Alaska News

Home that predates American Revolution goes on sale in South Anchorage

What is surely the oldest habitable house in Alaska is for sale, a two-and-a-half story wood-frame structure on Campbell Lake built around 1680.

Anchorage homeowners who think of their 1970s split-levels as antiques should note this place went up a century before America became an independent nation, 60 years before Vitus Bering reached Alaska -- in fact before Bering was even born.

To be clear, it hasn't always been in Alaska. For its first 300 years it stood on farmland near Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Physician Ross Brudenell bought it in 1981 and had it disassembled, trucked up the Alaska Highway and reassembled at its current location.

(It may not be the only such house in the state. There are rumors of a similar vintage building relocated to Hillside that could not be confirmed.)

Originally from Tennessee, Brudenell came to Alaska with the Indian Health Service in the late 1960s and moved to Anchorage in 1979. He became fascinated with colonial architecture, particularly buildings from what historians call the "first period," 1620 to 1680. He knew a fellow enthusiast who had successfully relocated a similar house from Massachusetts to Denver. He consulted experts of the period and learned of the old house not far from the coast.

"It was more or less virgin," he said. "It had never been plumbed or wired. There was a well right outside the back door and an outhouse some distance from the well."

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In his research he learned that it had stood empty for most of the 1940s and all of the 1950s. It was dubbed the "Bradford-Higgins house" after the last in a long string of owners, who eventually sold the land for an assisted living home. They were connected to William Bradford, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Brudenell located three craftsmen experienced in such work to dismantle it board by board. The same men relocated to Anchorage for most of 1982 and put it back together. He moved into the house in October of that year, which is what the municipality lists as the year it was built.

The Alaska incarnation is a bit bigger than the 24-by-30-foot Bay Colony original. "In the early to mid-'90s I added a glass ceiling and a sunroom," Brudenell said. "That's really the only structural addition."

But there's no shortage of modern amenities, including lights and running water. Most interior walls feature contemporary drywall. It has two and a half bathrooms, three bedrooms, forced-air and radiant floor heating, and a platform on the roof for gazing at stars.

The lot also includes a boathouse, two floatplane slips, one with an aircraft lift, an art studio/workshop space and guest quarters over the detached two car garage -- a former sheep barn from the old farm that Brudenell acquired to keep from breaking up the set.

"And a heated driveway. Boy, was I glad I did that!" he added.

The roof and siding shingles have been replaced, probably more than once. These kinds of exterior sheeting do not last as long as the main frame, which is heavy beams, notched and held in place by pegs. Such beams, both covered and exposed, are visible in many rooms.

Every door uses hinges and latches replicated to match the style of the period, as do the interior paint colors. The floors are connected by narrow stairwells with tight corners that make you wonder how the big bed got into the second-floor master bedroom. The massive kitchen fireplace has an iron lug pole stout enough to swing a dutch oven into or out of the heat. But there are also smoke alarms and a backup electrical generator. And the south-facing sunroom was the main entry.

The most important upgrade is not readily visible. It's underneath the house.

In New England, many buildings are set right on the rocky ground, a so-called "dry-laid foundation," Brudenell explained.

"Especially in southern Massachusetts. The rocks are kind of a flat shape and it's a piece of cake to stack them up."

In the soft, clay-laced soil of earthquake-prone Anchorage, something more substantial was needed. Brudenell took the advice of his father, a civil engineer, and brought in a pile driver.

"We have 18 closed-in round steel pilings, all driven 30 feet into the ground," he said. "The chimney stack," now reinforced with concrete, "has eight underneath it and there are another 10 for the rest of the house. Then there's a network of 12-inch H-beams we welded to form a connected structure."

Five fireplaces in five rooms connect to that chimney structure. At least one is fronted by blackened plank flooring where cinders leaped into the room.

The house is listed by Re/Max Dynamic Properties with an asking price of $850,000. At 2,240 square feet, Brudenell admits, "it's one of the smallest houses on Campbell Lake by a long shot. I have neighbors who have 10,000 square feet. In my mind, that's too much. I'm more for downsizing, small is beautiful and all that."

Brudenell said he opted to move to the East Coast after spending "a fortune" to visit grandchildren. He sold the Cessna 185 he'd owned for 30 years and reluctantly put the old home on the block.

But he's already bought another one of the same vintage in Newport, Rhode Island. "The place in Newport, it has a fascinating history too," he said.

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What's the attraction of living in an antique?

"The craftsmanship of a house built 300 years ago is an incredible contrast with the balloon architecture that pops up all around Anchorage," Brudenell said. "We'd have 50-knot blows and it'd be snug inside."

Snugger than it was back in New England. Among Brudenell's upgrades were insulation and double-pane storm windows. The originals, probably diamond-shaped panes, nearly opaque and set in single wood frames that swung outward, had long been replaced by double-hung sash windows. He had them reproduced in the original window frame size and glazed with some "pretty old" mutton-pane rolled and blown glass scavenged from defunct mills.

"When you stand outside the house and look at 'em, it's a pretty astonishing effect," he said.

The seasoned timber-and-peg construction is "solid as iron," he said. The use of nails was mainly confined to the shingles. The exterior is white oak and the interior mostly white pine. "We've had a couple of good quakes here, but it doesn't shake around a whole lot."

As important as the durability is the charm of the past, said Holly McLear, the Rhode Island realtor who sold Brudenell his new home.

"There's so much history in these old houses," she said. "Paul Revere may have stopped there. You never know."

Given its construction 60 years after the Pilgrims arrived in the area, it's entirely possible that one who came across on the Mayflower as a youth could have, in old age, lived in or visited the house, tracked mud onto the plank floors, hung a hat on a wall peg, sat by the hearth and warmed his or her hands within the same building now standing at 3524 North Point Drive in Anchorage.

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That kind of possibility is a big attraction for Brudenell.

"When I go to sleep at night, I love to think about all the generations that padded around those floors," he said.

Reach Mike Dunham at mdunham@alaskadispatch.com or 257-4332.

Mike Dunham

Mike Dunham has been a reporter and editor at the ADN since 1994, mainly writing about culture, arts and Alaska history. He worked in radio for 20 years before switching to print.

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