This 140-Year-Old Westwood Home Finally Gets a New Life

Renovations from two previous owners revived this west-side gem and made it a showplace.
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2932 Montana Ave., Westwood, $699,900

For roughly a century, this 1876 Montana Avenue home, once sited on a 10 acre farm, belonged to the descendants of a single family. They all trace back to a man named Henry Nagel, founder of the H. Nagel & Son Co.—also known as the Brighton flour mill.

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Photograph Courtesy of Emily Buzek Valentino

The last named Nagel lived on the property in the mid-to-late 1900s; by the time non-family-member Andrew Stetson bought it in 1995, the home was gutted (most notably missing multiple stained glass windows), vacant, and in a state of near-ruin with no working plumbing or electricity and a half-slate-half-asphalt roof that was causing the house to shift. Stetson, who would live in the home for 12 years (he started his Westwood-based Bass Cellar business in the basement), worked arduously alongside contractors to replace the roof, install copper gutters, re-wire and re-plumb the entire structure, install a new forced air system, and meticulously strip and repaint the home’s exterior siding.

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Photograph Courtesy of Emily Buzek Valentino

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Photograph Courtesy of Emily Buzek Valentino

He sold the newly refurbished home in 2007, but by 2014, when current owners Frank Eversole and Rick Pouliot bought it, the property was vacant again and in foreclosure. Though “livable,” says Pouliot, it was suffering anew from “deferred maintenance and questionable paint choices,” notes Eversole. To date, the couple has replaced 71 windows, removed 52 trees, and refinished thousands of square feet of hardwood flooring. Now, the home is a showplace, complete with glamour baths, a pineapple onyx tile-backed bar and a party-worthy kitchen (command central for the many Westwood community events the couple has hosted).

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Photograph Courtesy of Emily Buzek Valentino

Through a side business, Eversole and Pouliot have purchased and renovated dozens of other homes in Westwood, too. Their goal? To help revive this historically significant west-side community. It’s a mission that requires teamwork. Eversole and Pouliot credit Stetson, not themselves, with saving this home; Stetson, in turn, says he was “thrilled when they bought the house,” adding that they were “definitely the right people” to bring the place back to life a second time. Proof, as we see it, that home restoration sometimes takes a village.

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