Editor’s note: This article is based on publicly documented details of the restoration of the Donald Cameron House at 63 Main Street in Westford, Massachusetts, along with established historic-preservation, building-science, and lead-safe renovation guidance.
Some houses have “good bones.” Others have a staircase so magnificent that it practically demands its own agent, publicist, and dramatic entrance music. The Donald Cameron House in Westford, Massachusetts, falls firmly into the second category.
Built in 1893 for textile merchant Donald Cameron, the Colonial Revival residence at 63 Main Street was designed during an era when homes were expected to make an impression before guests had even located the doorbell. With its circular drive, porte-cochere, carved central staircase, stained glass, detailed millwork, and carriage house, the home reflected the confidence and decorative ambition of the Gilded Age.
Then came the fire.
A three-alarm blaze in 2016 destroyed the roof and attic, damaged upper portions of the structure, and left the once-grand property exposed to years of uncertainty. At one point, the house seemed destined to become one more sad “before” photograph in the long history of neglected historic homes. Instead, after town-led stabilization efforts and a later private purchase, it became the centerpiece of an ambitious restoration documented during This Old House season 46.
The result is more than a beautiful renovation. It is a lesson in how historic restoration can respect a building’s original character while quietly teaching it a few modern tricks, such as efficient heating, solar power, weather-resistant materials, and the radical luxury of not having a roof that leaks.
A Westford Landmark With a Complicated Second Act
The Donald Cameron House sits near the center of Westford, a Massachusetts town with a deep connection to early New England history, mill culture, agriculture, and Colonial-era architecture. The house itself was completed in 1893 and designed by Lowell architects Davi and Rayne. It stood on nearly three acres with a carriage house at the rear, a circular driveway, and a covered entrance once suited for guests arriving by horse-drawn carriage rather than crossover SUV.
Its architectural features made it special even before its fire: a carved wood staircase, stained-glass windows, built-in bookcases, ornate door casings, and rooms designed to make everyday life feel just a little more ceremonial. This was not a modest farmhouse trying to blend in. This was a house that clearly knew it looked good.
After the 2016 fire, however, the future of the property was uncertain. The roof and attic were badly damaged, water intrusion became a concern, and the house needed stabilization before any true restoration could begin. Westford residents debated possible municipal uses, preservation options, and even demolition. Ultimately, the property was sold, giving it the chance to become a home again rather than a permanent community problem wrapped in a tarp.
Charles and Dianne Grondine purchased the property in 2021 with a family-centered vision. Their daughter Emily and her partner, Ethan Hudon, would live in the main house, while Charles and Dianne planned to move into the renovated carriage house. That multigenerational plan gave the restoration a practical purpose: this was not meant to become a frozen museum display with velvet ropes and a sign that says “Please Do Not Touch the Banister.” It was meant to be lived in.
Restoring the Colonial Revival Character
Historic-home restoration is often misunderstood as a simple choice between preserving everything exactly as it was or replacing everything with something shinier. In reality, successful rehabilitation lives in the middle ground. It protects the features that define a house while allowing thoughtful changes that make the building useful, safe, efficient, and durable.
At the Westford house, the restoration team focused on the elements that gave the home its identity. The grand central staircase became the emotional center of the project. It survived the fire, although it needed painstaking work. Layers of old lead paint were removed by specialists, balusters were taken off-site for repair, and the original oak treads, mahogany handrail, and paneled wainscoting were refinished.
The staircase is not merely decorative trim. It is the architectural spine of the house, connecting floors, rooms, and generations of residents. Saving it allowed the renovation to preserve a physical connection to 1893 while making the entry hall feel like a proper arrival sequence again. In old houses, that matters. A front hall should not feel like a hallway at a dentist’s office.
Historic Details Worth Saving
Beyond the staircase, the restoration retained or recreated numerous character-defining elements:
- Carved head casings above parlor doorways
- Stained-glass interior shutters in bay windows
- Period-inspired window seats
- Original proportions in the main floor plan
- The historic porte-cochere and front entry presence
- Quarter-sawn white oak flooring chosen to complement original woodwork
The project illustrates an important preservation principle: repair first, replace only when necessary, and use documentation when reconstructing missing elements. Old photographs were especially useful in rebuilding the roofline, widow’s walk, exterior trim, and front portico details. When a historic feature is too far gone to save, the most convincing replacement is usually one based on evidence, not a contractor’s vague memory of something “kind of Victorian-looking.”
When Historic Materials Meet Modern Durability
One of the most interesting parts of the Westford restoration is its willingness to use modern materials without surrendering the home’s historic appearance. Purists may clutch their architectural salvage catalogs at the thought, but the decision makes sense when original materials are badly deteriorated, fire-damaged, difficult to maintain, or no longer practical for the building’s future.
