Stratford’s famous former white house is set to undergo some major changes.
City staff have issued a permit so that the 18 columns on the house can now be demolished, the permit comes after around a year of talks between the city and Kevin Larson who owns the house about the best way to deal with the pillars which Larson says are rotting and need to be torn down because they are at the end of their lifespan.
Larson says that over the last six months there has been a dialogue between the two sides about the site so that a form of heritage preservation, as the home was built in 1866, can be preserved while the site is developed at the same time.
He says that now that the pillars can be torn down there are three major steps that need to be taken.
“We have to get the contractors actually to feel comfortable enough to take them down, so what they’re doing in the next two or three weeks is they’re actually investigating how they’ve been structurally attached and by the looks of things they actually aren’t attached to the main building whatsoever, they’re a free-standing unit with some minor connections to the main building.”
Larson says the next steps will be getting the pillars, once they are torn down, off the site and then repointing the front of the building and getting an idea of what the final site, projected to be a six-unit higher end condo building in the houses original red color, will look like.
