Pittsfield couple jacks up an 1870 barn to build a gearhead's dream space and auto shop
Aug. 5—To be honest, Eli English says, the 1780s barn was the reason he lobbied his wife, Lisa, to move into an old, time-worn house on a rural road in Pittsfield.
One peek inside the barn and he immediately envisioned the space as a perfect backdrop for his growing automobile and memorabilia collection and a shop he'd name Traditional Speed & Custom.
Ten years and tons of work later, the barn on Prescott Road is a nostalgic wonderland of more than a dozen road-ready vintage cars as well as auto-related memorabilia and local mementos that stretch from the wooden floors to the lofty rafters.
"I have a little addiction/hoarding problem but I try to keep it somewhat contained," he jokes. "It's not stuff just piled up on each other."
Think of a '50s diner only 1,000 times bigger.
He doesn't sell or trade items he's purchased or found or that people have donated. Most pieces came from the Granite State. There's a very heavy, 24-foot-tall Colonial Theatre sign with marquee-type bulbs, and a sign that came from the garage of a Chichester auto repair business he used to drive by daily on his way to high school. The quirky laughing bear on the sign stuck with him. Later, after it was auctioned off, Eli spotted it in the front window of a pawn shop and brought it home.
"We used to poke fun of Eli's obsession and sickness," Lisa adds in a chat speckled with bursts of laughter.
"It's a family joke, because we've spent many hours with our hands over our heads," holding things up in the air while Eli stands back and meticulously decides how a piece should be placed.
It took quite a lot of work to get to this point.
Eli describes how the whole barn, which in one corner had sunk into the dirt while the rest sloped uphill, had to be raised five feet. A company came in with a hydraulic jack and cribbing to support all the heavy lifting. The ground beneath the barn was dug out and leveled before the building was placed on a new footing.
Cars in their DNA
Eli's hot-rod shop operates out of that lower level, and now sons Isaac, 17, and Alden, 19, who grew up watching their father work, are a part of the business.
"It's in their DNA," Lisa says.
That lineage also includes Eli's father, Neil, who restores old houses for a living and has been a part of the restoration and renovation project, and Lisa's father, Peter LeBel, who was a customer before starting part-time work at Traditional Speed and Custom.
Lisa is the office manager, handling the paperwork, books and overseeing details for the recently added transport services they offer to clients who need a trailer to pick up a vehicle not yet drivable.
Eli's specialty is working on cars and trucks from the 1910s up to 1959. "I like to say I'm a pre-muscle-car shop."
He also organizes the annual Pine Tree Jamboree, an engine-revving event set for Sept. 15-17 at Winterport Dragway in Maine. It features hot-rod racing, a swap meet, a camp-out and a car show.
Clients and fans
Bonnie and Al Dyer, of Fairfield, Maine, take part in the Winterport weekend and are customers at Eli's shop as well. The couple bought a 1932 Ford 5-window coupe in 2010 and asked English to make it roadworthy.
"(Eli) did a roof insert for us, patched some rust holes. He took pictures along the way to mark the progression. You'd never know it was not original," Bonnie Dyer says.
The Dyers use the car in the summer, going to cruise-ins and taking rides with friends. They're the third owners of the classic car.
They also own a 1939 Ford business coupe and a 1949 Ford cab-over-engine pickup, and share in the English family's joy at adventures in their antique vehicles.
When she and her husband first drove to the English homestead, "I wanted to move in," Bonnie says. "We've been to the barn numerous times and think I see something new every time. You have to look up and down and all around."
'Unmodeling'
Things have changed inside the house as well. The English family tore out the 1960s-era "update" and worked to uncover some of the original features of the house. "We call it 'unmodeling' instead of remodeling,' Lisa says.
That meant ripping out paneling and uncovering original woodwork and exposing fireplaces that were hidden in the walls and hearths buried under the floors.
"One half of the house was unfinished. I was like, 'I don't understand why you are so excited about this, but I get it now," Lisa says.
Along the way, they've gotten lots of feedback from people with stories about friends or family who have memories of time spent there, as well as background information on the Clark family who built and lived there for generations.
Eli and Lisa are the first family to live on the historic property since the Clarks and descendants called it home.
Moving back to Pittsfield was a bit of a homecoming for the Englishes.
"We kinda moved back to our roots," Lisa says.
Eli owned a house in Concord for 10 years and then moved back to town. Lisa grew up in Northfield just 10 miles away.
"When Eli and I met after the years passed, we realized we knew the same people but had never met. Eli was a blind date. We decided to keep each other."
Lisa fondly recounts the moment they first got a good look at what would be their new (yet old) place of residence.
'It was Valentine's Day when we first walked through the house with a 14-month-old baby," she recalls. "Everything in the house was unfinished. I looked around and said to Eli, 'Are you sure about this?' He looked at me and said, 'This is our forever home.'"
He was right about the then-ramshackle property, Lisa admits, "but it was because it's going to take us ' forever' to fix it up."
But they both agree that it's a labor of love.
