Iconic North Shore 'Pink House' Demolished Amid Calls To Preserve It

NEWBURYPORT, MA — The year-long effort to restore or relocate the iconic "Pink House" on the road to Plum Island came to a destructive end on Tuesday morning with the demolition of the house that U.S. Fish & Wildlife claimed was a danger to the surrounding marsh because of asbestos.

The Pink House in Newbury — which legend has it was once built out of "spite" because of its gaudy look and position away from the road in the marsh a century ago — became an inspiration for artists, poets and other North Shore romantics who fought hard for its preservation even as state agencies such as U.S. Fish & Wildlife determined that was cost prohibitive.

Members of the "Save the Pink House" Facebook discussion group — with more than 4,000 subscribers — mourned the demolition of the house on Tuesday with poems, odes to its history and place in the region's landscape, and angry rants against those who were involved in the decision to take it down on Tuesday with little-to-no-notice to those who have long-fought to save it.

(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.)