The original slate roof, for example, was replaced with metal shingles that maintain the visual rhythm of slate while reducing long-term maintenance demands. The home also received composite siding, cellular PVC trim and railings, and fiberglass gutters. From the street, the house retains the look of a late-19th-century Colonial Revival home. Up close, it simply has a better chance of surviving New England weather without requiring a full-time maintenance crew and a minor degree in ladder engineering.
This approach aligns with a common preservation strategy: where original fabric cannot reasonably be retained, replacement materials should match the historic design, scale, texture, and visual character as closely as possible. The goal is not to create a fake antique. It is to create a durable continuation of the building’s architectural story.
A Better Exterior Starts With Moisture Management
Historic houses need to dry. That sounds obvious, but many old-home problems begin when modern insulation or siding systems trap moisture inside walls. Wood expands, contracts, absorbs moisture, and complains silently for years before revealing its dissatisfaction through peeling paint, rot, mold, or spectacularly expensive repairs.
During the Westford restoration, the exterior wall assembly was designed to improve insulation while preserving ventilation and drying potential. The team addressed the relationship between siding, insulation, air movement, and moisture management rather than treating each item as a separate project. That whole-house approach matters because energy efficiency without moisture control is just a faster route to hidden damage.
For homeowners restoring an older house, the lesson is simple: do not begin with a shopping list of insulation products. Begin with a building assessment. Understand where water enters, where air leaks, how walls dry, what materials are original, and whether past renovations created new problems. The best historic-house upgrade is rarely the loudest product in the showroom.
Bringing 21st-Century Comfort Into a 19th-Century Home
The Westford house did not stop at cosmetic restoration. Beneath the antique-inspired lighting, period furnishings, and polished woodwork, it gained a high-performance mechanical system designed for modern comfort.
The renovated home uses an air-to-water heat pump system that provides heating, cooling, and domestic hot water through a compact mini-duct network. This system was particularly suited to the house because it reduced the need for bulky ductwork that could interfere with historic ceilings, trim, and room proportions. In other words, the HVAC system learned to behave itself and stay out of the way.
The project also incorporated insulated basement improvements, upgraded windows, and a ground-mounted solar array. Rather than covering the historic roof with solar panels, the owners used part of the property for a 36-panel ground-mounted system. That choice protected the visual character of the hipped roof, dormers, and widow’s walk while helping generate nearly all of the home’s electricity.
This is a useful reminder that sustainability in historic restoration is not just about buying the newest appliance with the most futuristic label. Reusing a historic building already preserves materials, craftsmanship, and embodied energy that would otherwise be lost through demolition. Adding efficient systems, improving insulation strategically, managing air leakage, and using renewable power can extend that environmental benefit for decades.
A Kitchen That Looks Forward Without Losing the Plot
Historic restoration does not require pretending that refrigerators, dishwashers, and coffee makers do not exist. The key is allowing modern spaces to fit the house rather than forcing the house to imitate a generic new-build interior.
In Westford, the rear of the home was adapted into a more open kitchen and dining area, with a modest addition that connects to a deck. The kitchen uses pale green cabinetry, generous windows, quartzite counters, brass accents, and a restored 1910 baker’s table serving as an island. The design avoids a giant center island and upper cabinets, allowing light and original room character to take center stage.
The effect is contemporary but not trendy. It feels like a room that belongs in an old house inhabited by people who own both a breadboard and a phone charger. That balance is harder to achieve than it looks.
Old-House Style Is More Than Antique Furniture
Emily Grondine’s approach to furnishing the house also shows why historic interiors work best when they are curated rather than staged. Antique tables, chests, brass chandeliers, a vintage gramophone, and restored decorative pieces create a sense of continuity. But the home does not feel like a set from a costume drama. It feels collected over time.
That distinction matters. The best historic interiors do not recreate the past with museum-level strictness. They use the past as a framework. A period chandelier can coexist with efficient wiring. A historic staircase can lead to a media room. A dining room can host a formal dinner one night and takeout containers the next. Houses survive when they remain useful enough to be loved.
The Dining Room Mural That Turns Local History Into Art
Perhaps the most personal feature of the restored home is the dining room mural. The owners commissioned artist Lisa Curry Mair to create a four-wall scenic mural inspired by the hand-painted murals and decorative wallpapers popular in affluent American homes during the 18th and 19th centuries.
The mural includes a foxhunt scene, Westford landmarks, family dogs, horses, the yellow Cameron House, and a thistle border referencing the Scottish heritage of the home’s original owner. Mair researched historical town maps, including an 1886 map of Westford, before developing the design.
