ENDURING BEAUTY IN WALLS of STONE

Now back in the family who had been here since 1830, the old farmhouse is again ready for generations to come. Additions dating to 1840 and the 1950s were preserved.

- REGINA COLE

the old stone house is in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. It already had a nearly 200-year-history in Diann's family when Joe and Diann Martin purchased it.

Built in 1820 on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River, the house had been sold in 1830 to one of Diann's ancestors. During the 19th and 20th centuries, it was a working dairy farm of a thousand acres and known as Potomac Riverside Farm. In 1840, a side ell was added, the first of a series of additions and alterations. Over the years, family members divided the land; when Diann's grandparents owned the house, it was surrounded by 365 acres.

"In 2003, my uncle owned the adjoining farm as well as one-third of this property," Diann says. “He wanted to sell both together and my dad could not afford to buy him out. We were sad but had no choice. It passed out of the family."

In 2015, the new owner fell on hard times and the house, along with 18 acres, was offered in a foreclosure auction. That's when Joe and Diann bought it.

By then, the house was in bad shape, the Martins explain. "Plaster was falling off the walls, the radiators and fixtures were gone, and the exterior paths were overgrown and unusable. But it still has a wonderful location on the river." It was structurally sound, having been protected by the standing-seam metal roof.

Then the couple found Seth Ballard, a Washington, D.C.-based architect who specializes in historic preservation. [Ballard+Mensua Architecture]

"I entered the Tulane School of Architecture loving modern architecture," Seth smiles. But "I left loving historic architecture."