Further tales of the Giobbe House

[lslapiko.livejournal.com]

Here's an interesting follow-up to my Giobbe house blog post of April 23 (http://lslapiko.blogspot.com/2010/04/more-tales-of-giobbe-house.html).

This weekend I had the bittersweet pleasure of hearing from A.C. Frabetti, whose grandparents were the Giobbes. With his permission I'm sharing his e-mail in full here, because I think it really brings home the importance of saving these historical houses. More than wood and stained glass, they are spaces that have provided the settings for life.

Laura,

Thank you for posting about the Giobbe house. My grandmother had the house until it was sold less than a decade ago, and it became the last remnant of my childhood memories. You would have loved how she had some of the rooms, full of old clocks, chinaware, etc. With her passing, her children decided to sell it (too many ghosts of sorrow there). The subsequent owner wanted to restore it but I think he ran into trouble. I guess it was then sold to a developer, who transformed it as it sits now.

There is a bigger loss here than you can imagine. My grandfather (Ciro Giobbe) was a general family doctor who had his office in that house. There is a large number of people in Somerville who knew him (he died before I was born, many years ago). Since it was an office, much of the public would have seen the interior, and recalled the windows etc. A shame! When Somerville loses all of its historical treasures, it will cease to be a beautiful place to live.

- A.C. Frabetti

Mr. Frabetti also sent some beautiful pictures of the interior of the house prior to the renovation which you can see at http://lslapiko.blogspot.com/2010/04/further-tales-of-giobbe-house.html.

And please sign the petition to prevent further development of the Giobbe house lot at http://www.petitiononline.com/giobbe/petition.html.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_meej_/]

Fortunately, the ordinance is fine with repair or in-kind replacement; nothing would be requiring a property owner to replace vinyl windows with wood or asphalt shingles with slate, for instance. Additionally, the costs of maintaining existing materials are often overstated.

While it would take a rare case for me to advocate that a property be listed against the owner's wishes, those cases - such as monumental homes that have very significant features and a noteworthy place in the City's history, as the Benton/Giobbe property does - do, in fact, exist.

(Lastly, the City's working on a fund, as far as I'm aware.)

[ron_newman]

The Somerville Theatre was designated as historic at a time when it was at best unclear whether the owner desired that designation.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_meej_/]

I think that's one I'd count as one of those "rare cases." (Also, I'd say that non-residential properties have a different standard, for me at least, than a single-family home in terms of owner opposition.)