Preservation Online: Story of the Week Archives: One House at a Time

From Preservation Online, the online magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

www.preservationonline.org

One House at a Time
A Florida Man's Crusade Has Saved Seven Old Houses.

Story by Kathy Babcock / Nov. 17, 2006

Floors were ripped up. Mold and rot had moved in. The siding and bead board ceiling were riddled with termites. And remodeling had turned one of the oldest homes in Bonita Springs, Fla., into an awkward warren of dark, cramped rooms, which were stripped of almost everything when Christian Busk saw the 900-square-foot fishing cottage, built in 1913 of cypress wood and southern yellow pine.

"It was just a frame," says Busk, a Bonita Springs landscape architect and contractor whose passion is saving historic homes. "It had no windows, doors, or molding. The house was scheduled for destruction, and the owner gave everything of value to his friends."

But the frame was sound, the Georgia brick fireplace and chimney were intact, and the original door and window openings were in place. So Busk moved the E. P. Nutting house, named after a former owner who wrote the first history of Bonita Springs, about half a mile from its original location on the Imperial River to what's rapidly becoming Busk's new development-of old houses.

"It was in such bad shape when I bought it that a lot of people said, 'Why bother to move it?'" says Busk.

That's been said about most of the historic houses-seven so far-that Busk has bought in Bonita Springs. Settled in the 1880s and a tiny fishing village for most of its history, Bonita Springs' population was only 13,600 in 1990. But by 2005, the village was long gone, and Bonita Springs was home to 42,300 people, most of whom didn't grow up there.

"It's a challenge on so many levels here," says Charlie Strader, president of the Bonita Springs Historical Society. "You have different cultures, different values and people coming from everywhere."

You also have Busk.

"Basically, he's the guy stepping in front of the bulldozer and saying, 'Let's save that,'" says Gloria Sajgo, principal planner for historic preservation in Lee County's community development department. "He's doing it house by house, at the last minute."

Planning policies that increase density and allow larger square foot buildings and incongruent architectural styles, plus the enormous economic pressure for development, create a favorable climate for teardowns, Strader says.

"It's the areas that have a [historic] house here and there that don't fit into any planning categories that are most at risk," says Chris Tenne Pendleton, president and chief executive officer of the Edison & Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers.

Busk's passion for historic homes started 18 years ago with a 1940s house. Friends living there told him the owner planned to tear it down. Busk, who liked old houses even as a child, bought it for $5,000 and moved it next to his own home.

Word got around about the guy who saved houses, and people started calling Busk about other old homes in trouble, like the Williams-Packard house, built in 1915 by one of Bonita Springs' first settlers.

Scheduled to be torn down, the owner offered to sell the house for $1 to anyone who would move it. Busk opened his wallet and spent more than $500,000, almost all of it his own money, to move and rehabilitate the two-story structure.

More purchases and relocations followed, including the 1920s Bowers-Briggs house, rumored to be a hideout of gangster Al Capone, and Busk's latest acquisition, the Haldeman house of Naples, Fla., built in 1886 by Confederate Gen. John Stuart Williams. Busk moved the 7,000-square-foot house, named after its former owner, Louisville, Ky., newspaper publisher and Naples pioneer Walter Newman Haldeman, 15 miles to Bonita Springs after the Naples city council voted to allow luxury beachfront condos to be built on the site, despite the efforts of local preservationists.

"He's one of the few private individuals doing this work," Strader says. "He's found a way to make it economically viable."

Busk rehabilitates the houses and then leases them, which is the only way he can recoup some of his expenses. "I can't afford to keep them as museums," he says, pointing out that it's a use compatible with the buildings' origins.

Although Busk prefers to renovate houses in their original locations, developers want most houses moved. Busk relocates houses to lots he owns on streets on and near Oak Creek, in the oldest part of Bonita Springs. It's a setting in keeping with Bonita Springs' origins, when settlers sought property with access to rivers, creeks, or the Gulf of Mexico.

Busk removed tons of debris and invasive non-native vegetation from the lots, and preserved native plants, like slash pine, when siting the homes.

Some buildings Busk can't save. The Wayside Inn, a favorite rest stop for motorists on the Tamiami Trail and a chapter in Nutting's book on the history of Bonita Springs, was torn down in September 2005. The hotel had housed tourists, including Thomas Edison, and in the 1920s was moved by boat from its original location in Fort Myers to Bonita Springs. Believing the site more valuable as commercial property and more attractive to a future buyer if vacant, the owner had the building demolished before Busk could negotiate a purchase, Strader says.

Despite such setbacks, Strader is cautiously optimistic about the public's interest in historic preservation, which Sajgo says is growing.

Even looters, it seems, appreciate Busk's work. When Busk acquired the Williams-Packard house, it was severely damaged. In addition to the usual broken windows, the cabinets were ripped out, half the staircase was missing, and the mantelpiece over the fireplace in the first floor living room was gone.

"People returned things that they had taken from the house once they realized I was restoring it," Busk says.

Including the mantelpiece.

Kathy Babcock is a freelance writer in Fort Myers, Fla.