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Our classic half Federal house is vertical living. Three stories, high ceilings, lots of stairs. Nary a flat surface anywhere; without nudging, you can roll a ball from one end of a room to another. That happens after 225 years of pine floorboards settling. Dust flies. Doors warp. Mice slide through clapboard cracks.
My husband and I are often asked when we’ll move, when we’ll find one-floor living with windows that don’t require sticks to stay open. Our sons flourish in their adult lives far away and the two parents and yellow lab left on Boardman Street don’t need eight rooms for sleeping, working, and watching Hulu. We could get along very well with half of that. We could do our bit to add youth and energy to Newburyport by selling our home to a family with small children, or growing children, or future children. The house is within walking distance of two playgrounds, downtown, the waterfront, and the Clipper City Rail Trail. What better place to learn to ride a bike? Why not downsize, vanquish the mortgage, halve our property taxes, and learn to love a low-maintenance two-bedroom?
But we don’t budge.
Instead, we, like many of our peers, opt to rattle around in the family home instead of selling it for a tidy fortune to any number of eager urbanites aching for the 01950 zip. But where would we go?
To be sure, plenty of empty nest Newburyporters have crossed the Merrimack and found happiness in Salisbury. They have bought condos and townhouses. They enjoy smaller tax bills. Yet they are a 5-minute drive away from an impromptu sunset cocktail at Michael’s or a Screening Room matinee. They can still grab a bagel at Abe’s and cruise the boardwalk within minutes of waking.
But we don’t budge.
We love where we live. We love walking out our front door with an easy stroll to the YWCA for a workout or the Port Tavern for a beer. We love Maudslay State Park and the Rail Trail and sunsets at Cashman Park. We love how close we live to a close network of friends, how easily we can gather for wine around a fire or grilled chicken in the backyard. Easy to say that most people in our city feel the same way. Hence the low inventory of homes on the market and the dazzling high prices of those that are. This month, June, Bentley’s Real Estate reported only 19 active listings with a median price of $1.99 million in Newburyport. That’s better than March’s report, which claimed only nine listings with a median price of $2.45 million.
But that’s not the whole problem. Downsizing for those of us yearning to age in place, those of us with body parts installed on a surgeon’s table, or those of us with Rheumatoid Arthritis or pulmonary issues, means no stairs. Or limited stairs. And in an old New England seaport that houses over 2,900 historic homes, good luck finding one-floor living. Early settlers designed bedrooms on upper floors for privacy and escape from the kitchen cooking odors below. In the June real estate listings, I could find only one home with a first-floor master bedroom. Many condos offered single-floor living, but all seemed to be second and third-floor units requiring a hefty climb for access.
To be clear, I like stairs. Stairs are good for strength and cardio. But my husband has Parkinson’s and I could easily trip lugging a basket of laundry down to our basement washer. I spend many a morning dog walk searching for homes with first floor bedrooms and full baths. I spy lovely ranches in the North End, and quite a few by Perkins’ Playground. Once, a homeowner of a sweet 3-bedroom offered me a reasonable price if I wanted to close the deal before the house went on the market at the end of the week. I balked.
If I’m honest, downsizing is about so much more than avoiding a tumble. We adore this house purchased in 1990 for $129,900. We have renovated every square inch, adding bathrooms and updating the kitchen, painting and plastering, refinishing floors. We tore down the dizzying patterned paper that lined every wall of every room and shored up the foundation so that our bouncing baby boys wouldn’t shake the house every time they wrestled. We cemented the dirt basement floor. We built a patio to enjoy the perennial gardens we have planted in the tiny backyard. But through all the renovations, we understand that we were not owners but caretakers of this historic house, tenants passing through.
I cherish that history. Will I stay here as long as our predecessor, an octogenarian who moved into 53 Boardman Street with her in-laws during the Depression when she was a young bride and stayed for the next 56 years, outliving her in-laws and her husband? Will our sons share stories like her son shared with me of avoiding the creaky eighth step in the back stairway when he came home after curfew? Of hosting cousins and placing the maiden aunts in the drafty third-floor bedrooms where maids once slept? Of the maple tree shading the house from summer heat?
I’d like to think so. While my sons often lamented that they couldn’t play basketball in a cul-de-sac like their friends in the West End, they relished biking the neighborhood and never having to take a school bus. We were within walking distance of the Kelley School, the Nock Middle School, and the high school. This is home, and it is important, at least to me, to have this as their home base when they visit.
I admire our friends who sold their meandering family home with five bedrooms and are figuring out their next step from a light-filled apartment on Temple Street. They love the freedom. They enjoyed the Christmas rental for the family gathering. But I lean toward another friend, who is vehement that she will stay in her South End Greek Revival, if she must tie ropes along the steep stairwell to reach her second-floor bedroom.
Alternatives? An elevator? $$$$$ A seat that glides up the stairs? Perhaps. A community like Hillside, Dave Hall’s brainchild of communal sustainable living? How fun to live on that road off Pond Street if a group of friends lived there, too. Wake up to group coffee on the porch. Community gardening. Friday cocktail hours. Heck, Wednesday cocktail hours. The problem? None of our friends are ready to take the plunge either. Like us, they are happy in the address they have called home for decades.
And so we do not budge.
Sue Hertz
Newburyport resident
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