As far as I have been able to discover, Lilac House was built around 1890 as a family farmhouse. The photograph to the right is not a carefully staged recreation—it is the real Lilac House, complete with the Adirondack chairs and the old-fashioned windows that have watched over this property for decades, perhaps more than a century. The vintage plumbing fixtures in the main bath date from the 1920's, I'm told. The working fireplace features cast iron "heatilators"-- used to direct warm air into the keeping room, a room named for its purpose: a place where family and guests could gather near the fire, stay warm while meals were prepared, and keep the cook company. Nearly 130 years of ordinary moments unfolded here: meals shared, children raised, seasons celebrated, and gardens tended.
About ten years before I became its steward, the home was bought by two sisters and their husbands for a remarkably modest price. They spent years of weekends here, using their skills as builders to lovingly restore the home. They honored its character while quietly bringing it into the modern world: updated plumbing, electrical systems, heating and cooling, painting the fresh walls, and ensuring every comfort needed for the next century. When it was done, it was perfect. When I first saw the place, it was in the frosty depths of the pandemic. I couldn't walk away. But we had to make an agreement, Lilac House and I. It had to pay for itself, or I couldn't afford to keep it. It figured out a way. Now families and friends come from near (NYC) and far (England, China, and Belgium) to breathe in the sweet fragrance of memories that others have left., to sit by the fire, to linger in the garden, and to become part of the many generations of memories that make Lilac House what it is.
A Country Story
I can't prove it, but I am sure in my heart that the smaller downstairs bedroom once slept twins...so I still call it the twins' room. The peonies and lilacs have clearly been there for decades, and I often muse on whose hands placed them in the soil so very long ago, to provide blooms for me and my guests today.