Landmark home trashed by vandals

“They used to call it ‘hippy haven’,” says owner Alvin Grein. “Its first owner was a draft dodger, and other Americans knew it as a place where they could stay when they first came to Canada.”

That first owner was also the home’s builder—and an aspiring architect.

“Today, locals refer to the home as the ‘pumpkin house’ and ‘the triangle house’”, says Grein.

That latter label aptly describes the Sissaboo Falls home that Grein and his wife, Liz have owned for the past twenty years.

Both the base and the roof of the house are built from triangles, and each of the triangular windows frame twelve triangular panes of glass.

Grein says the property—located in a remote location just beyond the Sissaboo Falls dam—has served the family well as a summer residence for the past twenty years. “I was a teacher and had my summers off, and my wife’s family all lived in the area.”

But after my mother in-law’s death, we started coming less frequently,” says Grein.

The couple rented the property out on occasion but for the last couple of years it has sat empty.

“We asked the police to drive by the property. They reported back that it been vandalized, but we really weren’t prepared for the extent of the damage,” says Grein.

When he and his son visited the property in September, the home had been stripped of all copper wire, baseboard heaters, bathroom fixtures—even the kitchen sink.

“Anything in the house, or on the property, that could be sold—they took it,” says Grein.

Just as disturbing as the theft was the wanton destruction. Items were thrown into the refrigerator and lit on fire. In the basement, the last three steps were chopped away. Every pane of triangular glass was broken.

The home wasn’t insured. “The cost for insuring a home that’s in a remote location and not occupied is prohibitive,” says Grein.

The Greins hope to sell the house and note that the structure is sound. With the right owner and some TLC it should be possible to restore the home to its former landmark status, they say.