This old house

By Debra Minor Wilson
Times West Virginian

METZ September 18, 2008 06:04 pm

— The old Victorian house on Sam Slay Lane in Metz has been in Sam Bean’s family for 62 years, but now he has to leave.
Built in the 1880s, it’s been purchased by a local energy company, and he’s moving to a smaller house in Fairmont.
They moved here in 1944, left in 1950 and returned in 1991.
“Our parents had three boys (Sam, Lee and Joe) in three years and we were active little things,” Bean said.
Lee died in 2005, and Joe lives in Meadowdale.
He recalls hurtling down the snowy steep hillside on speeding winter sleds, slamming the back door after coming home from school, and sliding down the curved banister from the upstairs bedrooms to the foyer probably too many times to count.
You accumulate a lot of things and memories over those years. The 70-year-old retired elementary school teacher has been busy sorting through mounds of papers and heirlooms. Some he’s given to family, some he’s taking with him, and others he has no idea what to do with.
“It’s going to be hard to leave,” he said.
His family was only the third to own the building. It was built by Elmus Hibbs (from gas and oil money, scuttlebutt said) in the 1880s, purchased by the Bakers in 1910 and finally by Bean’s father, Jess.
Like most houses built back then, it’s a treasure trove of intricate, delicate detailing. Pineapple carvings grace the fireplace mantels, which are different in each of the 12 rooms. Stained glass brighten up the windows.
The house still has its original tin roof. Markers from the double-seater privy sit in the yard (“dee-luxe accommodations,” he said with a laugh). Porch supports are festive gingerbread house-type woodwork.
It’s got transoms and floor thresholds, foot-high baseboards, decorative wainscoting, original brass doorknobs, five-sided rooms, nine-foot-high ceilings ... everything most modern homes do not.
“You’d think, living out in the country, they wouldn’t get so fancy. And back then, this really was the country. A lot of handiwork, a lot of time and money went into this house. It took some money, even back then.”
Many of the neighborhood houses were there when Bean was a boy. But they’ve been changed in different ways. This house looks now almost identical to an early 1900s photo, except the shutters are gone now and there’s a cement wall out front.
“1917 and Grandma Baker was sitting on her porch in the summertime. A machine goes by and the dust just flies. And she got to thinking, ‘Well, gee, if they lost control, they could come just through that picket fence and knock the house off the foundation.’
“So they took the fence out and put in the cement wall.”
Original cedar roof shingles are curled and split from age.
“You expect this. With an old house like this, the sky’s the limit when it comes to restoring things. We decided to preserve some of the Victorian architecture, with our limited amount of money.”
The end of a storage building is thought to be part of the old Metz Methodist North Church.
“This is all natural oak,” he said, pointing to woodworking. “Over the years it’s been painted. When we came here in 1944, we had the intention of stripping the paint, but that would be so much work.”
Eight bedrooms branch off the long upstairs hallway. It’s the perfect set up for a hotel, but research indicates this was built as a private home, he said.
“You wouldn’t design it this way today, but that’s what they did then. They were a family of 10, and I guess each wanted his own little bedroom. As the children left, they rented out rooms up here. We rented out rooms the first time we lived here.”
He’s uncovered a lot of family treasures, as well. His mother had been postmaster at Wadestown in the 1950s and had to buy her own equipment —adding machine, lockboxes, stamp window and scales — which he still has now.
There’s a doll his mother had given her sister Margaret dressed in one of Margaret’s own baby dresses ... the saddle his father had used riding to school when he was a boy.
The house has aged well, although it’s settled some and cracks snake up the walls upstairs.
Some changes have been made. The house originally had oil lights, he said, and then gas lights. It was completely rewired in 1991. A bathroom was installed downstairs off the kitchen.
He’d always meant to do this improvement and that, but time just got away. In 1995, his mother had a stroke and needed constant care.
“That changed everything. She was my main concern.”
He’s going from a 3,000-square-foot home to one that’s only 900, so he’s giving as much of the treasures to family as he can.
“The grandfather clock, the baby grand piano, and the marble pieces, wicker pieces, oak pieces ... they’re gone.”
The 12-room house is just too impractical for Bean and his tabby Manx Prince.
“The house fit the lifestyle of the 1880s, but not the 1980s. We do not have that nice kitchen, that nice bathroom. There’s no central heating.”
When the house was bought in May, he was told the land would be longwalled, which he feared would endanger the house.
“Now they’re saying they’re not longwalling ... they’ll keep this house and preserve and maintain it.”
The house could become a museum, he said. Or it could make a nice bed and breakfast, people have told him.
“Well, it would and it wouldn’t. I don’t know. Metz has changed so much since we’ve been back.”
He’s heard that some houses that had been purchased are now being offered back to the owners. He would not buy back this house, he said.
“I can’t maintain it the way it needs to be and it’s not what I need.
“Still, it’s hard to leave, for me especially. I’ve lived here longer than anybody, even my parents.”
E-mail Debra Minor Wilson at dwilson@timeswv.com.

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