MILTON — Nearly 146 years after German immigrant Joesf Mason built the Mason-Allen House in downtown Milton, the house has been deconstructed and salvaged for wood and other parts.
The Mason-Allen House was a historic landmark on Elmira Street since its inception in 1871. The home remained in Mason’s family until the county purchased it in 1994.
The structure once stood behind the Santa Rosa County Courthouse and faced relocation or demolition while the county mulled possible courthouse expansion. In 2003, resident Christine Walsh decided to purchase the home from Santa Rosa County after the county began seeking bids to have the home demolished.
In 2004, the Blackwater River Foundation partnered with the Santa Rosa Historical Society, the Florida Division of Historical Resources, Main Street Milton and many other community organizations to preserve the home and attempt to keep it in its original location.
In 2006, the BRF proposed to use the home as offices for nonprofit organizations and the Santa Rosa County Veterans Memorial, a site for the downtown farmer's market and as a festival area — a project they called the Heritage Center.
The BRF acquired conceptual drawings of how the center would look once completed, obtained funding to begin the project and gathered volunteers to start restoring the house. However, the idea of the Heritage Center would not become a reality.
“The county decided that it was not going to remain there,” Walsh said. “We had planned that it would be a wonderful 501c3 home… but there were members of the community that thought it was an eyesore.”
In 2008, the county informed Walsh that she would need to relocate the Mason-Allen House for “economical reasons.” Walsh purchased the home for $400 from the county, but she said she spent “an [exorbitant] amount of money” to have it relocated to a parcel of land in Bagdad and on restoration efforts.
“We had attempted to save it [at] its location in Milton, but… we could not bring that into fruition, unfortunately, so it was… moved to Bagdad in an attempt to save it there,” Vernon Compton, spokesperson for the Santa Rosa Historical Society, said. “We were very happy to see that. Our goal is preservation and saving as many of these historic buildings as possible.”
Walsh had the building moved to its new location on Thompson Street in March 2008. The home was split into two 25- by 52-foot sections and a truck transported the pieces on two separate days. The roof of the home was removed to avoid hitting power lines. Valuable elements, such as doors, windows and fireplace mantles were removed from the site for preservation.
Earlier this year, the county informed Walsh that the building would need to be demolished; the building was dilapidated and became a hazard, according to Evan Mitchell, the man whom Walsh hired to deconstruct the home.
“There was a complaint about appearance through code compliance, and it was valid,” Walsh said. “The foundation was built strictly to code; we did everything we could do to code. I invested so much money, and it would take that much again to do what I wanted to do.”
Mitchell and his father recently took the building apart, and they salvaged the pieces to make furniture and other decorative pieces.
“She spent so much money trying to restore it, but the county didn’t really give her the choice,” Mitchell said.
“We are reclaiming most of the parts; it won’t go to waste. We are making furniture out of the wood.”
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: 'We had attempted to save it'