The National Park Service either wants to have the McGlashan-Nickerson moved from its current location or demolished/NPS

A 135-year-old house at Saint Croix International Historic Site is considered architecturally significant by Maine preservationists, but deemed excess property by the National Park Service, which wants someone to buy it and move it to another location.

If no one is interested in purchasing and relocating the two-story Italianate style house located in the village of Red Beach, Maine, the Park Service would opt to have it demolished and the six acres it is set on restored.

The Park Service acquired the property and house in 2000, and from 2005 to 2014 used it for various administrative services for the historic site, which commemorates the 1604 location where French explorers tried to colonize the territory they called Acadia. However, the agency then built a new building to serve as visitor center and for administrative purposes, and the McGlashan-Nickerson house fell out of use.

"Now it is considered excess real property, as it no longer serves any administrative functions, is not identified as a contributing asset in the legislated purpose nor within the boundary, and is not related to the park’s fundamental resources or values," the Park Service noted in an environmental assessment released in October to evaluate the future use of the property. "The NPS lacks the resources to stabilize, rehabilitate and maintain this structure."

"... To date, the NPS has invested more than $100,000 in the building to remediate some, but not all, lead paint, repair the crumbling foundation, and repair gutters and porch. The house still requires more than $1,000,000 in stabilization and rehabilitation work, including replacing the porch, roof, shutters and gutters 'in kind' to maintain historic integrity, repairing most of the windows, containing or abating lead paint both inside and outside the building, treating airborne radon inside, replacing the furnace, mitigating mold, and re-painting, at a minimum," the assessment added.

South side of the house shows the deterioration/NPS April 2017 photo

In including the house on its 2018 list of the Most Endangered Historic Places, Maine Preservation staff noted that the house "shares a long drive with the 1854 Gothic Revival Joshua Pettegrove House, one of only a few houses in the state set in a landscape designed by Andrew Jackson Downing, the founder of American landscape architecture. These houses are both individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places and form the southern boundary of the village running upriver to the north."

The preservation organization has offered to work with the Park Service to find a buyer for the house, one that could stabilize it and maintain it in a manner that is compatible with the park's nearby visitor center.

To have the house demolished, the group adds, would be a violation of the Park Service's own mission to preserve the historic structure.

Public comment on the proposal is being taken through November 30. You can read the EA and leave your comments at this site.

Saint Croix Island is located in the St. Croix River at the border of the United States and Canada.