The demolition started in January, according to Swampscott developers. Right now, the 6.2-acre site is covered with huge piles of dirt and several excavators.

Sylvia Belkin, a longtime resident and, until recently, a 35-year Swampscott Historical Commission member, had been purposefully avoiding the Little’s Point area for weeks because she knew what was coming: Swampscott’s famous White Court estate was being demolished soon.

“I just kept myself away from there, but then somebody told me that the demolition was underway, so I did drive by, and it was gone,” she said. “It feels like a death.”

Four Swampscott developers -- Nick Meninno, Andy Rose, Mark Klaman and Bruce Paradise -- purchased the building for $2.7 million in December 2017. The property was assessed at $5.8 million.

The demolition started in January, according to developers. Right now, the 6.2-acre site is covered with huge piles of dirt and several excavators.

“It was carefully taken down over about three weeks,” Meninno said. “We separated wood, metal, and concrete, so waste materials could be properly disposed of.”

Meninno and his partners plan to build a replica of White Court, which will house 18 luxury condos, each about $2.5 million. The project should be complete in about 23 months, he said.

The developers salvaged several architectural components of the interior, including windows and light sconces. Many were auctioned off, and developers donated the $25,000 proceeds to Swampscott’s ReachArts. They also included a path to the waterfront that could be accessed by the public, and the team also kept a large, colorful painting of a peacock that has been refurbished and will hang in the new building.

A bygone era

Alongside the Elihu Thomson Administration Building, the Andrews Chapel, the Fish House and the Swampscott Railroad Depot, the White Court estate was counted among the town’s most prominent, cherished and identifiable landmarks.

“This is definitely a loss for the town,” said Richard Smith, an architect and a Swampscott Historical Commission member. “White Court was an example of an era that is long past, the era of great estates, when people would come to Swampscott and stay for the summer. That evidence of a bygone life is no longer there.”

White Court, a Great Gatsby-like property with a sprawling waterfront, was designed and built in the Classical Revival style in 1895 by Boston’s renowned architect, Arthur Littles. President Calvin Coolidge spent the summer of 1925 there, with his wife and their dog, Rob Roy. According to the Coolidge Foundation, the president spent most of that summer inside the home, but would join his wife for strolls around the 6-acre, ocean-front property. (They would occasionally go on the presidential yacht, Mayflower, which was docked in Marblehead.)

White Court later served as home to Marian Court College for 50 years until the higher education institution shuttered in 2015. It had most recently been owned by the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. The nuns kept the property on the real-estate market for nearly two years until they finally decided to sell it.

“The Sisters were asking $4 million, turns out they sold it for [$2.7 million,]” Smith said. “If we had known that they were going to sell for that price, maybe it would’ve turned out differently.”

He added, “There are very few remaining great estates left here."

In Swampscott, he said there’s only the Blythswood estate, a private home abutting White Court. It was also designed by Arthur Littles.

Smith says the town should learn an important lesson from the White Court loss.

Just about everyone tried to save the historical building. Swampscott Board of Selectmen established and charged a “White Court Taskforce” with exploring funding opportunities and partners to turn the building and property into a community resource. In 2017, members hosted a “Welcome to White Court” event.

The Historical Commission placed a nine-month demo delay on local developers’ plans to raze the iconic building. The commission later reduced the delay to three months in exchange for developers agreeing to preserve historical aspects of the historical building. And in September, the public said goodbye when developers hosted an estate sale.

Swampscott Train Depot

While mourning the loss of White Court, Swampscott Historical Commission is now fretting the Swampscott Train Depot might meet a similar fate. Members are taking action to help ensure it doesn’t happen.

The historical building, owned by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, has remained underutilized and vacant for years. Several attempts to bring a commercial and/or community use to the historic building have ended up going nowhere.

Most recently, no one submitted bids to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to operate a retail and/or concession outfit in the historical building. In the last selectmen's meeting, Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald said the MBTA may soon put out another request for bids.

The depot was designed by George W. Cram and built in 1868. In 1997, a group of volunteers raised $15,000 to fix the depot’s exterior and successfully landed the historical building a precious spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

“After the summer estates era, Swampscott became a commuter town around the 1880s and 1890s,” Smith said, explaining the historic importance of the site.

Some estimate the cost to fix the train depot at roughly $350,000.

“The MBTA isn’t terribly interested in the building,” Smith added. “What we would like to see is the town get control of the building. There may need to be some grant writing and funding to help the restoration.”

Belkin added, “Perhaps the governor can help us and get it for a dollar. Anyway, the depot is next on tap.”

Smith says he imagines a cute little coffee shop where commuters could get breakfast before boarding a Boston-bound train.

“It would be a really nice addition to the town,” he said.