As construction begins to turn an antebellum house in Roanoke’s Fishburn Park into a coffee shop, 200-year-old stories are being told from what the owners and contractors are unearthing from under a rotten porch and through renovations.
The home was built by hand using logs and timber frames, dating back to around 1820, Mike Pulice, architectural historian with the Department of Historic Resources, estimated. For a house this old, contractor Al Anderson said, it’s in pretty good shape. He likes working on older homes with this level of “craftsmanship” where he can learn “the tricks of the trade” from a time before machines were used in construction, and he has been honing his skills since 1983.
The interior of the house bears some remnants of a family’s life there. The last family to occupy the home moved out sometime in the 1990s. An old wooden bed frame, a vintage stove, a sink and ceiling fans are some of the only pieces left in the vacant space. The paint is peeling off the interior walls, and sunlight seeps through holes in the wooden boards.
The builders, who started work this month, have unearthed artifacts such as marbles, old medicine bottles, a flask and pieces of dishes from the property, and the owners are looking to reach out to Roanoke College archeological students to do more excavation on the site of an old porch that was rotten and torn out.
Justin vanBlaricom, who bought the house with his wife, Keri vanBlaricom, in 2022, said he has heard rumors of items being hidden in the floorboards, as he lifted up a piece of the flooring on the second floor to expose a foil wrapper piece from a cigarette pack. This week, the couple found a tin lid to an old chewing tobacco container.
Anderson said the discoveries are part of why he enjoys working on such old properties.
“You learn two or three new things every day. Every building is different,” he said. “There’s not many days in my life when I felt like I was going to work.”
He said if he had to guess, less than 1% of the original structure of the home will be altered in the restoration process.
Pulice said the house was originally owned in 1825 by James Crawford Thompson, who he said was likely a farmer. Later, it was occupied by John Blackwell, the first caretaker of Weaver Park, which is now Fishburn Park. In 1948, his son George took over the job, and his family were the last people to live in the house, said Pulice.
The vanBlaricoms expect the building to reopen as a coffee shop in about a year, if all goes according to plan.
The property has been vacant since about 2000 and was owned by the city until the couple bought it for $10 with the condition that they substantially fix it up within a year. They’ve since received an extension from the city.
Other conditions included applying for historic tax credits and having the property evaluated for the National Register of Historic Places. Pulice said the application was approved, and the home is eligible for the register but has not yet been nominated.
The couple also agreed to invest at least $150,000 into the building. Keri vanBlaricom expects spending closer to $500,000 all in.
“It’s scary, but I think we feel like this is something we’re called to do and we want to show our kids it’s more than restoring a house,” Justin vanBlaricom said.
Getting to the point that they could start work has been no easy feat. The vanBlaricoms, who both grew up in Roanoke, have had their eyes on the property since 2017 and first asked about its purchase three years ago.
Over the past few years, they had to obtain city council approval and a rezoning as well as a contract before they could obtain construction permits.
The project has brought some controversy, as some in the Grandin Court neighborhood have questioned whether the building should be privately owned. The vanBlaricoms and the city were sued by a former president of the neighborhood association who opposed their contract with the city; that suit was dismissed, although an appeal has been filed.
The vanBlaricoms also filed a defamation lawsuit in May against a former secretary of the neighborhood association. According to online court records, a hearing has not yet been scheduled in that case.
Keri vanBlaricom said the goal is to make the coffee shop a community space. “My personal heartbeat is always to bring people together,” she said. The couple said that in general, connection has suffered since the coronavirus pandemic, and they’re hoping this can help to bring some communication back.
She also cited the expansion of the greenways, and the house’s proximity to Fishburn Park, and said she’s hoping that people will visit the coffee shop in conjunction with these outdoor spaces.
Projects involving buildings that are this old aren’t common anymore. Not many contractors have the skills to work on this kind of structure, Pulice said, making Anderson a unique find.
Dating old homes, Pulice said, is done by “taking all clues into consideration” — analyzing nails, sawmarks, framing, massing and other elements of a home’s craftsmanship that might hint toward a period in architectural history.
Pulice said he first visited the Fishburn Park house in 2007 and concluded that the property was pre-1900, just based on its log frame.
Pulice said Anderson, who’s from Pilot, may be the only person in the region with the ability to protect and stabilize homes this old.
“I couldn’t build a new house, but I could fix an old one,” Anderson said.
Cost, he said, is one of the big challenges with restoring hundred-year-old buildings.
“There’s no way anyone can convince you that fixing up an old one is less expensive than if you built a new one,” Anderson said. “But it certainly doesn’t have the soul. There’s lots of stories in these old places.”
Right now, the construction crew is stabilizing a new porch on the front of the building. Anderson said they’ve dealt with some termite damage but have been able to recycle some rotten wood by using good pieces as patches on the existing structure.
The main part of the home is the central part, made of logs. Three additions followed, but all date to before the Civil War.
The house has two floors, but Justin vanBlaricom said the staircase, which is of “original character,” cannot be torn out, as part of their contract, and is not up to code for public use. The upstairs will mainly be used for storage, he said.
“It’s all been really positive,” Keri vanBlaricom said, “and a positive unearthing of the log cabin and how it was built.”
