Builder C.H. Newton and architect Paul Weber collaborate on a historic home with a bright future.

Long before Woods Hole became a haven for oceanography, scientists, vacationers and tourists, it was a whaling and factory town. An active whaling hub in the 1800s, Woods Hole was home to nine working ships at its peak. When the era of whaling faded, the industry and the village pivoted. A group of ship-owners formed the Pacific Guano Factory and in 1863 they built a factory on the shores of Great Harbor, producing fertilizer from bird droppings. When the factory went bankrupt in 1889, a local developer, Horace Crowell of Newton Massachusetts, reimagined the area as a summer community. He bought the guano factory and the surrounding land, a narrow, mile long peninsula surrounded by a protected harbor on one side and open ocean on the other. According to the Woods Hole Museum, Crowell built a road down the middle of the peninsula and began selling large waterfront-front lots, eventually transforming the area into a neighborhood of beautiful estates with stunning gardens. 

At the turn of the century, a large barn near the end of the road housed workers and artisans building a new estate. That barn, known as “The Lodge” was later dismantled and converted into three homes on nearby lots. In 1929, one of these sections become a single-family residence called “The Pond House,” named after the half-acre pond on the property. This home would miraculously weather all the major hurricanes of the 20th century, but it sat in a low valley between the ocean and the harbor,...