Once in disrepair, Ted Williams’ childhood home on Utah Street has been given an update
Developer Brian Rucker walks out of baseball star Ted Williams’ childhood home, which is being renovated in North Park. Even when the little house was falling apart, cars would stop on the street and people would get out and snap pictures of themselves in the front yard.“People would come up to the workers and pass down stories from their father and grandfathers,” Jarrett Pugh said recently. “Just volunteer their memories.
Pugh and Rucker, real estate developers at Waypoint Partners, are only the sixth owners of the property. They found the home in disrepair.“When we first acquired it, the idea was to renovate the house as a historical monument,” said Rucker. “But there was really nothing to restore. There was a hole in the middle of the kitchen where the floor had rotted away and collapsed. The walls were giving way.
Said Rucker: “We decided we had to do something to protect the history of the site. Ted Williams played in the backyard here. He played at nearby playgrounds. Somewhere in this area, he hit his first baseball. He might have signed his first contract here. We don’t know.”Truth is, Pugh, Rucker and their workers found almost no sign of the Williams family’s time in the home.
“I still remember the look of a fan from Boston who asked if he could take a doorknob and we said yes,” recalled Rucker. “He wrapped it in a towel. Then I told him to take an old faucet …“When we started, I didn’t know all the details. People would stop by and give us pieces of history and stories,” he said. “We did our best to memorialize the house and Ted Williams. But there was no repairing what was existing.
Pugh and Rucker believe the front looks close to what Ted Williams used to see as a boy. They will mount a plaque memorializing the historic value of the site on a boulder in the front yard.
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