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These stories were published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on

December 9, 1998. All rights reserved.

This Old House, Part II

So close and yet so far. James Hollingsworth spent

$20,000 and countless hours of labor to take apart the old yellow

house on Mapleton Road and move it to Tennessee, but he ran out of

money and is working full time in Memphis. Yet, as described in a

U.S. 1 cover story (August 26) just one more week’s work, plus the

cost of transportation was needed to finish the job.

Princeton University, which owns the property and needed that acreage

for the new Marriott Suites motel, stopped short of sending in a

demolition

crew to raze the site and has been trying to have some party, any

party, continue what Hollingsworth could not finish. At first the

university hoped to get rid of the building without spending any

money,

but no takers emerged.

Now the university will pay to have it removed. It is on the verge

of signing a contract with someone who makes a business of selling

dismantled houses. "In the spirit of what James was doing,"

says the source, "we want this to get taken apart and erected

somewhere."

The house next to the yellow house will also escape the wrecker’s

ball and is also on the verge — 30 days away — of having a

signed sales contract, presumably to be leased commercially. The

university

is not acting totally selflessly in saving this house. It had promised

Plainsboro Township that, in return for letting one house be

demolished,

the neighboring house would be kept. Located across from the

headquarters

of Ford Farewell Mills & Gatsch, it is zoned as office/commercial.

Officials at Picus Associates, which runs the university’s commercial

real estate operation at Forrestal Center, believe that the university

probably acquired the old yellow house and the house to its north

as part of the 1951 purchase of the Rockefeller Institute lands, which

became available when the medical research institute, established

in Princeton in 1915 and now known as Rockefeller University, moved

to Manhattan after 1948. Until fire code problems shut it down three

years ago, the old yellow house was used to house graduate students.

Hollingsworth, 35, bought the house for $1. He is an architect, and

for three months, with his own hands, he systematically deconstructed

the 6,000-square-foot house, piled up the doors and windows and

flooring

and siding and structural elements neatly in the yard, and covered

them with plastic.

"You just can’t get this kind of material anymore,"

Hollingsworth

said of the structural timbers, some of which measure nearly a foot

around. "Any house today is built of pine. Here the smallest

member

is true three by five and hardwood. It’s just so amazing working on

a project that was actually crafted by craftsmen, not just by some

guy who hired a bunch of laborers."

Closing in on the university’s August 31 deadline for having the house

gone from the site, Hollingsworth had hired a crew of six to help

him get the job done. The projected cost, not including the value

of Hollingsworth’s time was supposed to be just over $40,000 plus

the cost of a site in Tennessee. By the time he quit work and headed

back to Memphis, he had already invested $20,000. He could not be

reached for comment.

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