Restoring a Relic, Without the Mortgage

Hazelwood, an 18th-century mansion in Prince George's County, is being restored by county residents living there rent-free through the historic property curatorship program run by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. The house was once occupied by Revolutionary War Maj. Thomas Lancaster Lansdale. (By Charles Cohen For The Washington Post)

For instance, she attended a masonry conference in Annapolis last year so she could repair the fireplace and foundation herself. Now she works with traditional lime mortar -- park personnel bring her horse hair from other sites for the mix -- and orders hand-fired bricks from South Carolina for authenticity. She has opted for hand-buffing floors lest history be sanded away.

Andy, who commutes to a Baltimore engineering firm, worked up a computer-assisted drawing of one of the rare missing soapstone floor vents.

During a tour, they marvel not just at the house's aesthetics but also at how functional the design was. The house is a "living and breathing organism," Andy said.

Pam said, "The artistry and skill in the early 19th Century was just awesome -- there was always a reason for everything."

The success of the curatorship program, Wagnon said, will depend upon such idealists who "get smitten by these historic structures." The county has two other smaller, historic houses in need of curators.

The park commission bought the property 20 years ago; eventually, vandalism became a problem and the county boarded it up. Although a park police officer lives in a trailer on the grounds, that hasn't been enough to stem all problems over the years. The Coopers discovered two cherub-adorned Italianate plaster medallions pried from the wall and awaiting the return of looters.

While saving Hazelwood is daunting, the Coopers believed it was doable, mainly because the house escaped termite damage (for the most part) and water rot. The beams, walls and -- with a few exceptions -- floors were solid. It didn't need to be gutted. The big jobs were plastering, restoring fireplaces and painting the roof.

History is thick at Hazelwood, and the Coopers have heard plenty of ghost stories -- sightings, presumably of Lansdale, and tales of murder and suicide.

"Yeah, there have been some things that have happened and you can explain it away. As long as they don't throw me off the veranda, I'm okay," Pam said.

Even in broad daylight, the house can be downright spooky. A vulture routinely roosts on the giant chimneys.

All of this appeals to the storyteller in Pam, whose tour of the house includes a wooden pen in the attic that legend has it once imprisoned a crazy woman.

Her husband, however, almost spiked the restoration project when Pam started airing her desire to dress in a gown and waltz in front of the second-floor window.

"You do that," he said, "and I'll never set foot in that house."

Sometimes, in between chores, Pam will pause in the once-ornate hallway, where Andy's antique lathe splitter hangs as decoration, and imagine how the place operated in full party mode, when socialites stepped from boats and waltzed in through what is now the back door. She wonders about the lives of the slaves, the servants and the owners over the years.

Although the soil is rich with archeological finds, according to a county survey, she resists the urge to dig and ponder the meaning of the shards, just as she refrains from driving to a library to search the background of John, the paper hanger who signed a wall in 1859.

"I am busy scraping," she said. "I don't have time to do research."