Historical Commission clears Little House demolition to protect Glover farmhouse

← All news · September 10, 2026

On Sept. 10 the Historical Commission voted 5-3, on a second ballot after a 4-4 tie, that the A.E. Little House at 299 Salem St. is not historically significant, clearing it, and by separate votes two barns, for demolition. The reason, as reported, was to protect the Glover farmhouse and the redevelopment that promises to preserve it; the secretary objected on 'the use of leverage.' A single newspaper account is the only record of the meeting.

The Swampscott Historical Commission used an initial demolition-review vote on one building to protect another.

On Sept. 10, the commission voted 5-3 to find the A.E. Little House at 299 Salem St. not historically significant, according to Itemlive, the only news outlet to cover the meeting. The vote came on a second ballot after a 4-4 tie. It cleared the house, along with two barns on the same parcel, for demolition.

The reason, as Itemlive reported it, was not the Little House’s own merits. It was the circa-1740 General John Glover Farmhouse next door, which was not before the commission. Commissioners reconsidered, the paper wrote, “largely out of concern” that delaying the Little House could threaten the redevelopment that now promises to preserve the farmhouse.

“A no vote clears the path for us to save a historic building,” Chair Nancy Schultz said immediately before the vote, per Itemlive.

This account rests entirely on Erin Hickey’s Itemlive story, “Swampscott clears path for Glover,” published Sept. 10. Swampscott Tides did not cover the meeting. No town video of it exists. The commission had not posted minutes or a written determination as of this writing. Every fact and quotation below is as Itemlive reported it.

A 5-3 vote after a tie

The commission was asked to make three initial determinations, on two barns and the A.E. Little House, as Glover LLC moves toward a Planning Board hearing. Itemlive described Glover LLC as the third developer to pursue the site.

The barns were found not significant “with little controversy.” The Little House produced what the paper called a lengthy and at times heated debate over the commission’s role.

Schultz, who has led a years-long volunteer campaign to save the farmhouse, urged commissioners to let the developer proceed.

“The Glover Farmhouse is truly in danger from legal demolition, as well as demolition by neglect, and is in need of immediate remedy,” she said, per Itemlive.

“Not a single day has gone by in the last three and a half years that volunteer hours have not been spent in pursuit of this preservation effort,” Schultz added, asking the commission to vote “by keeping foremost in mind the stated purpose of our bylaws. All of this that we do, all of this work that we do here, is for the public welfare and the public interest.” She then urged commissioners to “finally and definitively preserve” the farmhouse.

Vice Chair Jonathan Leamon was direct about the trade.

“For me, it’s not the argument about the public interest that’s really influencing me,” he said, per Itemlive. “It’s the loss of the Glover Farmhouse … I understand what you’re saying if it were somewhere else, but it isn’t. I can’t look at it in a vacuum.”

The objection on the record came from the commission’s secretary, Brad Graham, who questioned whether the farmhouse should factor into a determination about the Little House’s significance.

“My concern is the precedent it sets for the use of leverage,” Graham said, per Itemlive.

Graham said commissioners had discussed the Little House’s importance repeatedly during his years on the board.

“If the Little House were on a different parcel of land, a mile down the road, would there be any question that this commission would find it significant?” he said. “And that’s all I’ll say.”

As Itemlive reported it, no commissioner argued that the Little House lacked significance on its own. The arguments turned on the farmhouse and the calendar. The article does not say how any member voted, Graham included; his objection is on the record, his ballot is not.

Three deadlines

Three deadlines framed the vote, all as reported by Itemlive.

The farmhouse’s own nine-month demolition delay expired July 20, so its owner may now legally tear it down. The Planning Board opens its hearing on the developer’s 96-unit application, item 26-13 and part of a 140-unit plan across Swampscott, Marblehead and Salem, on Sept. 14. The developer’s team also warned that construction timing was tight.

Attorney Kenneth Shutzer, representing Glover LLC, argued that the language governing the demolition-delay process calls for weighing “public welfare and public interest,” better served here by letting the project advance.

Lawrence DiGiammarino, the applicant’s attorney of record on the Planning Board agenda and “Larry” in Itemlive’s account, put it in dollars.

“My client decided, despite his own financial interest, to try to save the Glover farmhouse,” he said. “He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t have to because Athanas could tear it down.”

Underground parking to spare the farmhouse costs more, he said, against rising construction and financing costs.

“We are at serious risk if you don’t give us this vote,” he said. “If we don’t get this shovel in the ground before the frost, we’re not the developer.”

The bylaw question

What follows is context on the governing bylaw, not a legal opinion. Nothing here says the vote was unlawful.

Swampscott’s demolition-delay bylaw, Article IX, Section 4, splits the process in two.

