PLUM ISLAND — Huddled along the row of huge homes that have sprung up like dunegrass on Plum Island's beach, Saffords cottage seems small and out of sync with the building boom going on all around it.
But it's managed to do something that many of the island's oceanfront homes have not: it has survived in a place where destruction has been meted out in liberal amounts.
It's been battered by nor'easters and hurricanes and was nearly swept away in a series of vicious storms in 1950. It's been raised, moved, fixed up and modestly expanded. The salty ocean air filters through it, the distinct smell serving as the backdrop to family summers for generations.
"The people who built this house knew what worked," owner Peter Erickson said. "When it's hot out, it's not hot in here, with the natural breezes. It's from a time people lived closer to the environment."
It also has one quality that makes it unusual, if not unique, among Plum Island homes. It has a photo album that documents its 118-year life on the sea's edge.
"In 1891 the home is pictured with a couple sitting atop the roof smiling widely, the home is flush with the beach as if you could run out the door and straight into the ocean. This is when the house was on the high dune," Erickson said.
Saffords cottage is one of the few oceanfront survivors of a time when horsecar trolleys brought thousands of beachgoers to the island. They stayed in the four-story Plum Island Hotel, or in one of the many simple cottages that were springing up all over the north end of the island.
Like most island homes of its era, the cottage had a name — given to it by Helen and Donald Safford, who bought it from an elderly Georgetown couple in the early 1940s. The name still hangs on it.
"It was oceanfront and we were just a hop, skip and jump from the ocean," said Helen Safford, 87, of Newburyport, noting the home was purchased for $850. Today, its assessed value is $941,200.
"My brother bought it for our family; our mother always loved the island and wanted a cottage."
1950: Year of destruction
The home, located on Northern Boulevard about 1,000 feet north of the now fast-eroding Plum Island Center, became the haven for summer recreation. Until 1950 the family could walk straight out the back door and play baseball on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
But in the fall of 1950 a series of violent storms disrupted the family's beach hideaway. Flipping through the Safford family's photo album, the brittle pages record the sudden destruction of a neighborhood. Nearby cottages — like the 'YeLourne House, Gertrude, Child's, Shore Gables, and Sandscreener — suffered heavy damage or fell apart as they tumbled off the eroding dune. Some, like the Laing House, were raised up and moved back.
"September 1950 there was a big storm followed by another in November. The house next door was gone as were several others along the beach," Peter Erickson said. Saffords found itself perched on the edge of the dune, part of its foundation undermined by the crumbling sand.
"In 1951 we had to move it back 60 feet to the road," Helen Safford said. "We found a business in Salisbury who moved homes and we paid $400; that was a lot of money."
Hoisted onto wooden beams and then pulled by a pickup truck, Saffords is pictured in the photo album as it was being moved away from the water's edge.
"I don't think they knew what they were doing, but they knew what worked and what didn't," Peter Erickson said.
And while it is unclear exactly how many others did the same to preserve their homes, a Daily News story from the time documented the moving of Saffords cottage.
"Still another Plum Island cottage is going to be moved in the hope that it can be saved from the encroaching ocean," the article read, dating to July 1951.
Helen Safford said originally the home was elevated in its new location and they planned to be able to drive their car under the house. But because the posts were placed too close together, they had to build a two-car garage next to the home. It still stands today, less than 15 feet from Northern Boulevard.
After Donald Safford died in the 1990s, Helen sold the home to her second cousin, Candace Erickson, to keep the beach house in the family.
"It's nice to have it in the family, and I'm welcome down there anytime," Helen Safford said.
Built in 1890, many of the original features of the home are intact, from the hatched windows to the low sloping roof. The cottage is reminiscent of the theme of Henry Beston's book The Outermost House, which was a catalyst for the establishment of the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Only minor changes have been made to update the house.
"I have lots of childhood recollections of the house but mainly of Plum Island, where we would spent six weeks every summer," Candace Erickson said.
While before the cottage was atop the dune where so many large homes are situated now, Saffords is now hunkered down in a dune. And as if with the approval of Mother Nature, sand and grass have built up on the seaward facing side, further protecting Saffords.
"We wanted to do right by the cottage and keep it small; it is rooted in Newburyport history," Peter Erickson said.
Since summering at the home, Erickson, the head of an architectural firm, has noticed the changing landscape of the beach and has taken it upon himself to create theories and papers documenting the affects of beach erosion.
"Moving the house back created aeronautics. The wind goes over the dune and the house is nestled into the dune," Peter Erickson said, noting a book on architecture which cautions building homes on top of the dunes.
"Our house is the perfect example of how proper roof lines can act to build the dune. After one storm I had to shovel sand off the roof of the house, but I never get snow on the deck."
Peter Erickson is working to raise residents' awareness of erosion and the risks of building homes high on the dunes overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
"It's like standing up in the front row," Candace Erickson said. "This house has been through hurricanes throughout 118 years and it just rides them out. This is why we should build from flood level and not grade level."
She remembers an era when the island was reserved for summer rentals and people left Newburyport and the surrounding areas to venture out on the island to "find the breeze."
"There used to be little pumps for water and outhouses, it was terrific," Candace Erickson said. "We used to run all over the dunes and the lawns, it was just perfect and not overdeveloped."
The Ericksons say today the island is experiencing the cyclical nature of the land and Candace Erickson feels she knows what will happen to the homes with the best views today.
"The dunes come and go, and hopefully we are close enough to the road that we will stay," Candace Erickson said. "The ones out front I'm not as optimistic about, those houses went before and they will again."
