DEATH IN THE FAMILY
Town is in danger of losing one of its most historic homes
HALFMOON, N.Y. >> Thanks to the last blast of winter, the town is in danger of losing one of its oldest homes and the owner is in danger of having her heart broken.
The weight from winter’s final snowstorm on March 14 collapsed the roof of an early 19th century brick home at 128 Dunsbach Road. The house has been resurrected once before after losing its roof in the cyclone of 1913 but this may be its death knell.
The home’s owner is Marianne Geleta. She grew up in the federal style brick home before her family built its own home next door. The house was her grandmother’s home and has been in the family as part of a 100 acre farm since the 1920s.
When the five Stah sisters divided up the farm’s acreage, the house and 20 acres stayed in Geleta’s part of the family. When it became available due
to the aging of her grandmother who was living in it, she bought it.
When discussing the most recent catastrophe Geleta breaks into tears each time she thinks of losing it and the connection it has to the large extended family. She was upstairs in her bedroom the night the roof collapsed.
“I kept hearing boom, boom, boom in the back of the house and didn’t know what it was,” she said. “It was the big snowstorm. It was 9 p.m. and the sound was the bricks coming off the back and falling on the roof of the addition I put on. I looked out my bathroom window and I could see them piled up.”
Geleta moved downstairs as the noises continued and shortly thereafter heard a long, slow, deep groan. Her description makes it sound like a last breath.
“It was like being in the bottom of a big ship,” she said.
It was the roof slowly collapsing.
When her brother-in-law came over from up the road and saw the roof he told her to leave the house immediately. The first thing Geleta grabbed as she gathered up some favorite items was a framed photograph of her grandmother.
Since that night the house has been declared uninhabitable by the town. Geleta has been advised by several people, including her insurance agency, to demolish it.
Geleta is the secretary of the Halfmoon Histori- cal Society and has a love for the town’s history and a deep affection for her family’s place in it. The house is the three dimensional symbol of that place in the town’s history and it’s in danger of becoming only a memory.
As she described her phone calls and pleas for assistance and what she sees as a cruel indifference by some to her dilemma, her anger dissolves into tears of helplessness.
“I’m never going to have a house like this again,” she said. “If I tried to build one it’d kill me. The insurance company said it’d cost $1 million to build a new version of it.”
The house is not architecturally pristine to the time period. Geleta has replaced windows, frames, and sills and made renovations here and there over the years. However, what was replaced that was still in one piece she has kept. Her love of the home’s history is part of her being.
Old newspaper photos show the house after the cyclone came through town. It not only took off the roof, it took down seven of the farm’s eight barns. The sole large surviving barn still stands behind the house.
“There’s no insulation in that house,” Geleta said.
“It has three layers of brick. That was the insulation. I put in running water, heat and I had it rewired. I put a new roof on a couple of years ago. Everything’s fine they said. Now look at it.”
In the back of the house, the bricks Geleta heard that night lie scattered across the angled roof of a kitchen that she added. The walls around the home’s perimeter sag and show cracks. Iron supports she had installed at the base are bending. The house needs emergency care from a team of restoration engineers and builders.
Her “gold” insurance policy will provide about half of what she’s been told she’ll need to build a replacement.
Clifton Park historic house restoration expert Joanne Coons has looked at the damage and doesn’t think it’s that bad. Coons and her husband Paul have restored two homes as well as the Vischer Ferry General Store.
She is clinical rather than emotional where saving an old home is concerned and Coons believes the “bones” of Geleta’s house are good.
“Our home (the old Carlson home off Moe Road) was in much worse shape than that,” Coons said. “That house can be saved. I’d like to get an engineer in there and have him take a look at it.”
Geleta has been informed of Coons’ critique but the voices favoring demolition are getting louder.
“I always wanted live here since I was little,” Geleta said looking at her home through tears. “Everybody in my family has lived in this house. It’s like a death.”