SWAMPSCOTT — After the 250-year-old home of town founder Samuel Pitman was demolished to make room for the new Elm Place 40B Development on Oct. 6, the Historical Commission is determined to make sure Revolutionary War Gen. John Glover’s home does not meet a similar fate.
The Glover House, which is located on a roughly 4-acre lot located near the borders of Marblehead and Salem, is expected to meet the wrecking ball next summer as a developer, Leggat McCall Properties, plans to demolish the house to build a 4-acre housing development including two buildings with 96 rental units in Swampscott and one building with 44 rental units in Marblehead.
The Historical Commission voted in the spring to delay the site’s demolition by a year, buying it some time to relocate the home or negotiate the house’s preservation with the developer.
Historical Committee Chair Nancy Schultz announced last week that the house was recently added to the state Historical Commission’s Massachusetts Cultural Resources Information System, the Commonwealth’s primary database of historical or culturally significant properties.
“In the case of both the Pitman House and the Glover House, when we started looking into this a couple of years ago, to our dismay, we learned that neither was listed on the MACRIS database,” Schultz said.
Although MACRIS properties are not necessarily legally protected upon entry into the database, Schultz said the system is widely recognized by developers. The Glover House’s recent listing, she said, will serve as an official recognition of the lot’s historical significance.
“It’s important. When developers go to look at the sites, they frequently consult this database to see if there’s any buildings of historical significance,” Schultz said.
Schultz said the commission is currently working to sway the developer against demolition, urging Leggat McCall Properties to use the preserved house as part of its future property. According to Schultz, this option does not seem likely to succeed.
“We are still in talks with the developer, trying to convince them that preserving this house in place is a wonderful asset for their development. So far, they haven’t been receptive to that idea,” Schultz said.
Leggat McCall, Schultz said, would prefer the commission relocate the house to another lot, just as the commission attempted to do with the Pitman House.
Just as a lack of dedicated funding and land properly zoned to accommodate the Pitman House in town ultimately prevented attempts at relocation, Schultz said she was concerned that a potential relocation of the Glover House would follow a similar path.
Additionally, Schultz said that the Glover House’s unique position near the borders of two other towns would make relocation within Swampscott challenging.
“(The developer) would prefer that we move the house but from my experiences with Pitman House, it’s not always easy to find the right spot to move it and it gets complicated,” Schultz said. “I still hope that they will come to see a way that they could incorporate this house somewhere on the site, but we are also actively now looking at other sites.”
Schultz said the commission is also considering an attempt to list the Glover House on the National Historic Register, a process that she described as long and complicated.
The Historical Commission is currently planning fundraising events for the house’s relocation in the months ahead. Schultz said she hopes to see a bolstered interest in preserving American history with the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution on the horizon.
“It’s a site of national significance. I think there will be more funding opportunities here, especially because of the upcoming anniversary of the American Revolution, Rev 250, in 2026,” Schultz said.
The Historical Commission will soon launch a fundraising website for those who wish to donate toward the Glover House’s preservation. Schultz said that while she was upset by the Pitman House’s demolition, she considers the public’s interest in preserving the site to be a hopeful sign for the Glover House.
“I was heartened to see that there are so many people out there who support historic preservation. It was extremely encouraging to me that people in Swampscott, Salem, and Marblehead care deeply about historic preservation, and that definitely gives us hope that everyone will pitch in and keep Glover from the same fate as the Pitman House,” Schultz said.
