A 19th-century brownstone mansion with 17 rooms and eight fireplaces is being offered for free to a new owner, but under one condition.
The house is on the market for $0, as long as the new buyer has the means and resources to rip the entire 5,000-square-foot house off its foundation and move it elsewhere, according to the historical society trying to save it.
Located in Limerick, Pennsylvania, The Hood Mansion was built in 1834 by John McClellan Hood, an Irish immigrant who came to America in 1799.
He made his fortune starting a wholesale supermarket business in Philadelphia called ‘Hood and Hamilton’.
It was a summer home to which Hood, his wife, and thirteen children escaped when Philadelphia was ravaged by an outbreak of yellow fever in the early 1800s; but more importantly, the Hood Mansion was part of the Underground Railroad, with tunnels underneath to help slaves escape to the free northern states.
Pictured: The historic Hood Mansion, which is offered free of charge to any interested party as long as they have the means to physically move it from the 113-acre estate
Now that the Brooklyn developer who owns the 113-acre estate wants to demolish the relic to make way for a warehouse complex, the Eastern Pennsylvania Preservation Society (EPPS) is making a last-ditch effort to keep this historic mansion alive.
On its website, the EPPS said it is working with the Limerick Township Historical Society to safeguard the monument and anything within it that could be considered an artefact.
The idea to convince someone to move the mansion came about when the EPPS made a deal that if someone could move it at no cost to the current owner, demolition would not be necessary.
The owner originally said no to the proposal, EPPS President Tyler Schumacher said the Philly voice.
“Then he came back and said, ‘Okay, if you can get someone to take it off the property, I don’t have to be involved. I don’t have to pay anything and they can have it,'” Schumacher said of the ownership reversal.
No timeline was given, but the owner did tell EPPS “he wanted it done quickly.”
Moving a house of that size, of any size, would be a hugely expensive undertaking, something the EPPS is fully aware of.
“We’ve received quotes from about $700,000 to $1 million,” Schumacher said, adding that it would take at least one to two months to actually move it.
The interior of the 5,000-square-foot mansion was badly vandalized in 2016, and EPPS President Tyler Schumacher estimates renovation costs could total around $400,000.
In addition to being an important safehouse in the Underground Railroad, the mansion was also home to Washington Hood, the son of John Hood and his wife Elizabeth. Washington Hood worked in the American army together with Robert E. Lee, who would later become a commander in the Confederate army
Not only that, the mansion was vandalized in 2016, when criminals broke in to smash windows, steal artefacts and spray graffiti on the walls.
“Renovations would probably cost about $400,000. It’s not as bad as it seems. There is a lot of vandalism, but structurally the building is very solid,” Schumacher said.
In the Facebook post, EPPS attempts to spruce up the home, citing its chestnut floors, oak beams and “solid brownstone construction.”
“It will be difficult to find another home as well built as this,” the association wrote.
You’ll also be hard-pressed to find a home steeped in so much history. In addition to being an important safehouse in the Underground Railroad, the mansion was also home to Washington Hood, the son of John Hood and his wife Elizabeth.
Born in 1808, he graduated from West Point and later became a captain in the Army Corps of Engineers. As the US expanded westward, he was involved in drawing up the new state borders.
During this time he also worked with Robert E. Lee, the man who would later command the Confederate army during the Civil War.
Descendants of the Hood family used the mansion as a summer home until the 1940s
In the 1980s it was auctioned to a developer who ultimately failed to turn the property into a golf course
He died in 1840 of yellow fever while conducting surveys of the Oklahoma Shawnee country between Arkansas and the Missouri River, an assignment given to him by President Martin Van Buren.
Descendants of the Hood family used the mansion as a summer home until the 1940s, before it was managed by paid caretakers for another 40 years, the Philly Voice reported.
In the 1980s it was auctioned to a developer who ultimately failed to turn the property into a golf course.
In 2008, the property was sold for $17 million to Boyd Gaming, a Nevada-based casino operator.
But like the previous plans for the golf course, Boyd’s plans to build a giant casino on the property fell apart, prompting the company to sell it again to the current owner.
Schumacher told the Philly Voice that there is interest from people who might want to help move the mansion before it is demolished.
“We had a semi-serious party that would take the house apart and move it to Chadds Ford,” Schumacher said. “Unfortunately the prices were just too high and they couldn’t make it work.”
Schumacher believes there should be better preservation laws in the U.S. so that developers can’t simply buy historically significant sites and leave them for decades.
“There’s so little a historical society or a conservation organization can do to stop this,” he said.