How Preservation Society's Jim Soule built a foundation for Fall River beyond his lifetime

FALL RIVER — Jim Soule sits on the porch of the historic Rock Street home he and his wife restored over decades, listening to the ring of wind chimes. I tell him that I own a house with a porch but never manage to sit on it.

“Make it somewhere you’ll feel comfortable — then you’ll start using it,” he says.

Jim is the longtime president of the Preservation Society of Fall River, and this simple suggestion reflects the group’s philosophy under his leadership. Over the past five years, the nonprofit has bought several historic properties and rehabbed them — not for sentimental value alone, or to be kept as shrines, but used as well-maintained places to live. His idea is to restore old buildings to glory, then put them to good use, which keeps them vital for the future.

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The society owns three houses it’s either improved to historic preservation standards, or is in the process of doing so; it is acquiring a fourth, a triple-decker near Ruggles Park.

"Our long-term goal will be to rehab that property to make it look like it did closer to when it was originally built," Jim says.

The Preservation Society has grown exponentially in recent years. Long-gestating plans for an Underground Railroad museum on Pine Street are progressing fast, and Jim has other properties in mind to save. He has a vision of expanding to every neighborhood in Fall River.

He has many long-term plans. How much time he has is unclear. Jim has Stage IV cancer.

“They can’t do surgery. They can’t do radiation," he says. “The metastatic process is killer."

He says he is getting treatment. At the time Jim received his diagnosis in April, he was told he'd live “maybe a year.”

“I hope I beat the odds. I need a year or two,” he says. Then, surprisingly, he laughs.

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"We’re Mayflower descendants," Jim says. “I’ve never been more than 30 miles away from Plymouth. Ten generations, and I haven’t left.”

For someone who enjoys retracing his lineage, Jim did not start out in life wanting to restore old houses. He didn’t even grow up in Fall River.

“He’s a Bridgewater native that has adopted Fall River as his hometown,” says Jim Souza, owner of New Boston Bakery, and the Preservation Society’s board vice president.

Jim worked as a respiratory therapist for the Department of Veterans Affairs. In the late 1980s, he said, he met a recent graduate at work: Connie.

“It was definitely for both of us, and it sounds corny maybe, pretty much love at first sight," Connie says. “And since then, we merged our families. We’ve been best friends ever since. We immediately became partners in life and supportive of each other’s goals.”

When they decided to build a life together, Connie wanted that to be anywhere but Fall River. She couldn’t wait to move away to one of the suburbs — “I think a typical mentality,” she said.

“I introduced him to Fall River and he immediately fell in love with the city,” she said. “He could see what I couldn’t. … He wanted to stay here.”

Their house at 577 Rock was another situation where Jim saw beyond what was on the surface. The sprawling Colonial Revival house was built at the turn of the 20th century for Dana David Brayton, a former cotton mill president. When they saw the house, Jim says, its historic character had been smothered. It was divided into seven small apartments with sheetrock walls, drop ceilings and orange shag carpeting. Jim says the house was falling apart — but he saw something in it.

“It took him a week to convince me,” Connie says.

They spent decades restoring it, removing walls and revealing details like exquisite pocket doors hidden behind drywall, tearing down apartment kitchens and bathrooms, bringing the old wood back to life.

“We didn’t have a lot of money, but he had a vision,” she says.

“At first, we needed the apartments, so we kept it as a multi-family,” Jim says. “And then every few years, we would eliminate one of the apartments."

Today the immaculate single-family feels like a preserved Gilded Age heirloom. Jim says the house “still needs work,” although at a glance it’s impossible to tell where.

The Soules’ house was the inverse of the Preservation Society’s strategy: instead of eliminating apartments, build them — as Souza says, “Fixing them up, being preservation-minded, giving an example to people how things could be.”

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The Soules’ parlor is full of paintings from the Fall River School — oils from local artists working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, images that are ornate, luxurious, reflecting the wealth flowing through Fall River at the time. Often they’re still-lives of extravagant table displays. Jim grins and says, “The general rule of thumb is, the more fruit, the more expensive.”

In this room, Connie says, the Preservation Society was born in the mid-2000s, "with like-minded people that believed in preservation, and that it could change this particular city for the better.”

A version of the society existed in the 1970s and ‘80s but withered. In 2006, this new version incorporated and set to work.

It's the group behind plaques found on some historic homes in Fall River, which Connie says sets them apart and establishes continuity with Fall River’s past. “He gets emails from people who want those plaques. And they’re not in a historic district — they just want to know about their house," she says. “I like when he gets those. … You can see the growing interest where we didn’t have it before."

“For the first 10 years it was mostly advocating,” Jim says. “We’d done historic house tours for a while. We would argue with the mayor’s office when they were tearing down buildings, like any good preservation society should.”

Among them was The Historic Abbey, once known as the Central Congregational Church, a downtown landmark where Lizzie Borden worshipped. When the church was nearly demolished in 2011 due to neglect, Jim had the Preservation Society hold public brainstorming sessions on how to save it.

A year later, the society lobbied hard for Fall River to pass the Community Preservation Act, a measure that dedicates a portion of real estate taxes to city beautification. In the CPA’s first 10 years, the city has handed out over 100 grants, spending about $12 million on improving parks, maintaining historic icons, and helping new ones flourish. Without it, many Fall River landmarks simply would not exist anymore.

