Shortly after its construction, the beach cottage home at 217 S. Lumina Ave. survived the hurricane of 1899 and every other storm that’s rolled through since. But it could not survive the rising value of the land on which it rested.
On Tuesday morning, the wood of the house’s living room creaked underneath the tracks of a 45,000-pound excavator as the house was torn down by the new owners of the land. A real estate agent working on the deal said the house was offered to historic preservation organizations, but the costs to move it were too great.
Neighbors watching the destruction didn’t believe that the money couldn’t be found to move the house. One woman came out to see the demolition, watched for only a moment, before turning away in tears.
“One by one, they’re ripping the heart out of Wrightsville Beach,” Mary FitzGerald Holst said. “Where the preservation of Wrightsville’s history is concerned, there seems to be no foresight, only hindsight after the fact.”
Robert Holst, her husband, said he wished town leaders or members of the business community could have found the money to rescue the house, which was constructed in the style of the Old Nags Head beach cottage.
“It’s more valuable than money,” Holst said of the home’s historic character.
Known as the Bluethenthal House from its former owners, the structure was first built in 1898. It was placed on the market in June 2015 for the first time since it was purchased by Herbert Bluethenthal sometime after it was constructed.
At a price of $3.5 million, the September purchase was the largest home sale in New Hanover County in 2015. However, the two lots on which the house sits are considered to be much more valuable than the improvements, which real estate experts estimating it to be no more than $500,000, giving the land a value of about $3 million.
Intracoastal Realty real estate broker Mark Bodford said the owners will now try to sell each lot separately for the purpose of building single-family homes on the lot. Bodford said the lots were ideal for single-family homes, noting that each lot could hold up to 5,000-square-foot homes. He said the lots were purchased by a pair of investors.
Bodford said that the house’s original owner had offered to donate it to a historical group, but that the cost of moving it was too prohibitive, citing estimates that it could cost up to $500,000 to relocate the structure.
“They tried to give the home to the museum or to the town, but it was really expensive to move it,” Bodford said.
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