If you're just tuning in, the free little Half House that sits at 27 Pascal Ave. in Rockport we reported on last week (see original story here) generated quite a response and several people emailed to let us know its mysterious origins, why it was cut in half and where that other half of the house exists.

Chris Harrison of West Palm Beach, Fla., first saw the story and contacted us. He is the son-in-law of Donald Rhodes, one of the original occupants of the house.

"My understanding is that the house was a duplex built in the 1800s," said Harrison. "The neighbors on the left wanted a driveway and wanted to purchase the 27 Pascal Ave. house. However, one of the two owners of the duplex wanted to sell and the other didn't."

In response to the original story, several locals floated the speculation that the two families who lived in this duplex couldn't get along, so they cut the house in half and one of the warring owners took the other half of the house and settled it somewhere in the Midcoast.

This, apparently, is not the case.
 
Rhodes, also of West Palm Beach, has the full story. He was 3 years old when his parents bought 27 Pascal Ave. around 1946. Explaining how the house lost its other half, he said: "The story always told to me was that the people next door [to 27 Pascal Ave.] were the Thomases and they didn't have a driveway because the house sat so close to the property line of the duplex. The Thomases wanted to buy the whole duplex, but by then, the heirs of the duplex couldn't get together and agree to sell the whole thing so, one of the heirs sold the Thomases the left side of the duplex. The Thomases tore that side down [where a driveway still sits today.]"

When the Rhodes family moved in, the house had already been cut in half.

"That's when my dad got out of the army and bought the property," Rhodes explained. "When he bought it it was in real bad disarray." 

In the 1800 sepia-toned photo you can see the two front doors right next to one another.  In the 1946 black and white photo, the Half House's doors and windows have been repositioned.

"My dad put it all back together," said Rhodes. "He moved a window and today, the door is now in between the two windows."

He and his two siblings grew up in that little house, Rhodes said, adding he lived there until he turned 17 and joined the Air Force.

"Growing up in that house in the 1950s was like growing up in Mayberry," Rhodes said. "I have a lot of fond memories living there. I went to Rockport Elementary School, which was at the end of Pascal Avenue, the same building where Hoboken Gardens now sits today. My grandfather founded the family business in 1917. He was a blacksmith and built a machine shop, then a full-service garage called Rhodes Garage, across from the Baptist Church on Pascal Avenue."

By and by, the little house had changed owners. Rhodes tried to buy it back in the early 2000s, but a family dispute obstructed the sale. Rhodes's nephew, who owned the house, sold it to someone in Camden, who then, according to Rhodes, tried to leverage a foundation underneath the house, then abandoned the project.

"Either he ran out of money or something, but he did quite an amateurish job trying to renovate the house and it has sat that way for several years," he said. "I'm really so sad to see it so badly damaged."

Doug Day clarified that the gentleman who attempted the renovation actually had ambitious designs for the Half House but when his mother died, he had to let the project go.

The house was sold one more time. Today the owner is Day, who also owns the big house (28 Pascal Ave.) across the street. He inherited the Half House in its current dilapidated condition; hence his initial desire to give it away free to a willing person who could move it off the property. Since this story posted, he has been in touch with Rockport assessors with more outside-the-box ideas, including rebuilding the Half House to its original specs.

"It still makes sense to start over on the Half House," Day said. "But I've been taken by the possibility of rebuilding the original. Trouble is there's really not enough lot left. The ideas continue and the offer stands to help pay for the removal. I have two different plans for the property. One is to recreate the original, only slightly smaller. The other is another intriguing architectural design by Richard Morris Hunt."

So now that the mystery of where the Half House's other half went has been solved, we will be interested in seeing what this little property's fate will be. Like all houses, this one's story isn't over yet.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com