Restoring Condemned Mansion Leads LI Couple To 'Rabbit Hole' Of Wonder

OYSTER BAY, NY — An Oyster Bay couple didn't know they were embarking on a four-year journey of historic and personal discovery when they accidentally stumbled on a condemned, unlivable, vacant mansion in 2018. Jamie Arty said she "never wanted an old home" until she and her husband, Franz, found the 1834 home while house-hunting and making a wrong turn.

"I wanted something we could move right in and not do any work. It's funny how things work out because we got the exact opposite," she told Patch.

What the couple got was more than Arty could have ever imagined.

Four years later, the family's multi-million dollar restoration of the home has made headlines, garnered a social media following of thousands, inspired a short documentary film that won a New York Emmy, and most importantly for the Arty family, revealed centuries of history that touched them on a personal level.

Even though everyone thought in 2018 the 10,000 square-foot house would have to be torn down, "there was something really beautiful about it," Arty said.

Arty has a design and event planning background and her husband, a software engineer, told her the renovations would take six months.

The couple, with a 4-year-old and twin 2-year-olds, eventually moved in, but it would take over two years.

"I am glad we did it — it was one of the best decisions we ever made."

Early on in the renovation process, Arty created a Facebook group called Making Over a Mansion for family and friends. Old-home enthusiasts, and then-genealogy and local history hobbyists, became hooked watching the process unfold. The Facebook group now has over 36,000 members.

"I don't really know how they found us," Arty said with a laugh.

The house needed almost everything. There was lead paint, holes in the roof and a faulty staircase. The family had to first restore a cottage on the property to live in while they got the main house to become liveable.

Over the two years of restoring the home, the Artys discovered its history, and stories of the previous owners that sent them down a "rabbit hole" of discoveries. They learned a prominent New York abolitionist and judge William Townsend McCoun home once owned the home.

Later, it was the home of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. and his family. The Oyster Bay Historical Society was instrumental in helping to uncover the home's long history, particularly Executive Director Denice Evans- Sheppard. The story of Evans-Sheppard's own family home in Oyster Bay, with its connection to Long Island Black history, also inspired a documentary.

"I had no idea about all this history here," Arty said.

"I like to think how this home has seen three pandemics since it was built: cholera, smallpox and then Covid. I imagined those families sitting here like we were in 2020, shut in the same room."

Arty tried to keep that sense of history alive in her restoration choices. She says the moldings and finishes are similar to how the house would have looked 200 years ago. The work on the home isn't over, she said — "it's never going to be finished" — but the home's Instagram-perfect interiors and decor have been featured in magazine spreads.

For Arty, the restoration goes much deeper than the surface.

Finding out that a free woman of color lived in the home before the Civil War and learning a little about her life, from a time when records of women and people of color were scarce, was the most moving part of the journey for Arty.

"We found out that this woman [Sophia Moore] was such an important part of the McCoun household that McCoun held two funerals for her. It was amazing to see how nicely she was treated, how she was able to buy her own freedom."

Arty plans to research Moore's life next year, and travel to New Jersey to see if she can find any of her living descendants to share the remarkable history she found. Moore's grave can still be seen, placed near Judge McCoun's in his family cemetery on the property.

"Just to know she would go up and down these same stairs is amazing. I think about how she'd touch the same banisters we are touching right now, all those years ago."