UPDATE: Little House in the City

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published September 30, 2015 and can be found here.

     By       Mike Governale

Quick update on     this story    I posted in January about the sole remaining house in the Capron neighborhood downtown. Patrick Dutton has been working extremely hard to save and repurpose the structure. I know because he told me directly and I also have had conversations with contractors I know personally who have said the same. Unfortunately the house at     35 St. Mary's Place    has partially collapsed during the work, and now     may    be unsalvageable. Here's an update directly from Dutton...

   "I understand there is some ongoing dialogue about our little house at 35 St. Mary's Place. I wanted to set the record straight so that everyone talking about it has a clear understanding about what's happening. We've been working hard to bring this bldg back to life, and would have demolished it a long time ago (believe me) if that was our intention. Even though there were earlier reports (RocSubway) that we were planning to demolish, that report was inaccurate and I was never asked for comment.* Attached is a rough draft of a recent rendering of what we had been working towards. It's an unfinished rendering but you get the picture.

   On Monday, we were in the process of replacing the roof structure and the Capron street side of the 2nd floor collapsed under its own weight. It turns out that most of the mortar joints have basically been turned to dust over time due to age, years of neglect, etc.

   Before this collapse, this is a project that made essentially no financial sense but we were focused on reclaiming this old house because that is what we do. At this very moment we are discussing out options but it is not looking good. If anyone has any questions or would like further clarification, I'd be happy to discuss. Nobody has been more passionate and financially invested about restoring this neighborhood -- I'm heartbroken by the turn of events.

We are exploring all of our options --- as soon as I know the final decision, I will let you all know. We have pulled an emergency demo permit in the event we have to go in that direction (which is the way we are leaning at the moment) but we are meeting with one additional mason and our structural engineer before making a final decision."

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UPDATE:

Since this report, the house has been demolished.

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*Attempts were made to contact Dutton for comment prior to     the story in January    . All information came from reliable sources involved in the process.