WELLFLEET — The historical commission has urged the owners of a 75-year-old cottage that is an important example of mid-century modern architecture to consider alternatives to its demolition. The house is one of the original cluster of small summer houses designed by architects Nathaniel Saltonstall and Oliver Morton for their Mayo Hill Colony Club in the late 1940s.

While the commission does not have the authority to prohibit the owners from tearing the house down, at its Feb. 26 meeting members unanimously voted to require that any such plans be delayed for 18 months.

Westford residents Douglas Metcalf and Carol Anne Loucks, who own the property at 60 Way #55, had asked to demolish the single-story structure so they can replace it with a larger house that would have a basement level with two stories above.

The couple’s architect, Irena Sumbera, told the commission that they plan to build a new house using the same style of mid-century modern design that Saltonstall and Morton used.

“The proposed home is not to erase the past but to build on it,” Sumbera said. The new house would “honor the past while building for the future.”

Commission co-chair Timothy Curley-Egan asked if there was engineering evidence that the house was not structurally sound. Sumbera responded that she had made that assumption based on the age of the building and the materials used to build it. The house was constructed of concrete, plywood, and glass.

Commission members asked whether the owners had considered options like expanding the existing cottage. Sumbera argued that would be difficult because it would require building a connector between the original structure and the new; the lot is small and close to the road, she said.

When commissioner Kevin Sheehan asked whether the owner could obtain a variance, Sumbera responded that “two huge families” would be sharing the new house.

Metcalf owns another six-tenths of an acre nearby, but he said it was an unbuildable lot. He added that his grandmother had bought it to protect the view. Scrub pines now obstruct the view, he said.

Joan Zukas, who lives next to the modernist house, said she did not want to put up a roadblock for her neighbor, but a second story would make a significant difference to her.

Sarah Korjeff, the Cape Cod Commission’s preservation specialist, urged the commission to impose the 18-month demolition delay. In her letter, Korjeff said that even though 60 Way #55 was set back on the property and less visible, it still was an important part of the original design of Saltonstall and Morton’s historic Colony.

“Loss of any one of the original buildings will diminish the significance of the entire property, so demolition should be avoided if at all possible,” Korjeff wrote. If a new house is built, she wrote, care should be taken “to limit visual impacts to other historical structures.”

A letter from Peter McMahon, founder of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust, offered more history of the Colony Club. “The Colony is the only cottage complex of that era that is highly significant due to its architectural design, the public art that was integral to the designers’ conception, as well as the many important cultural producers who stayed there,” he wrote.

Sumbera argued that the 1978 purchase by Metcalf’s grandmother, Edith Harris, had effectively removed the house from the Colony’s cluster.

Saltonstall sold the houses in 1963 to Loris and Eleanor Stefani, who rented them out seasonally until Eleanor’s death in 2019. But Eleanor disputed the validity of the cottage’s sale in court on the grounds that Harris was not a purchaser in good faith. The house had been sold to Harris by lawyer and businessman Charles E. Frazier Jr., who had stepped in as part of a refinancing scheme when the Colony was experiencing financial difficulties.

In 2008, the Land Court ruled that, while Frazier’s authority to sell the property had lapsed, Eleanor had not challenged the sale within a reasonable amount of time.

McMahon’s letter noted that the complex had not been preserved through a comprehensive restriction, but at least one house “has been updated and expanded in a way that respects the original design, so this is a precedent that could be followed.”

This is not the first time the house has come close to being demolished. In the 1990s, Harris’s son, Robert Metcalf, secured approval for a new well and a septic system large enough for a five-bedroom house. The ongoing court case, however, drained his resources, according to Sumbera, so the elder Metcalf never acted on his plan to demolish the cottage and construct a two-story colonial-style home.

Curley-Egan said the decision the commission would make on the property could be precedent-setting because the whole Colony, now owned by Eleanor’s son Jeffrey Stefani, is on the market.

 

Three Recent Cases

The unanimous decision marked the third time in four months that the commission has instituted a demolition delay.

In November, it approved a delay for the proposed demolition of the Capt. Joseph Hatch House at 90 Coles Neck Road, which was built around 1780. Owners Matthew Walker and Sally McCarthy, who live in Washington, D.C., said they would be open to giving the home to someone who would have the ability to move it and a place to put it.

In January, the commission imposed an 18-month delay on demolition of a Cape-style house at 45 School House Hill Road that had been built in 1797. The property is owned by Providence, R.I. residents Scott and Carolyn Kilpatrick, who want to build a mid-century modern-style house in its place.

Before the three cases now delayed, the commissioners called for a delay in 2020 for a 19th-century house at 20 Briar Lane. The owners were planning to wait out the delay, since they were not interested in preserving the house, but local restaurateur Mac Hay purchased the property shortly before the delay expired and continued its past use as rental apartments.