A partnership of local developers, with the approval of the city and neighbors, is tackling a renovation project on an antique Nashua home linked to a prominent family with roots dating to Nashua’s earliest days.

The partnership, called 7-9 Amherst Street LLC, has eyes on restoring the now dilapidated but once glorious Greeley home at 7 Amherst St.

It was built more than 200 years ago and once was home to Ezekiel Greeley, one of the original shareholders in the Nashua Manufacturing Co.

Prospering

It was a city unrecognizable from today’s Nashua.

According to "The History of Nashua" (Part V, Dunstable from 1800 to 1860), the population of a growing community, not yet named Nashua, was 862 people in 1800. There was a weekly two-horse stagecoach into town, and, "Whether for better or worse, there were no lawyer, no doctor and only one clergyman."

It was an agrarian society for the most part, but industrialization was almost literally right around the corner. The area, first known as Indian Head, would become Nashua Village in 1803. Five years later, Joseph, Ezekiel and Alfred Greeley would come from Hudson and began an enterprise "engaged in transporting goods by boating from the head of the Middlesex Canal to the Nashua River," according to the history.

Ezekiel and his brothers, each with 30 shares of stock, would go into partnership with other men, including Daniel Abbot, to start the Nashua Manufacturing Co., the mills that formed the basis for the growth of Nashua. The mills would be located down the hill and around the corner from the house that for years was a grand home to a prominent Nashua family.

"It is certainly not the oldest (house). It dates back to a time when it was Dunstable. The Greeley family was prominent in Nashua for generations," said Bob Samson, chairman of the Nashua Historic District Commission.

The commission oversees certain aspects of development and renovation in the city’s historic district, where the project is sited.

The main structure that makes up the now rambling home has the characteristics of late Federal and Greek Revival styles. Mark Nash, one of the partnership’s members, said the whole building, including all of the additions tacked on over the years, is more than 6,000 square feet. The project will restore about 3,000 square feet on two floors of the main home.

The plan

Over time, the home acquired a mishmash of additions and attachments, which, for some people, didn’t necessarily benefit the home’s original clean, symmetrical lines. There is a large porch in the rear. A tower and enclosed staircase provided access to upper-story rooms when the building became a boardinghouse.

Both the porch and tower will be removed during renovation, as well as a smaller porch on the left side, in a project lasting several months that will turn the current eyesore back to its simple, classic, impressive self.

"The tower goes," Nash said during a recent walking tour with his project partners. "That tower isn’t the right architecture. That came later on, in the 1830s or so. Then it morphed again two or three times through the 1800s."

The rear porch isn’t original, either, and will be torn away.

"Somewhere between 1830 and 1890 is when the rear section got put on," said Stephen Boilard, Nash’s stepson, project partner and head of Nash Construction.

"It kept on changing a little bit through time."

Nash has also worked restoring houses with Jim McCormick, the third member of the renovation trio.

"We’re going to have fun with it," Nash said. "We’re going to make something nice in Nashua."

Inside

The original brick-ended home has a simple layout. There is currently a mysterious arrangement of rooms and features, forced over time by the addition of rooms probably brought on by changing family situations.

"They did it for family members," Nash said. "It had two kitchens in it. The weird thing is the main house had no kitchen. Just four big rooms on the first floor, four big rooms on the second floor and two rooms on the third."

A subsequent build-out provided a rear kitchen.

Gesturing to the rear of the home, Nash said, "This has a connection in that it goes to a fireplace and a kitchen area. I think that was the main house and this was the other unit, so it was actually a duplex."

Inside is an odd mixture of mostly old and some new – or at least not as old. Two large crosses hang on the walls indicating its past brief use as a church. Flashlights reveal broken plaster on ceilings, peeling paint on walls and debris on the floor.

"The house, of course, is in deplorable shape right now," Samson said. "No question about it."

Beyond the general disorder, though, are hidden gems hinting at a special past.

