
The Peirces owned the house until 1926, and after that, it changed hands several times, from the Halls and Welches to the Bigelows, and finally to Harrison, who bought the house in May of 1988.
Harrison had already restored several old Victorians in the area, and he got to work right away on the Franklin Treat house. He stripped the house of its asphalt siding and began repainting the clapboards, which captured the attention of passersby and the local media. Though the paint has since faded to a shade that resembles coffee ice cream, an article in the Waldo Independent describes the colors.
“He settled on sourdough for the clapboards, colony red for the window sashes, cameo rose for the molding around the windows and doors and for the ‘quoins’ – wide boards meant to resemble the cornerstones found in Italian villas – he chose a dark gray,” Tammy Lacher wrote.
Inside, he stripped wallpaper and cleaned things up, but all of the architectural elements were still intact. The doors and their hardware were original. In the bathrooms, he found a copper bathtub and a broken marble-top sink. He can still remember the floors, with alternating strips of walnut and birch, and the butler’s cupboard in the dining room.
As the summer passed, people would stop by and share stories of the house with Harrison – in the 1920s, the owners took in boarders who worked in the quarry, and almost all of the 20 rooms inside had a fireplace or woodstove. As he worked on the house, he collected stories and photographs, historical data and deeds. He clipped articles out of newspapers and saved wallpaper scraps.
When he sold the house, he hadn’t finished the restoration, but he had completed a history of the home. He gave the looseleaf book to the new owners, Virgil and Blanche Nelson, when they closed on the house in December 1988. According to an article in the Waldo Independent, he told the Nelsons, “What you’re paying for is the book. I’m giving you the house.”
He had no way of knowing the story would end there.
Repeated calls from the Bangor Daily News to Virgil Nelson’s home in Kentucky went unanswered, so it’s unclear why the house has been unoccupied for so long.
“His intent was to house his family and his business,” Harrison recalled. “We had the closing in the bank’s office. We left on good terms, on a friendly basis. He said, ‘We’ll see you in the spring.'”
Spring came. Then summer and fall. No one showed up.
Years passed, and Virgil Nelson continued to pay his taxes on time. The grass grew so tall as to become a fire hazard, so the town sent a letter to Nelson’s address in Kentucky. He paid a local man to mow it. In 2000, the town sent another letter, asking for a sinkhole in the back yard to be filled. The problem was remedied, but still, no sign of the Nelsons.
These days, the town’s woes have more to do with vagrants and vandals wandering in and out of the house. Two weeks ago, someone knocked out several wooden balusters and set them on fire inside the house. Many of the windows are broken. The roof leaks. The ell sags. Town officials are exploring the option of having the house boarded up to lower the liability.
“The house isn’t secure,” Brassbridge said. “Kids are in and out all the time. The town needs to make it safe.”
Plenty of people would welcome the chance – not just to make it safe, but to make it shine. Every summer, Brassbridge says, dozens of would-be buyers ask for his phone number and address. So far, the house hasn’t sold.
“From what I hear, they don’t hear back from him or they give up,” Brassbridge said. “Which is too bad, because a house should be lived in.”
Kristen Andresen can be reached at 990-8287 and kandresen@bangordailynews.net. Special thanks to Ernestine “Pat” Lewis of Frankfort, who assisted with the research for this story.
Franklin Treat house
Age: Built in 1864
Original owner: Franklin Treat, a shipbuilder
Current owner: Virgil Nelson of Maysville, Ky.
Stories: Three, plus a basement deep enough to play basketball in.
Rooms: 20
Cool features: Hand-carved X?s in the granite foundation, curved windows, marble fireplaces, flying staircase
Address: Route 1A, Frankfort
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