Instead of painting directly on plaster walls, she created the mural on canvas panels using a technique known as marouflage. The panels were prepared and installed over the dining room walls, helping create a historically inspired finish while accommodating the realities of an aging structure. It is an elegant solution: art that looks permanent but can adapt to the house rather than fighting it.
The mural gives the home something more valuable than decoration. It gives the restoration a sense of place. It does not merely say, “This is an old house.” It says, “This is a Westford house, with Westford stories, Westford views, and a past worth carrying forward.”
What This Westford Restoration Gets Right
The revival of the Donald Cameron House succeeds because it does not treat history and modern life as enemies. Instead, it recognizes that preservation is strongest when it makes old buildings viable for the future.
The project retained its most meaningful original details, used historical evidence to reconstruct lost elements, upgraded systems for comfort and efficiency, improved fire resilience, reused original materials where possible, and made room for a multigenerational family. It did not attempt to erase the fire, the damage, or the house’s long period of uncertainty. It transformed those challenges into part of the home’s story.
That is what a thoughtful historic renovation should do. It should not make a house look as if time stopped. It should make a house feel as if time continuedand somehow got better taste in insulation.
Experiences From Restoring a Gilded Age Home in Westford, MA
Restoring a house like the Donald Cameron House is not an experience measured only in square footage, invoices, or the number of paint samples mysteriously labeled “warm white.” It is a slower, more emotional process. Every room asks a question: What should stay? What can change? What does this house need in order to survive another century?
The first experience is learning to see beyond damage. A fire-damaged historic home can look overwhelming because the obvious losses are dramatic: missing rooflines, blackened framing, water stains, cracked plaster, stripped rooms, and empty openings where architectural details once lived. Yet restoration begins by looking for what remains. A staircase survives. A stained-glass panel survives. A fragment of carved trim survives. Even a faded photograph can survive, and sometimes that is enough to guide an entire reconstruction.
The second experience is discovering that old houses have personalities, although they generally express them through drafts and mysterious noises rather than witty conversation. A century-old house is never completely predictable. You open one wall and find three earlier repairs. You remove a ceiling and discover a framing method that makes perfect sense only if you were alive in 1893 and had strong opinions about lumber dimensions. The work requires patience, humility, and a willingness to accept that the house occasionally wins the argument.
Another lasting experience is the connection between craftsmanship and history. Modern construction often rewards speed, repetition, and convenience. Historic restoration rewards observation. A carpenter may spend hours matching a profile in old trim. A paint specialist may work carefully around lead-based coatings. A mason may save original granite because it carries a texture and color that no catalog product can truly duplicate. Those details can appear small, but together they determine whether a restoration feels authentic or merely expensive.
There is also a strong sense of community in a project like this. Neighbors remember the fire. Local historians recall the home’s past. Former residents may have photographs or stories. Tradespeople recognize the significance of contributing to a landmark. When a prominent old house is restored, the project becomes larger than one family. It becomes a visible vote of confidence in the town’s history and future.
Living in a restored Gilded Age home also changes the daily experience of ordinary life. A morning coffee becomes more memorable when it is enjoyed beside stained glass. A family dinner feels different under a mural that includes local landmarks and references to the home’s original owner. A walk upstairs becomes less routine when the staircase carries more than a century of wear beneath newly restored finishes. The past becomes part of the household rhythm without requiring anyone to wear a corset or write letters with a fountain pen.
Perhaps the greatest experience is realizing that restoration is not nostalgia. It is stewardship. The owners are not simply borrowing a beautiful house from the past; they are preparing it for people they may never meet. Their decisions about materials, systems, maintenance, and design will determine whether another generation sees the same staircase, the same portico, and the same sense of arrival.
That is the quiet triumph of the Westford restoration. The house no longer looks like a monument to disaster. It looks alive. It has a durable roof, efficient systems, family plans, local art, and enough architectural character to make even a modern home feel slightly underdressed. More importantly, it has a future.
Conclusion
The restoration of the Donald Cameron House in Westford, MA, proves that historic preservation and modern sustainability can work together beautifully. By saving the grand staircase, restoring stained glass and decorative woodwork, rebuilding lost details from photographs, using durable substitute materials, installing efficient HVAC, and adding ground-mounted solar power, the project brought a damaged 1893 Colonial Revival home back into everyday life.
From its Gilded Age elegance to its modern energy systems, this Westford historic home restoration offers a practical and inspiring model for anyone who believes old houses deserve more than admiration from the sidewalk. Sometimes the best way to preserve the past is to give it a comfortable place to live in the present.
