Five Questions With: John Shea

JOHN SHEA RECENTLY WON a project award, as part of the 2015 Rhody Awards, from Preserve Rhode Island and the R.I. Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission for his restoration of the James L. Hazard house in Newport. / COURTESY HAMMOND RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE LLC
JOHN SHEA RECENTLY WON a project award, as part of the 2015 Rhody Awards, from Preserve Rhode Island and the R.I. Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission for his restoration of the James L. Hazard house in Newport. / COURTESY HAMMOND RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE LLC

John Shea, a sales associate with Hammond Residential Real Estate LLC in Boston, recently won a project award, as part of the 2015 Rhody Awards, from Preserve Rhode Island and the R.I. Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission, for his restoration of the James L. Hazard house in Newport. The 6,000-square-foot Victorian structure was constructed between 1853 and 1865. In 1875, noted architect Dudley Newton placed one of his patented, Mansard roofs on the house. After a 2012 fire rendered it inhabitable, the house was vacant for a year. Shea hired an architect and with professional help restored the structure over two years, then sold it this year to a local family. He spoke recently with the Providence Business News about the preservation journey.

PBN: How did you come to acquire the James L. Hazard House?
SHEA:
I was looking for properties in Newport. I’m in the real estate business. Newport is a home of mine, besides living in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston. It wasn’t set in stone how it was going to be used. It was possibly a second home. I was flexible in what I was going to do.

PBN: What was the condition of the property when you bought it?
SHEA:
Many people in the city thought it was going to be torn down. It was vacant for a year and a quarter of the roof was missing, so it was taking the elements right through the third floor into the property.

PBN: What attracted you to it? Did you like the idea of saving something?
SHEA:
Yes. I was attracted to that. I also knew when it was built, in the mid-1800s. Those homes could be saved and gutted. In the 1700s, the Colonial era, those homes are much more difficult to save because they sit in the dirt, literally. [Victorians] are typically off the ground. The structures are more, like when you see them, they have more girth to them. They’re typically more possible to gut and save. Physically, I felt the structure was safe.

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PBN: What was the goal of the renovation, to restore it to a single-family home?
SHEA:
I was thinking about doing maybe three condos and living in one. Doing a condo for each floor. My wife was a little skeptical whether she wanted to live in the house. This is a block from the Viking Hotel. It’s a very sought-after area. If you couldn’t live on Bellevue Avenue or Ocean Avenue during the late 1800s, that was the neighborhood after those two neighborhoods. So, that’s why there are these great, enormous homes on those three streets. They lead into Bellevue Avenue. You still have a good stock of gorgeous homes built in the mid- to late-1800s. I did my market analysis. The condos [would be] more of a middle market, and I don’t have to explain what’s happened to the middle-class market in the past eight years. I discovered in my research I was more likely to sell it [as a single-family home].

PBN: Now that it’s finished, what do you most like about the structure?
SHEA:
It will be there long after I’m gone.

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