Historic house gets reprieve

The Tarpon Springs Historical Society will work to bring the city's second-oldest home up to code, saving it from demolition.

By KATHERINE GAZELLA

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 23, 2000

TARPON SPRINGS -- The city's second-oldest house has been saved.

To prevent the demolition of the Patten-Hope house, the Tarpon Springs Historical Society has volunteered to make repairs that will bring the 116-year-old structure up to city standards.

"I see no reason to tear it down now," said Jules Elliott, a Virginia developer and owner of the house. "The demolition is off."

Elliott applied in May for a permit to bulldoze the house, which is on Athens Street near the Sponge Docks. He has owned the house for 10 years and said he decided to knock it down to make room for new development. The building has been boarded up for several years and is riddled with termites, he said.

The city has told him to bring the house up to code, but he said it would have taken a lot of effort to improve the house.

Now, volunteers from the Historical Society and the community will meet at the house Saturday morning to make repairs. They will board up some of the windows, make improvements to the porch and clear away the brush from the property, said Phyllis Kolianos, manager of the Historical Society.

"What we're doing now is just stabilizing it," she said.

Nobody knows what will happen next. It is possible that a non-profit group could use the house as its headquarters, said Kathy Monahan, community affairs administrator for the city. Such a group might be eligible for grant money, she said.

It also is possible that someone could buy the house and use it as a residence. A third option would be for someone to use the house as an office while Elliott built up to 12 residences on the rest of the 0.83-acre property.

"As long as it's not used as a residence, I can develop the property around it," he said.

The house was built by one of the oldest pioneer families on the Gulf Coast. Nathaniel Stone Patten, a steamboat captain who retired to Tarpon Springs and opened a sawmill, built the house in 1884.

In 1905, Florida statesman Samuel Edward Hope acquired the house. Hope, a Civil War veteran, a state surveyor and a civil engineer, was a member of the Florida constitutional conventions of 1865 and 1885.

In recent years, the city had talked about buying the house from Elliott, restoring it and turning some of the property into a parking lot. A sale never went through.

The city had wanted to buy the house using grant money, but to get the grant it was required to have the property under contract, said Walter Fufidio, the city's director of planning and zoning. But he said the city could not sign a purchase contract without having received the grant first.

Volunteers are invited to meet at the house at 8 a.m. Saturday to help with the repairs. The address is 447 Athens St. in Tarpon Springs.

Katherine Gazella can be reached at (727) 445-4182 or gazella@sptimes.com.

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