Buildings feel no pain.
Some age gracefully, holding forth proudly while they can against decay. Many others simply fall apart as the decades do their damage.
All stoically stand sentinel to the corrosive impact of time, weather and neglect.
The apartment house at 130 N. Third St. in Easton would weep if it could.
Known as the Townley Building, just off Bushkill Street, it has a transcendent history and stunning potential.
It also has had a remarkably rough reality.
Rediscovered in the mid-1990s, well before the wave of restoration that recently has invigorated Downtown Easton, the building is now on a path to being declared blighted, according to city officials.
It was not always that way.
The fireplaces had Mercer tile. The wooden staircase was grand. The brick detailing on the front facade was both impossibly intricate and strikingly designed. It even has a garage, which equates to Downtown gold.
John Shipe built the place around 1866 to be his home, according to Richard F. Hope’s book “Easton Pa.: Historical Tours.”
The “Second Empire” Mansard roof defines its era, Hope wrote in 2009. It served its duty as a family home along Easton’s so-called “Millionaires Row,” when Grace Bixler, the stepdaughter of silk mill magnate Herman Simon, converted it into the Townley Apartments in 1920, according to Hope. The moniker comes from a “family surname,” Hope wrote, and a doctor bought the property in 1925 as its first floor hosted his medical practice for 50 years.
A shot at new life
A 23-year-old Lafayette College graduate bought the building in March 1995 for $85,000.
“It was a mess,” Joseph Clienti said in a 1996 interview. But he restored it years ahead of the Downtown’s residential renaissance, with an eye on the future. It went from syringes and crack bags — a hangout for hookers and junkies — to a showplace, with “mahogany pillars lead(ing) the way into the foyer,” according to the 1996 interview.
“I mean, if you tried to build something like this with all these features — the moldings, the floors, the fireplaces with Mercer tiler — it would cost a fortune,” he told The Express-Times back then. “The only way to be able to live in this sort of structure anymore is to find one that’s been restored.”
He borrowed and begged but once the building was up and running, “I was able to refinance and pay everybody back,” he said.
Cilenti kept the history even as he added ceramic tile kitchens and bathrooms and upgraded the electric and plumbing.
“I don’t want this place to be butchered,” he said. “The whole reason I bought it was because it was still pretty much intact. And that’s almost a miracle when you consider the way it was neglected.”
The rise, fall and rebirth of Easton’s silk mill
Cilenti couldn’t be reached last week to explain what happened next. But the building was sold in 2003 at sheriff’s sale for $172,081 to AHB Realty LLC of Bedminster, N.J., records show.
A principal from that company couldn’t be reached for comment, either. But that’s not a surprise. Looking through several folders of city citations against the company related to the Townley Building, there were several efforts to serve court papers that were met with “returned to sender” stamps.
District Judge Antonia Grifo issued two bench warrants and then, in January 2016, an arrest warrant in an effort to get AHB Realty to answer several sets of code violations.
Reversal in fortunes
Citations include failure to repair the roof, gutters and downspouts, weeds 12 inches high, failure to replace damaged fencing, rotten window frames and broken panes of glass, and failure to fix the basement hatchway and the fire escape. Citations were issued March 18, 2015; Aug. 19, 2015; Jan. 19, 2016; July 15, 2016; and Dec. 6, 2016, according to court records.
City placards have been on the front door for so long that they are deteriorating. Even the sign signifying the building’s historical value is well-weathered.
The building has been vacant since August 2011, city Chief Code Administrator Stephen Nowroski.
“The city has not been informed of a plea made by the defendant, therefore a hearing has not been scheduled for the citations,” Nowroski wrote in an email.
Some work, including trash cleanup, was done by city contractors and liens have been placed against the property to pay for those efforts, Nowroski said.
The building will be referred to the city’s Property Review Committee “for a determination of blighted certification,” Nowroski said.
If the property is found blighted “it will be condemned and can be taken under eminent domain,” he said, declining to specifically speculate what the city might do with the building. It could become a redevelopment authority project or be sold to a developer, he said.
Close to Route 22 and a short walk to Centre Square, it is within the city’s historic district, so “exterior renovations are approved by the Historic District Commission,” Nowroski said.
Easton Realtor Clay Mitman, who in recent years has been inside the shuttered premises, said if someone doesn’t “mind spending a million to a million and a half dollars” — including the purchase price — the grand old building could be brought back. But that likely would require gutting the place and “recreating historic details,” he said.
The nearly 8,000-square-foot building that stretches a half-block to the Bank Street alley is too large to be made back into a single-family home, he said.
“It’s too chopped up, it’s been apartments for too long,” he said.
Mitman said he met the owner two years ago and talked to him about selling the place.
“He has a vision that the value is more than it is,” Mitman said.
But the place does retain its exterior charm from an era when Easton’s Downtown was roamed by the very rich.
“I love the fine-dressed workmanship of the brick facade and entryway,” said local architect Tim Hare, a longtime proponent of restoring not demolishing the city’s historic buildings. “It’s one of my favorites.”
Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
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