‘Rest in Peace’ party held for $1 million teardown home
Blame the gutters — or lack thereof — for the impending demolition of an old family home in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood
With reports of off-thechart home prices grabbing headlines, a million-dollar teardown in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood should come as no surprise.
A couple known for rehabbing homes just paid $1,050,000 for a 5,000-square-foot property, with a house built in 1927. But the house will be demolished in a few weeks.
Lance Brown and Diane Stember Richards plan to replace the old house at 924 Willow Glen Way with a new 4-bedroom, 3.5-bath home. The couple own Spruce & Pine, a “casual” development company that works on just one project a year.
“We like to restore and bring wrecks back to life,” said Brown, who bought the
property on July 31. “This house is super-cute, but the foundation is completely shot. I’m guessing the original redwood gutters were never cleared and rotted off decades ago. I think water has been sheeting down the side of the house for decades.”
He figures “$500 worth of gutters would have saved this house.”
But longtime owner Joe Cascio apparently wasn’t interested in maintaining the home passed on through three generations.
“He never did anything to the house,” neighbor Richard Webster said.
Neighbor Adonna Amoroso agreed and said, “Joe was a good neighbor, but he wasn’t a fixer-upper kind of guy.”
When Joe passed away in February, the family home went to his niece, Joanna Primeau.
“I think my mother’s parents moved in around 1940,” Primeau said. “It was a happy home, with stuffed squid, pasta and crab on Christmas Eve — those are my memories.”
Primeau also recalled her grandmother sewing holiday dresses and said, “She had us stand on the dining room table to get our hems right, pins between her lips.”
Grandma Cascio passed away in 1980 and that’s when the home became Uncle Joe’s responsibility.
“My uncle was a funny guy, an old bachelor, and I loved him very much,” Primeau said. “Over the years we’d bring him meals, so we sort of knew what kind of shape the house was in, but we didn’t know the plaster ceilings
were falling.”
When Primeau learned the foundation was badly damaged and probably irreparable, she also knew the home’s days were numbered.
But parts of it will live on. Primeau intends to use some of the old window glass for a greenhouse she’s building, while neighbor June Turturici put her name on an oak floor register, among other things.
“We wanted to offer the materials to the neighbors because there are a lot of older homes on the street,” Brown said.
And pointing to a solid wood bedroom door he says, “This is like gold. You really can’t buy these new.” Likewise for a tight grain redwood-framed
screen door.
Brown invited the neighbors to a “Rest in Peace” party last week, where many gathered to tell stories and share memories of the Cascio home — and also learn more about what comes next.
Brown guarantees the new two-story home he’s building will not be a “box,” and he plans to save the property’s mature orange, palm and fir trees.
Neighbor Christine Conklin was “super glad” to hear that and said she’s happy “someone is going to do justice to the location and neighborhood.”
If all goes as planned, the new house will be ready for sale by June 2019.