In one room, components to a wall-mounted gas heating fixture remain. Boilard, also on the tour, examined the feature and estimated it could perhaps date from the 1920s.

Pocket-style shutters, also commonly referred to as "Indian shutters," still slide to cover some of the building’s front windows. Near the dining room, a small sliding door allows service between that small space and butler’s pantry.

The dining room itself features a grand fireplace, decorated with snarling, or perhaps smiling, expressions on the face of some kind of big cat.

As can be expected, there are several fireplaces throughout the home.

Upstairs are several rooms indicating another past life as a boardinghouse. A common bathroom serves the small bedrooms. The hallway there is narrow and dark. In its current state, the home is mazelike.

Yet another staircase, this one very steep, leads to an attic. The attic space is equally expansive, but it won’t be renovated.

The work isn’t worth it, considering how the home will be used and the scope of the job, according to Nash, besides the reworking necessary to make the seemingly vertical climb compliant with modern building codes.

Changing hands

"Greeley was the owner-builder of this," Boilard said. "He was a partner in the mills originally with Abbott."

The home has had various owners in recent years, and for different purposes. It was recently owned, but not fully occupied, by Terry Romano, who at one time was president of the Nashua Historical Society.

The society is a private organization and not part of city government.

At times, there was talk to make the old home into professional offices. Others wanted to turn it into condominiums.

For a while, when it was owned by Romano, it was home to The Church of the Twelve Apostles of Melchizedek and His Disciples.

That organization’s name is registered in the state to Levon Kunka Bowdre, and its address is listed as 7 Amherst St., Nashua, 03064. Weathered letters spelling out part of the church’s name remain tacked outside the front door.

"He wanted to do a church here, so she sold it to him," Nash said. "Nothing ever came of it.

"We ended up buying it," Nash said, in an arrangement to untangle the building from its various ties.

The group bought it for $285,000, which included a small house at 9 Amherst St. that is nearing completion of its own full renovation, property at 4 Abbott St. and the big home at 7 Amherst St.

"Jim had been ogling over it for years before we purchased it," Boilard said.

"We’re going to sink a quarter of a million into this place," Nash said.

The work

Nash remembers mulling over options before committing to the current single-family home project, including taking their own stab at making it into condominiums.

"Let’s try it," Nash remembers saying with a go-for-it attitude.

"It’s been in this condition for a long time," Nash said.

The three performed extensive research and made presentations to the historic district commission. It helped when it became known that the add-on porch was to be removed and that the focus would be on the original brick-end home.

"They were all for it," Nash said. "They’re happy with it, as is the Historical Society right next door."

Nash will keep as much as he can of the antique home and will repair, within reason, along the way "as best we can," he said.

"Everybody wants to be in the old colonial, historical house, but want the nice stuff inside," he said. "We’re going to modernize it but keep what features we can."

Those features include doors, woodwork, the dining room’s fierce brick animals, stairway features and more, if they can.

"This fit better than the alternative, which was a conversion," Nash said.

The job is a big one. "It’s a six- or seven-month project," Boilard said.

"The quickest thing is tearing the old part down. It’s this …" Boilard said, gesturing at interior features, alluding to careful restoration required of the more special architectural features. Eventually, the home will have a two-car attached garage with a breezeway connecting it to the house, a modern convenience for today’s horseless carriage.

Legacy

Work has begun to carefully strip the additions off the back and side of the building.

"I’m happy," McCormick said. "We were originally looking at it to convert to condos. But now, it’s kind of nice it’s going to be a nice house. It’ll be prominent; people will be proud of it."

"We all have a lot of pride in Nashua," Boilard said. "It would be nice to drive by and say, ‘That’s a nice single-family,’ not just, ‘We turned a profit.’ It’s nice to give something that’s going to be presentable to the community. The Historical Society is happy with it. We can all be happy with it."

Don Himsel can be reached at 594-1249, dhimsel@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DonH.