The "Mayer-Hess Farmhouse Is Brought Back To Life" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Loading a new batch of photographs I had just taken with my Nikon D-3400 camera to my desktop.  

Artist drawing of original 1870 farmhouse.

Photographs were of the old Belmont Farmhouse along the Fruitville Pike in Lancaster, Pennsyl- vania.  Over the years I have written several times about the farm and its main house as well as its barns.  Even wrote about my friend Jere who would ride a wooden skid in the waters to the west of the farm in hopes of catching a snapping turtle so he could take it to a local fish store and sell it to them.

Photo of the south side of the farm from 2005.

According to the Pennsyl- vania Historical Resource Survey, the large farmhouse is probably one of the largest surviving symmetrical Italianate Houses in Lancaster County.  So when the majority of the farm's out buildings were dismantled and either moved or destroyed, the large farmhouse remained on the property and was purchased by Gary Langmuir, President and CEO of Wohlsen Construction Company.  

Recent photograph of the same side of farmhouse.

It is now the Lancaster offices of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services which leased the farmhouse from Mr. Langmuir.  It recently was renovated to the tune of $1.1 million and the 150-year old farm house looks beautiful.  My photos that I took today are testament to that fact.  The farmhouse is now home to about 30 realtors.  

Closer view. of the farmhouse.

The old farmhouse, known as the Mayer-Hess farmhouse, due to the latest families who inhabited the place, is located at 1850 Fruitville Pike and stands out in Lancaster County for its unusual, but elegant, style.  It is a three story brick building that is capped with a cupola.  As I stood in front of the newly renovated farmhouse, I tried to imagine what it must have been like to live in the huge farmhouse 150 years ago.  I had heard many stories about the farmhouse over the years, one being that a child could be seen from time to time in the windows of the cupola.  The child was alleged to have been ill and was quarantined in the cupola.  True or not, it was still an interesting story.  

All new walkways and new paint.

There was also a barn on the property at one time that was disassembled and moved to the Ironstone Ranch in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.  The restoration of the farmhouse took about $100,000 to clean, paint and restore the exterior which was about four times the cost of construction of the farmhouse in 1870.  Today the Belmont Farmhouse is registered on the National Register of Historic Places and will forever be preserved. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.