The first step is an initial determination. “The Commission shall make a written determination of whether the building or structure to be demolished is significant,” the bylaw reads. That finding turns on whether a building at least 75 years old is on the National Register, or has been found by the commission, “after a factual finding,” to be “importantly associated with one or more historic persons or events,” “historically or architecturally significant,” or listed in the commission’s 1986 survey.

A significant finding then triggers a public hearing. After that, the commission may find the building “preferably preserved,” a stage the bylaw defines as when the commission decides, “following a public hearing, that it is in the public interest to be preserved rather than demolished.” That finding carries the nine-month delay.

Public interest is not absent from the significance test. The bylaw’s definition of a significant building ends “and therefore it is in the public interest to be preserved or rehabilitated rather than to be demolished.”

The question raised by the meeting is narrower: whether a public-interest judgment about the farmhouse should drive a not-significant finding about the Little House at the initial stage, where the bylaw calls for a written determination on the building to be demolished. Shutzer’s “public welfare and public interest” was his characterization. The bylaw uses “public welfare” once, in its statement of intent, and “public interest” twice, in the definition of a significant building and in the preferably preserved stage. The paired phrase appears nowhere in it, and neither phrase is in the sentence that sets the initial determination.

The Glover record

The parcel has cycled through three development teams: Leggat McCall Properties, which won a 5-0 plan approval in 2023 on conditions that assumed the farmhouse would be demolished; National Development, which a town planner said on Sept. 2 was no longer the developer; and now The Glover, LLC.

The land is still owned of record by the Athanas family’s Sunbeam Development LP, care of Anthony’s Pier 4 Restaurants. The Glover, LLC is the applicant, not the owner.

The farmhouse has drawn two prior demolition delays, the most recent expiring July 20. The preservation effort Schultz leads counts more than $500,000 in pledges and donations, of which $250,000 was pledged by National Development. The commission itself, not the campaign, hired engineers in 2023, with a state cultural-council grant and much of its own annual budget, to rebut claims the house was unsalvageable. The commission’s application for a state historic district has been suspended since at least January 2026 while negotiations continue.

This paper has covered that history; readers can follow it in prior coverage below.

The missing public record

The Sept. 10 vote survives in a single newspaper story.

The Historical Commission has appeared on the town’s video record once, at its April 12, 2023 public hearing on the Glover farmhouse itself. None of its 2026 meetings, including Sept. 10, has been recorded. The commission has published minutes for only two of its eight 2026 meetings, with nothing since April.

That leaves the vote counts unreconciled against the public record. Itemlive reported a 4-4 tie and then a 5-3 result, each implying eight voters, against a masthead of seven members and two alternates. Which alternates sat, whether a member was absent, and whether the reconsideration after the tie was procedurally proper are questions the available record cannot answer. No individual ballot is public; Graham’s objection is, his vote is not. Those are matters for human review against the eventual minutes.

Also on the Sept. 10 agenda, but not covered in the sole account of the meeting: a Community Preservation Act application tied to the farmhouse, the commission’s comments to the Planning Board, and an initial determination on 74 Beach Bluff Ave. What the commission did on any of them is not in the record.

One other item remains unresolved: the Aug. 31 hearing notice for the Sept. 14 Planning Board session appears in the statewide public-notice database only once. Whether a required second insertion ran in print needs a human check against the newspaper itself.

Sources

Human-review flags: the eight-voter tallies against a seven-member, two-alternate masthead and the reconsideration procedure (minutes not yet posted); the July 20 expiry year (press-resolved, property file carries prior review history); whether the Aug. 31 hearing notice ran a second print insertion. Not asserted here for lack of corpus support: who A.E. Little was or why the house carries the name; how any individual commissioner voted.

Correction and addendum (Sept. 11, 2026, 6 a.m.)

A source check against the Itemlive text, the bylaw, and the corpus found the following, corrected in the text above:

Addendum: what the one tape shows. The commission’s only recorded meeting is about this parcel. On April 12, 2023, before the commission’s first nine-month delay on the farmhouse, Kenneth Shutzer spoke as a resident attorney, not as counsel, and told the commission the delay was its whole leverage: “after that nine months is over, your authority not only dissipates, it just disappears” [26:42]; “our hardball is a nine-month delay” [34:24]; “the only way this is ever going to materialize is a vote has to be taken by your board to put in that nine-month delay because then that gives us some negotiating ability” [1:02:19]. A commission member who had earlier walked the room through the bylaw, by role context the vice chair, said that night that a delay could be voted “pending some sort of mutually satisfactory agreement, in which case we’d lift it earlier” [1:05:11], which is the waiver the bylaw provides. (The tape has no self-introduction for that speaker; the attribution is inferred.) Three and a half years later, the same lawyer, now for the developer, asked the same commission not to use that instrument on the building next door, and the objection came on the word he had used, leverage. The two positions share a goal, the farmhouse kept where it stands with the developer working around it. The record does not say whether anyone in the room on Sept. 10 recalled the 2023 hearing.