Robyn Hodgson Bücher

Historic mansions, farmhouses, and family homes rot across Maryland, the wealthiest state in the nation, from the Eastern Shore to the west in Appalachia. As the authors explored these homes, they researched the reasons the families lost their properties, so they could tell their stories.They discovered families often leave due to financial distress and environmental disasters. In other cases, developers purchase property with decayed historic homes and then allow them to rot until they can get them condemned through a process called demolition by neglect. Complex laws, or lack of legislation, leave local municipalities in a bind as properties deteriorate and unpaid property taxes accumulate.For the authors, these homes represent lost memories, lost hopes. Buying a home has always symbolized a means to accumulate wealth and rise to the middle class. Losing a home means losing access to the American dream. Walk with the authors as they have discovered, in weather-worn halls, 200-year-old architectural gems, faded photographs of ancestors, vintage trinkets, and antiques of yesteryear. Each item signifies a stop on a family's ancestral road map.

The stories that abandoned homes tell captivate Robyn and Michael. Over the past six years of traveling the northeast and exploring hundreds of abandoned locations, they have learned there is not one reason people vacate their homes. Some have relinquished their homes after foreclosure. Other homes are abandoned because people have died and have left estates unsettled, and their family members have squabbled over the assets. The authors have discovered many vacant houses exist because owners have needed assistance funding long-term care in a nursing facility, and the state has seized the property as repayment for Medicaid. Then, there are the historical properties, mansions from the Colonial Era to the Victorian Era, still rich with ornate architectural splendor forsaken to decay until cutthroat developers bypass their historical significance and gain permission from local municipalities to demolish them. Whatever the story, it is usually sad. Robyn and Michael pay homage to the lost lives and the lost dreams that these homes represent with their photographs