House for Sale | ‘To Live in a Lighthouse’ or ‘To Run a Country Store’ 

Originally published in the March 1982 issue of Yankee.

So many people have, at one time or another, dreamed about living in a lighthouse on a rockbound point of land overlooking miles of ocean. Or else operating a good old-fashioned country store in a small New England village. Both lifestyles somehow denote a sense of independence. But while lighthouse living evokes a solitary mood, the wish to run a country store seems to be a yearning for a slower-paced small-town atmosphere in which one is surrounded daily by friendly people who know one’s first name. 

The lighthouse we found available is out on Nayatt Point in Barrington, Rhode Island, and has a breathtaking panoramic view of Narragansett Bay; however, it is no longer performing the function for which it was built around 1829. Today it’s just a beautiful seaside home with an unusual past. However, our country store is doing exactly the same thing it has been doing since 1812—that is, serving the beautiful community of Colebrook, Connecticut (population 1,100). In fact, it’s the oldest continuously operated store in the state of Connecticut. It’s also a beautifully maintained official National Historic Landmark, located on the village green of what is certainly one of the best-preserved examples of post-Revolutionary War villages in all of New England. Colebrook is in the northwest corner of the state, about a 45-minute drive from Hartford, Tanglewood, Pittsfield, or the Salisbury/Lakeville area. 

The first floor of the store, with 1,040 square feet of display area, has a fully equipped kitchen, half bath, and cold pantry for beer storage. The store is absolutely jam-packed with everything from dried herbs to baskets to lanterns to homemade quilts—even a bird cage. There are old lighting fixtures, a copper-lined soda cooler, wonderful smells from the kitchen where pies and cakes for sale are baked, and a help-yourself coffee maker on a barrel in the rear. The postmaster, Ellen Fredsall, keeps a dish of homemade candy on the counter. Uncle Sam rents (at $125 per month plus the heat) a wing of the store for the Colebrook post office, which has its own cancellation stamp and everything. 

Upstairs is a cozy four-room apartment with modern kitchen, bath, cathedral ceilings, and a new deck over the post office wing on which owners Frederick and JoAnn Zebrowski have a picnic table and barbecue. Woodstoves on both the first and second floors provide heat on about five cords of wood a year, although there is a little-used backup oil furnace. With all fixtures plus $12,000 worth of inventory, the Zebrowskis are asking $179,000. Incidentally, Matilda, who drapes herself over chairs, items of merchandise, and window ledges, will not be included in the sale. (Matilda is a 20-pound kitty.) 

The Nayatt Point lighthouse is white brick with black wrought-iron trim. With five working fireplaces, four or five bathrooms (we lost count), a brand-new kitchen with a breakfast area opening onto a heated glass solarium that leads to a flagstone terrace at the water’s edge, this is really a very luxurious and beautifully restored dwelling. The second floor, for instance, has a charming study with fireplace overlooking the bay, a sitting room with two bedrooms and connecting full bath. From here, stairs lead to a master suite with fireplace, full bath, and dressing room. 

Of course we had to climb the tower. It has a separate entrance off the terrace, a circular iron staircase about two-thirds of the way up and then a ladder to the lightroom, from which all the equipment has long since been removed by the Coast Guard. There’s a fabulous view to one side, but the Coast Guard smeared black paint on the front glass for some reason or another. We’d scrape off the black paint, fix up the room, and use it for something very special. 

Dreams are certainly just dreams and cost nothing at all, but this particular dream can be converted into reality for a tidy little sum of money—$550,000, to be precise. 

Now we’ll update you briefly on a few of the properties featured here over the last few months. In October 1981: The one-dollar house in Foxboro, Massachusetts, was sold and is, or is about to be, moved to a side street about two miles away. In November 1981: The two Maine wilderness camps attracted “no one but wackos,” according to the disgruntled agent, while the Desert of Maine also remains available. As to the bridge spanning the Contoocook River between Bennington and Antrim, New Hampshire, well, the problem here is that before the bridge can be sold it has to be repaired to pass state inspection. This costs town money and reverts the whole issue back into town politics. 

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