Owner plans to raze historic Nags Head cottage

NAGS HEAD

When Robbie Morris bought the Winslow cottage, he had no intention of tearing it down. But after nearly a year working to preserve the 1929 structure, Morris said his best intentions have been frustrated and his wallet has been depleted.

The oceanfront house, part of the Nags Head Beach Cottage Row Historic District, is to be torn down as early as next week.

"I am heartsick," Morris said Wednesday. "I have done everything I can do to restore this and I have done everything to go through the unnecessary hoops.

"I tried to do the right thing."

Morris, who is from Richmond but lives most of the time in Nags Head, said he bought the cottage in December for $1,020,000, planning to make it his year-round home. He hired John White, an architect-artist from Manns Harbor, to draw up plans for an addition of a two-story balcony. Plans included moving the house about 100 feet back and installing a swimming pool for health reasons.

But in February, the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office denied his application, he said, telling him that the new wing was too "bulky." In further discussions with the state, Morris said that to maintain the historic designation, he'd have to remove the second level on the planned balcony, which would then force him to move the stairway.

Without the state's approval, Morris said he would not qualify for $20,000 each in state and federal tax credits. That made the cost of moving and restoring the house too expensive.

Morris has decided to build a 4,990-square-foot house from scratch, including the wing he wanted. He plans to salvage as much as he can from the old cottage. The idea is similar to what was done with the Nixon cottage, which was torn down and rebuilt to look almost exactly the same.

The Winslow cottage, formerly owned by Elizabeth Winslow Baumgartner, has its original wood floors, beadboard walls and ceilings, porcelain doorknobs, and brick fireplace. According to a 2000 news article, central heat and air conditioning and an upstairs tile bathroom had been added. After the Ash Wednesday storm in 1962, the roof was replaced and the kitchen was updated.

"The house itself has been altered a lot," said Cola Vaughan, the Nags Head Realtor who sold the house to Morris. "But that's the thing - all these houses have. So it's not historically pristine anyway."

Vaughan said houses in the historic district are subjected to harsher conditions than old houses not on the oceanfront. Nails rust, wood floors warp and supporting beams rot, he said. For a restoration to be done properly, often the cottage has to be taken apart and reassembled piece by piece.

Although the town has tried in the past 20 years to create a citizen's committee to preserve the historic district, homeowners have resisted. But Vaughan said that is because the preservation conditions are "too hard, too intrusive, too punitive, too expensive."

"People are not going to spend the kind of money that's necessary to restore these properties without some kind of help," he said. "It's prohibitively expensive.

"We're talking about a long-term obligation that goes down through generations."

Catherine Kozak, (252) 441-1711, cate.kozak@pilotonline.com