It Starts Here
Welcome to Disaster Mansion, aka David Gill House, aka 54 Gill Street, Ponckhockie Kingston, NY.
To be honest it’s not really a mansion, but it is a disaster, however, “old three story house that was once pretty grand but is now a disaster” doesn’t run off the tongue or sound as interesting as disaster mansion, so we are sticking with the latter. As for David Gill House, that is the name given to the house in the book by William B. Rhoads, “Kingston New York. The Architectural Guide”. Built in 1869 by David Gill for his family, it’s described by William B. Rhoads as a “virtuoso performance with … Italianate paired brackets supporting the projecting eaves, as well as the turned balusters and pendants of the second-story porch.”
Aimee saw Disaster Mansion (DM) listed in a tax auction by the City of Kingston. It had been abandoned for at least five years and had been gutted and pilfered from over the years, still Aimee felt a connection to the place and I was looking for an interesting project (probably more than I was looking for), but we went to the auction, went over our budget but won the house. Now the slow restoration has starts.