April 24, 2015

300-year-old colonial home for sale in Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — When Alaska homeowners think of antique residences, they might imagine 1970s split-levels.

But a house for sale on Campbell Lake is a colonial-style home built a century before American independence and 60 years before Vitus Bering reached Alaska.

The structure was built in Massachusetts around 1680 but moved to its current location in the early 1980s, the Anchorage Dispatch News reports.

Physician Ross Brundenell, a Tennessee native, moved to Alaska with the Indian Health Service in the late 1960s and became enamored with colonial architecture.

He bought 300-year-old Plymouth, Massachusetts, farmhouse in 1981. To move it more than 4,500 miles to the Northwest, Brundenell hired expert craftsmen to disassemble it board by board and reconstruct the house after it was trucked up the Alaska highway.

“It was more or less virgin,” he said. “It had never been plumbed or wired. There was a well right outside the back door and an outhouse some distance from the well.”

In the mid-1990s, Brundenell added a sunroom on to the 24-by-30-foot Bay Colony house.

He said that is the only structural addition, but he has outfitted the building with modern amenities.

There are the basics, like heat, electricity and running water. But the physician also built a roof platform for stargazing and turned the Plymouth farm's sheep barn into a two-car garage.

To have the New England house survive in Alaska, Brundenell also had to alter the building's foundation, adding steel pilings and a network of welded beams.

In Massachusetts, houses can often be set right on the rocky ground. But Anchorage sports soft, clay-laced soil and is prone to earthquakes.

The house is listed for $850,000 by Re/Max Dynamic Properties. Although reluctant to leave it, Brundenell said he has already purchased another colonial in Rhode Island, where he will be closer to his grandchildren.

The physician said he appreciates the history of old houses.

“When I go to sleep at night, I love to think about all the generations that padded around those floors,” he said.