Gothic Revival a labor of love
When Josh Bloomer, 52, first toured his family home at 8 Montrose St. in Roxbury four years ago, he pretty much fell in love with a labor of love.
“As soon as I walked in, (I thought), ‘This is the house,’” he said, though he immediately recognized it was going to need a lot of work.
The big old home — a 172-year-old Gothic Revival with 10 rooms and a small yard — had uneven floors, a run-down kitchen, a deteriorating exterior and a backyard that was, as he puts it, a pile of dirt.
So Bloomer, a handyman and owner of Pony Express Moving Services, said he got some tools and went to work. He leveled out subfloors, repaired crumbling plaster walls, repainted rooms, built a retaining wall out back with 100 bags of hand-mixed concrete, put in a deck and organic garden boxes, and had the heart pine wood floor in the living room refinished.
He also remodeled the kitchen with $2,000 worth of supplies he scavenged on Craigslist — old cabinets from a home in Franklin, tiles from a guy in Queens and a stove from New Hampshire.
Bloomer, who is selling the place for a just over a half-million, was also careful to respect the house’s historical integrity. A good example of typical Gothic Revival construction, 8 Montrose has a steep side-gabled roof and prominent center cross gable, undulating vergeboards under wide eaves, doublelancet windows and a fullwidth porch.
Built by architects Ivory Harmon and Ivory McDaniel, the house also has pointed dormers peeking from the roof, a living room window bay and two tall, door-length windows on either side of the front entrance.
The interior boasts a huge living room with high ceilings and elaborate crown moldings, a library, dining room, and three big bedrooms.
Set in the Moreland Street Historic District, it’s one of several other houses with the same Romantic, medieval-style architecture. Less common than other styles like Italianates or Greek Revivals, Gothic Revivals tend to be really old. In fact, to give a couple points of reference for the year that this house was built, consider that in 1845, Florida became a state and Frederick Douglass published his memoir.
But the age of the home means it still needs work. The outside could use repairs and same with the inside, especially if the owner wants to restore the place to its original glory.
“For me,” said Bloomer, whose wife recently landed a job out of state, “it was a 10-year project, but it got cut short.”