Avalon Home (c. 1895) Moved, Spared from Wrecker’s Ball

AVALON – The Victorian house on Sixth Street has had only four owners in its 123-year history. The Dean family that owned the home from 1955 to 1996 is working to preserve the historic structure from demolition. 
The Queen Anne-style home was built in 1895 by an early Avalon developer and part-time borough official, George W. Kates.
Queen Anne architecture features “steeply-pitched, irregular roof shapes; dominant, front-facing gable; patterned shingles, bay windows, picturesque massing, polychromatic and decorative ornamentation; partial or full-width porches of one story; multiple gables and dormers; occasional towers and turrets, rounded or square. Differing wall textures are their ‘hallmark.’ This is the most eclectic style of the Victorian era,” according to the website architecturalstyles.org.
The house sits at the northern end of Seven Mile Island following the loss of at least three streets to storms that reclaimed them to the sea. The home affords views of Townsend’s Inlet.
Eleven years ago, the house fell on hard times. The owner who bought the property from the Dean family as part of an estate settlement lost the home back to the lending bank. The Victorian dwelling sat in financial limbo for years before going to auction in 2017.
Chris Dean, one of seven siblings who grew up spending summers in this home for over 40 years, said he contacted the borough and the Avalon Historical Society about various plans to save the home from demolition.
Dean said he was rebuffed by the borough and several of his attempts to talk with the borough about the preservation of the house received no reply.
The borough, according to Business Administrator Scott Wahl, takes the position that preservation is a matter for property owners, not the municipality. Wahl said the borough was not in a position to take on the expense of moving the home, locating an alternative place for it, and funding its future maintenance and programmatic use.
Dean sees it differently. He speaks of a borough that is “totally uninterested in preserving its history” except as a “group of photographs at the History Center.”
Dean said that the borough never showed any interest in ideas to preserve this “important piece of its history.”
The inevitable comparisons to the City of Cape May are made by those in Avalon who see a municipal government that is not active in preserving the oldest homes left in the community.
Decades ago, Cape May decided to use historic preservation as a signature aspect of its development.
Its appeal as one of America’s unique resorts is based in large part on preservation of its Victorian past.
No such tradition developed in Avalon, or many of the other resort communities in the county. Avalon witnessed a recent history that was quite different.
At about the same time that Cape May embraced preservation as a key to its future, Avalon saw a turn toward summer homes that drove up property values and resulted in the demolition of many of the old summer cottages that characterized the community in earlier years.
Property assessments grew, the permanent population in the town declined and second home ownership came to dominate the borough. It was a different turn than that taken by Cape May and one that resulted in significant growth in property valuations. 
The community today has assessment totals that top $7 billion.
Moving the House
After several efforts to get support for moving the home, a member of the next generation of the Dean family, Adrienne Scharnikow, embraced a plan to dismantle and store the home while the family continues to seek a new location for it.
For two weeks, S.J. Hauck, a company that specializes in house moving, has been executing a plan to dismantle the structure in a way that will allow it to be moved, stored and eventually reassembled.
The structure was moved back 40 feet from its curb position to provide room for orderly separation of its parts. The roof, third and first floors will be moved separately but intact. The second floor will have its walls taken down and stored in pieces.
Part of what makes the effort so difficult is the need to bring the home off the property in ways that allow it to pass under Atlantic City Electric wires. The cost of having the utility remove the wires temporarily was too expensive.
The developer, Jerry Raffa, bought the land and home at auction with the intention of replacing the structure with a two-story, single-family home.
The effort by Scharnikow will save Raffa the demolition costs he otherwise would have faced.
According to Dean, the developer sold the house back to Scharnikow for $1 on the condition that it is moved in time for him to proceed with building his new structure.
Scharnikow is bearing the costs of dismantling, moving and storing the home according to Dean.
Where the home may end up is not at all clear. Dean says the family has been looking from Court House to Cape May Point. Meanwhile, the home will be in “bubble wrap,” he said.
Dean’s anger at the borough was palpable. “The only way to preserve something in Avalon is to get it out of Avalon,” he said.
Wahl saw it differently. When efforts to preserve the home after the auction first surfaced publicly in December, Wahl noted: “The borough has no past practice of acquiring an older home for historic preservation.”
Wahl was clear that the borough is not in the business of using public funds for the preservation of a home. “That is something best left to individual property owners,” he added.
In a community with high land values which sees over 60 demolitions annually, historic preservation will be seriously constrained by economic realities here.
This one Queen Anne-style Victorian house will bid good-bye to Avalon soon, as it seeks another home.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.