“When you think of how conservative people are with their money in this city, that they’re willing to give more to protect things that are important to them — housing, open space, history — it kind of says a lot,” says Alex Silva, the Preservation Society clerk and board member.

Jim led the movement in 2015 to create Fall River’s first — and, to date, only — protected historic district, preserving homes in part of the Highlands where unique, beautiful houses sit eave to eave.

“It’s only 47 houses,” Jim says, “but it’s a start.”

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Modeling Fall River's future on Savannah's past

If there’s another city Jim talks about as much as Fall River, it’s Savannah, Georgia. He sees similarities between that jewel of the South and what Fall River could be, and a model for how to accomplish it.

“Savannah has become the No. 1 heritage tourism site in the country, and it’s all because of historic preservation,” he says.

Using Savannah's preservation efforts as a guide, Jim and the society began acquiring homes, restoring them to preservation standards and renting them as apartments, with the proceeds used for upkeep and more acquisitions. In 2018, the group bought the Dr. Isaac Fiske House on Pine Street. The house was used to smuggle slaves to Canada during the 1860s, one of only a few Underground Railroad stations known in Fall River.

Others have followed, including the John Read house on June Street, now four low-income apartments. Under Jim's guidance, the society has gone from just advocating for old buildings to owning them directly. The group that once did tours of old houses is now a community housing development organization.

Silva says Jim’s method improves neighborhoods one house at a time and sustains their advocacy better than grants or fundraising.

“Whatever property we buy, there has to be a business plan,” Jim says. “There has to be a way to pay for it. We can’t depend on the city. … But the real idea is they have to pay for themselves. They can."

As a landlord, Jim says he’s more interested in creating pretty places to live than in making money; no Preservation Society member is paid. "We’re cheap," he says. “We don’t charge full market. We’re still under $1,000 for most of our apartments. 

“We do what we do, and we teach and we lead by example," he says.

“The whole purpose of that is to create affordable housing, and Jim found this beautiful way to put a twist on it,” Silva says, “to make sure people have these dignified, respectful places to live that they grow to love, they take care of. And it’s just a benefit for the neighborhood and the city.”

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“I feel like all the neighborhoods have potential. I feel like it’s one of the beautiful things about Fall River,” Jim says. “Each village is beautiful in its own way. They just need attention.”

He talks about Corky Row and Brightman Street, places far outside the Highlands, where the Preservation Society plaques aren't found, and sees a place for the group there. He sees a future where the Preservation Society saves what makes each village unique, to be appreciated for generations. Also in that future is a museum in the Fiske house dedicated to the Underground Railroad, which is currently acquiring exhibit items. The house was recently added to a list of National Park Service “Network to Freedom” sites, a coveted designation.

All this will take time. No one knows how much he has.

When he first heard his cancer diagnosis, he says, he was in the bath, having gotten a CAT scan to diagnose stomach pain. He received the results only an hour after the procedure, and thought it was impossible to see results so quickly. "It says Stage IV adenocarcinoma, metastatic cancer, pancreas, lymph, lungs — and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, they sent me the wrong results.’”

He called Connie to laugh about the mix-up.

“And I’m laughing," he says. “I laughed for what seemed like an hour, but it was probably about one minute, before I started crying.”

He’s retired early from his career — the disease and its treatment have made it impossible to work. But, he says, smiling, "I can still pick up a hammer.”

"I try to be upbeat, because I’ve got a wife and kids and grandkids. I’m fighting it. And I’m going to do whatever I can to do a year or better,” he says. “And sometimes I do cry, I break down. But for the most part I just forge ahead. Every day it’s, ‘What are we going to do with this house? Who’s going to take care of this window? Maybe I’ll do that window.’”

Silva and Souza said Jim has always been known for his relentless optimism, and he hasn't lost that even after hearing the worst news anyone could hear.

"I’ve never enjoyed life so much, in a sense,” he says. “I look up to the sky, I say, ‘Wow, that’s a beautiful blue.’ Or if it’s thunder and lightning, ‘Oh, I love the thunder and lightning.’ I appreciate every tiny thing."

Connie says that even before his diagnosis, Jim was clear-eyed about the speed of change in Fall River. Being involved in historic preservation means constantly fighting against decay, against time, against forces beyond your control. “He always says it’s going to take decades," she says. “It’s going to be beyond our time. But he’s laying the foundation. … He guides us.”

That means inspiring a younger generation to see what he sees in Fall River. Silva became involved with the society in 2018, doing everything from writing press releases to taking out the trash at their properties. A Fall River native, he returned after a few years away post-college. He calls Jim a mentor and a friend; Jim sees in Silva enthusiasm and leadership skills.

“Like the houses, these things outlast the people who build them," Silva adds. “It’s now trying to find a way to make sure the organization lasts, and not just lasts but grows into what we all know he dreamed it could be.”

Jim speaks much more softly than he once did, but his vision remains clear.

"I’m still fighting, still working," he says. “The Preservation Society is not going to cease to exist, whatever happens to me.”

Dan Medeiros can be reached at dmedeiros@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Preservation Society leader fighting cancer; how he changed Fall River