Burning Down the House
The historic 1905 Stockman House in Aberdeen, NC engulfed in flames during a controlled burn on March 5, 2021. Photo by Ted Fitzgerald for The Pilot
On Friday March 5, the Stockman house in Aberdeen was used as live fire training. Built in 1905, this home was a contributing structure to both the Aberdeen National Register and Local Historic Districts. Frank Stockman was a tailor from France who built this modest double-pile rectangular frame house with a high hip roof, turned porch posts, and tabernacle pane doors. The Styer family, who built the Pure Gas station that is now High Octane Coffee, lived in this home. It now sits as a vacant, charred lot.
Although neglected for a number of years, the building was deemed structurally sound and salvageable by both the NC SHPO and Aberdeen's Chief Building Inspector for the Town. Aberdeen maintains a list of buildings that should be condemned or demolished by neglect, and this home was not on that list. The Aberdeen HDC declared up to a 365 day stay in order for the applicant and the commission to explore any and all possible alternatives to demolition to protect the property. While the owner claimed that there was an effort to move the structure, it was never widely advertised nor were the entities in Moore County and NC who exist exactly for this reason — The Moore County Historical Association, The Pines Preservation Guild, Preservation NC — contacted to help find the building a new owner. If publicized widely or have these entities involved, there surely would have been a taker for the home, as again it was deemed both sound and restorable.
We as a county should always opt for saving, moving, or salvaging structures before burning them.⠀⠀
If still an owner couldn't be found for this building, at the very least there should have been a salvage effort. The market for replacement parts for historic buildings and fixtures is booming right now with the massive surge of people rehabilitating old homes. They need those bathroom fixtures thought of as dated. They will pay top dollar for those historic windows and tin ceiling tiles. And with the lumber shortage, there is a HUGE demand for old-growth lumber. Destroying irreplaceable features and fixtures to send to the dump or to burn into the atmosphere is not only wasteful, it’s incredibly unsustainable. The friends of the Aberdeen Library could have used proceeds from salvage sales to help fund the construction of the new library. However, this was not the route taken.
The Stockman House in 2018
We support the Friends of Aberdeen Library in their mission to expand services to the citizens of Aberdeen. However not seeking a way to adaptively reuse the building into the new library design, nor reaching out to the historic non-profits in the county or state to help find a new owner for the building was a major misstep.
Housing, especially affordable housing, is at an extreme shortage in Moore County and this structure could have been part of a sustainable solution.
The very last resort should have been offering this historic structure as a controlled burn. We support and love our local firefighters, however this not only is a waste of historic materials, but the old-growth wood that comprises these buildings doesn’t burn the way new construction does. There is also a huge uptick lately of heritage buildings in Moore County being offered as controlled burns, mainly due to owners not wanting to pay for demolition costs. If Moore County wants to be seen as a modern community, then this practice needs to be discouraged. Not only does it not provide real-life training for firefighters due to the historic building materials that burn differently, but exercises like these release several unnecessary carcinogenic materials into the atmosphere, even when both costly lead and asbestos remediation have been done. Devina Horvath, Project Manager Specializing in Environmental Due Diligence, notes that with a controlled burn "incinerators, dioxins, and lead from the ash heavily impact soil in a radius from the burn area. In a residential neighborhood where there are neighbors, [prescribed building burns are] unconscionable due to the impacts to their health.” We as a county should always opt for saving, moving, or salvaging structures before burning them.⠀
The Pines Preservation Guild has crafted the following proposal for how the municipalities in Moore County can deal with controlled burns:
Take steps similar to what was done in Asheville and Buncombe county. Their Fire Departments no longer take part in prescriptive burns as they constructed a training facility for these very exercises. The Southern Pines Fire Department Station #2 on US 22 could become a joint training location county-wide for live fire training. A portion of the cost for a demolition permit in the county could go towards helping to offset the cost of updating the station to accommodate this kind of training.
The introduction of local — county, or municipality-driven — tax incentives to owners of properties over 50 years old for restoration and rehabilitation. While most of these structures are already eligible for state or federal tax credits, many owners do not know about their availability, and most of the existing historic districts are woefully out of date, leaving many heritage buildings at risk. Being informed of these options when dealing with planning departments would give owners a multitude of options and help increase the preservation of the heritage structures that help create our community.
Create and foster a culture of adaptive reuse, and incorporation of existing heritage buildings into proposed developments. Growth and development is happening, but it needs to be done in a manner so future generations don't look back and say "what did they do!?" Existing structures often require less changes in infrastructure, less waste, and are easier to adapt since their existing structure and systems already exist. Increasing the cost of demolition permits should be considered by all municipalities to help decrease demolitions, and again, introduce tax incentives to help encourage retention and reuse.
Housing, especially affordable housing, is at an extreme shortage in this county and this structure could have been part of a sustainable solution. Not every resident wants or can afford the $350,000, 3,000 sq ft homes currently being built at breakneck speed. This building could have found new life on a new parcel as a small affordable home for a young family starting out or for retirees on a fixed income, both which are being priced out of Moore County at a rapid pace. It is always important to remember that the old building that one sees as an inconvenience is another’s dream structure. The Stockman house was the lone physical reminder a man who arrived in America as an immigrant and was able to create enough wealth to build this humble structure. It was lone remnant of Frank Stockman’s existence, and now it only exists as a charred memory.
