In Philly, the opportunity to live rent-free in a 300-year-old house doesn’t come around very often. When it does, it gets snatched up fast. Last month, a resident caretaker position became available at Germantown’s Wyck Historic House, Garden and Farm, one of the oldest houses in the city. For this live-work position, abatement of rent was offered for performing a four-page list of duties, including: changing light bulbs, serving as a back-up tour guide, and feeding the chickens daily. Oh, and collecting their eggs.
Sound like an unreasonable exchange? The position was filled within five days.
That’s usually how it goes. When Jonathan Burton, a former site manager of the Powel House and the executive director of PhilaLandmarks, advertised a position at Society Hill’s Hill-Physick House a few years ago, he received hundreds of requests for the job within four days of posting the listing.
Most of the time these positions are posted publicly online and are open to all applicants, but former caretakers acknowledge that there’s already a network of people with connections to the historic preservation community. The ideal candidate also varies by house.
Burton, for example, often looks for couples in their mid-30s who can split the work, with one person taking primary responsibility for the site manager’s duties. They should also be comfortable acting as the public face of the museum.
Once assigned, resident caretakers often hold their positions for years. Laureen Griffin and Martina Plag, for example, heard about a caretaker position at Stenton through friends who were site managers at Powel House, and ended up living and working there for a full decade before moving on to rent a home in Germantown.
Between three to five years is the ideal amount of time to be a caretaker, though, according to Burton. “Sometimes they stay longer and that’s when problems arise,” Burton explains.
“They start to feel a little bit of an ownership over the house, but it’s still a historic house museum. And you start to burn out—living where you work is very difficult.”
Lucy Strackhouse is senior director of Preservation & Property Management at Fairmount Park Conservancy and manages the caretakers living in the park’s historic houses. She remarks, “It’s not really the romantic ideal that some people think it is.” In fact, she sometimes tries to talk people out of taking the position.
“Make sure you know that this [home] has an old furnace and you may lose heat for two days before we get someone over there to fix it,” Strackhouse will warn applicants. “Or, the internet may not work well because you can’t get cable to the building. Or, it’s on septic tank.”
She continues, “We have amazing historic houses that are very, very charming, but they’re all quirky. So we really have to find people that are very tolerant and embrace that sort of lifestyle.”
Once Strackhouse identifies suitable candidates, she puts them on a waiting list in case additional opportunities arise.
Even with the 18th-century amenities, limited privacy, and demands of maintenance, the positions are coveted by artists and history enthusiasts who regard them as unique opportunities to live like it was 1799. And at a rent-free or rent-reduced rate, while saving up for a down payment to buy a perhaps less historic place of their own.
David Rose, the caretaker at Vernon-Wister House in Germantown and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s historic preservation program, patiently waited for five years before securing his position. When he originally applied, preference was given to a couple to live in the former butler’s suite at the back of the three-story colonial house, which once home to Congress member John Wister.
Rose was placed on Strackhouse’s waiting list, though, and when he checked back last fall the position was available again.
Rose describes his responsibilities as “the same things that you would do if you were taking care of your own home,” from cleaning around the exterior, removing garbage, and monitoring the need for repairs.
When Justina Barrett, site manager for the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Historic Houses, heard about an opportunity to live at Fairmount Park’s Woodford Mansion through an email circulated by a colleague, she didn’t think twice to apply. She spent four years living there as a caretaker with her husband and infant daughter, providing skilled gallery maintenance, landscape work in the home’s small orchard, and leading tours.
Barrett and her family lived in a one-bedroom apartment that was part of a 1930 addition to the back of the Georgian-style colonial mansion. Their first-floor apartment was connected to a living room in the 1771 section of the house, as well as a ground-floor modern kitchen that they shared with docents, staff members, and occasional tour groups.
“The public does, occasionally, traipse through the caretaker’s kitchen,” Barrett recalls. “So it’s a very not-private space. I was nursing my daughter right there in the kitchen, with the docents. It was very 18th century in the sense of privacy.”
The couple would have stayed longer, but once their daughter started walking and venturing past the velvet ropes protecting Woodford’s museum-level collection of 18th-century decorative arts, they knew they had to move on. (And to a home with their own kitchen.)
But for all the idiosyncrasies of living in a historic fishbowl with a poor internet connection, it must not be all that bad. The new resident caretaker at Wyck was a caretaker there once before, and enjoyed it enough to do it again. Plus, the price is right.
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