NEWBURYPORT — The city's interim building inspector has shut down a construction project aimed at restoring a century-old home after officials learned the owner and builder apparently ignored preservation conditions the city spent months creating.

The total shutdown of construction is a move city officials say is rarely used since conditions of a special permit are typically not so "flagrantly" ignored.

The special permit was granted for a so-called 6C development to build two residential structures on one lot. As part of the permit granted by the Planning Board, officials called for the preservation of certain aspects of the existing home, a 2,064-square-foot Greek revival built in 1900.

But the owner and builder failed to abide by many of those preservation restrictions, city officials said.

Daniel Bowie, chairman of the Planning Board, said, he is "extremely upset, as is the entire Planning Board," adding that preservation of the original structure "seems to no longer be possible" because of the failures.

"It is a very serious situation," he said. "It wasn't a situation where there were just one or two oversights."

The violations include the gutting of the home's tin ceilings, failure to preserve its clapboard exterior and cutting down of three trees that were supposed to be saved — including one that is likely city-owned.

Those are just three of at least seven aspects of the special permit the owners ignored, Bowie said.

Linda Smiley, chairwoman of the Historical Commission, said from photographs she has viewed, it appears the home was gutted, which is "flagrant" disobedience of the conditions of the permit.

"It looks like they pretty much gutted the house, which is a direct violation of the agreements they made," Smiley said. "At this point there is nothing left to preserve. We are outraged that this would happen. The Planning Board worked a long time to come up with agreements that would satisfy the conditions we wanted to put on the property."

"It appears to me to be nothing left, except the framing and the sheeting of the original house," she said.

Newburyport resident Janet Moreland, the owner of the property, and her attorney did not return phone calls seeking comment. Westford-based Gerard Boucher, the contractor listed on the building permit, does not have a listed phone number.

There was no one at the property yesterday afternoon when a Daily News reporter went to the address.

The special permit was filed with the city clerk Feb. 25, and a building permit was issued June 24. A Georgetown-based building inspector — hired temporarily by the city to fill in for Gary Calderwood, the city's building inspector — shut down the project last Wednesday.

For construction to continue on the 6C development, the Planning Board would have to again approve the special permit, said Nancy Colbert, the city's planning director. The board can vote to revoke the permit or accept modifications to it.

Colbert said the owner will not likely face any fines.

"Until there is a new building permit, they are not doing anything out there," Bowie said. "Having done what they did to the existing structure, there are a lot of questions to be answered before any modification is to be considered."

Bowie said he and Colbert plan to meet with the owner and contractor sometime before the next regularly scheduled Planning Board meeting, which is in August.

Granting the special permit took several months, Colbert said, and included participation from several boards, including the Historical Commission. The owner of the home or representatives were involved in each step along the way, Colbert and Bowie said.

Among the other problems, some of which were procedural, Colbert said the owner was supposed to take an inventory of the historical aspects of the house and put a state historical restriction on the house, which they did not do before construction started.

One of the other failures, however, is that the owners and contractors did not schedule a pre-construction meeting with city officials, which was one of the conditions of the special permit, Colbert said.

"This could have been avoided if the company set up a pre-construction meeting," she said. "But it never happened."

Colbert also said that the work done was not a complete failure of the special permit since the owner did preserve the exterior trim, the windows and the interior pine flooring.

Yesterday, an orange sticker that states "Cease and Desist, Stop Work" was stuck to the exterior of the house near the front door.

The home, which sits on the top of a small hill, was nothing more than a shell: the windows missing, the interior walls reduced to studs and the exterior sheeting mostly gone, leaving the interior exposed to the elements.

A large blue tarp covered a portion of the southern rooftop along with the third and second stories, but in many spots there were large gaps with no tarp coverage.

Behind the home, next to a construction storage shed and a porta-potty, is a pile of construction debris that measures about 10 yards wide, 10 yards long and 10 feet tall at its highest point.

"It appears that they've removed pretty much everything," Smiley said. "We are outraged by what has occurred here."