Swampscott Pitman House Faces Uncertain Fate After Zoning Setback

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Advocates for saving the historic Richards-Pitman house in Swampscott are left looking for alternatives — while growing desperately short on time — after the Zoning Board of Appeals indicated the house would not qualify for a frontage variance needed to move it from Pitman Street to a vacant lot on Hillside Avenue.

The Affordable Housing Trust had petitioned for the frontage variance that would allow the house, which dates back to the Colonial period and was home to both Revolutionary War hero Joseph Richards and Swampscott town founder Samuel Cloon Pitman, to a vacant lot on Hillside Avenue.

But while the ZBA allowed that the lot is a buildable property based on a 1955 variance that had not expired, the consensus was that the house would not qualify for the frontage variance.

Rather than have the vote go against it — which would prevent an alternative building plan for the site from coming before the ZBA for a set period of time — the Affordable Housing Trust withdrew its petition on Tuesday.

"We are pretty much trying to figure out our options," Select Board member MaryEllen Fletcher told Patch on Thursday. "We have to try to regroup and find another place to put it."

(Also on Patch: Push To Save Swampscott Richards-Pitman House Faces Critical Test)

Fletcher told Patch that "it's not the end of the road" for the house that must be removed from its current location to allow for the construction of the pending Elm Place housing property.

She said one option could be putting the house in storage or finding another location to move it until a permanent location can be found. Proponents of saving the house had proposed the Hillside Avenue space as a single move to help save on costs of preserving the house, which was to be renovated, have the outside restored to its historic appearance, and then sold as two units of affordable housing.

Elm Place construction is set to begin as early as next month.

The ZBA held a three-hour special meeting last week that grew contentious at times with Chair Heather Roman saying during the continuance of the public hearing on Tuesday: "I have never seen so much interrupting, so much cross-talk, so much muttering under the breath. I just left that meeting so frustrated."

A lawyer for the Affordable Housing Trust had argued that the variance should be granted because the inability to put a house on the lot with sufficient frontage represents a hardship for property owners. But ZBA members on Tuesday countered that the variance could be granted only for soil, shape or topography of the lot and that the lot simply not being big enough to support a structure of that size while meeting current frontage requirements was not sufficient cause for the variance.

A group of 70 residents, mostly from the Hillside Avenue neighborhood, signed a petition opposing the move of the house to the lot with representatives from the neighborhood group saying last Tuesday that their primary desire is for the lot to remain vacant.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)