Twelve years in the making, the complicated deal with the town, the land bank and the Howard B. Hillman family will create affordable housing, add conservation land and save a historic home in Chilmark.
Terry and Marcia Martinson began to move into an old house looking down on the Edgartown harbor this week. Unlike most people who live on the Island waterfront these days, the Martinsons will live there year-round. But taking the whole history of the place into account, their time in the home will be short.
With the much-discussed big-house bylaw now a fact of life in Chilmark, discussion at the town planning board this week turned to preservation of historic houses.
Pamela Goff, who owns a pre-Revolutionary house off Tea Lane, asked the board to consider an amendment to the bylaw approved by voters last year to regulate very large houses. The first-of-its-kind bylaw could have the unintended consequence of actually encouraging people to demolish old houses instead of preserving them, Mrs. Goff said.
The history of Seven Gates Farm goes back to 1887, and for generations a parade of farmers, shareholders and conservationists have done just about all they could to keep the land and buildings of this enclave looking, working and feeling largely unchanged.
