Crouching in the shadow of the University of Maine School of Law’s rust-streaked, cylindrical tower is a two-story duplex on Exeter Street that’s seen better days. The green and yellow paint is jumping ship, the curtains are turning to dust, and both the front and side porches are rotting. The sidewalk in front of the house is buried under a mountain of dirty snow. The bright yellow sign next to the front doors has a V inside the outline of a house. Caution: Vacant.
The City of Portland’s online property records would have you believe the person responsible for this eyesore is Madeleine Huston, of Auburn. That’d be unfair, given that she passed away over a decade ago.
When Huston’s father, Carl Blom, built his house here in 1916, nearby Nathan Clifford Elementary School was less than a decade old, and the future campus of the University of Southern Maine was still the Deering Estate. (When Portland Junior College, a predecessor to USM, acquired the estate in 1947, the Deering mansion, then nearly 150 years old, had become so dumpy it had to be demolished.) The construction of I-295 lopped off the southern edge of Blom’s Oakdale neighborhood in the early ’70s, and his children, Madeleine and Dana, inherited the property in 1980.
There was a fire here in the summer of 1999. Inspection records show that Dana Blom got a permit to repair the damage in the fall of that year. He became the sole owner after Madeleine died in 2001, and passed away himself in May of 2010, but it seems the building was well on its way to decay before then.
“The house was in disrepair when I bought my house in 2007,” said neighbor Jeff Spofford. “At that time, there was a scraggly gentleman that lived there in the second floor apartment.” The scraggly tenant hasn’t been seen for four or five years, Spofford said.
City inspectors paid a visit in January 2012, after a fire company reported the building unsecured and a danger to firefighters. The city padlocked the house shortly thereafter.
Madeleine’s son, William Huston III, of Cape Elizabeth, who inherited the property from his Uncle Dana, declined to be interviewed. Spoffard, who’s been restoring his century-old, two-family house, would love to buy this one and do the same. It’s “totally untouched,” he said.
And may remain that way for quite some time.
— Patrick Banks
