HOULTON, Maine — Dicia Jane Putnam is finishing up her 62nd property restoration. This time, it’s an 1860 Houlton colonial she and husband Jeff Putnam bought sight unseen from their Dallas home last October.
The Texas couple moved in just after closing and for the past year have been camping out in their 3,000 square foot Maine treasure during the transformation that took it back to its more basic roots.
“I like modern. Colonial and the old Shaker designs were a precursor to modern and so what I did was take it back to its simplicity,” Jane said, adding that she removed Victorian flourishes and other renovations that had been added over time. “We finally got habitable about two months ago.”
Jane loves the clean, simple lines of her latest masterpiece, with its vibrant white walls, white linen sofas, floor to ceiling uncovered windows, original heart pine floors, high ceilings, mortar countertops, four-walled library, recessed lighting and grand piano.
And Jeff loves what makes Jane happy.
As they both said, “the house has good bones.”
Dr. Jotham Donnell, who was the 15th Maine’s surgeon during the Civil War, lived in the home in the 1860s, according to historical accounts. Donnell’s famously decorated horse, Fanny, who lived in the carriage house on the property went to war with him. In 1865, Donnell and Fanny returned to Houlton, resuming house calls to Aroostook County patients.
Perhaps what is most striking, is the way the Putnams’ vast collection of color-popping original art mirrors their thoughts of Maine, a place they have been trying to get to for the past 25 years.
“I love Maine because you feel alive here because of the weather,” Jane said.
The couple has shared nearly four romantic decades of life.
She is an artist, designer and house builder. He is a novelist, opera singer and former San Francisco restaurateur. And together, the still affectionate duo, successfully founded and ran Baskerville Publishing, a small literary press based in Texas for 15 years.
“We are not interested in love stories, but we are interested in the pain and passion of love,” Jeff, who was a book editor at their business, said in a 1996 interview.
Their writing and publishing days were filled with the tales of the famed and not yet discovered. There were long conversations with literary figures like Saul Bellow, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Albert Guerard, who won the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
There were literary successes like the Baskerville published, critically acclaimed American classic “Tony and Susan” by Austin Wright that was made into a 2016 award winning film, Nocturnal Animals starring Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal.
The Putnams’ long road to Maine — dotted with great bursts of literary genius, raising children, restoring homes in Texas and Saint Andrews, New Brunswick, visits to France and Spain — started decades ago.
Jeff was working with Bidu Sayão, the famous Brazilian opera soprano who had moved to a Lincolnville oceanfront home.
“She was a truly famous lyric soprano,” Jeff said.
Sayão was 94 at the time and they were working on a book together.
Jane said they fell in love with Maine and on that trip, about 20 years ago, and they started looking for somewhere to live in the state.
About four years later, Jeff had worked on the biography of Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky and they traveled from Texas to a party for Brodsky in New York. While on the east coast, they again decided to look at houses in Maine. They stayed just over the border at the Algonquin Hotel in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick where Jane found a 6,300 square-foot home, also built in 1860, she fell in love with, bought and restored where they lived part-time.
“We loved Saint Andrews but we are not Canadian citizens and we could never retire there,” she said.
In 2019, Jane looked on the internet and found a cabin on Ross Lake in Littleton. They came up and bought that cabin that was on 55 acres. But because the cabin was not on the lake they split the property and sold the half with the cabin.
“I was coming up to Houlton to get a road built into the property,” she said, adding that at the time, most of the town was boarded up because of the pandemic and they could not cross the border into Canada. “I would stay downtown and I just fell in love with Houlton, I thought this is the place.”
When they got serious about a Houlton home purchase, each time they decided on a property it was already sold until they found their Main Street home.
In Texas, they bought an old truck, filled the bed with tools, tables and chairs and headed to Maine.
“We have a picture from New Year’s. There were two placemats that were left here from some fast food like Joey’s. We had this huge turkey and our two plates on those placemats. We sent [the picture] to our kids, ‘here we are camping out,’” Jane said, laughing.
In the process, porches, doors, staircases, and a few walls have been removed, a long garage, and new exterior siding has been added and they are nearing completion. Their carriage house and in-ground pool are next, they said.
The exterior siding was removed and replaced with new that will be painted gray.
“The old siding was in rough shape and I wanted to add insulation and house wrap,” Jane said.
Jeff, who is now 82, said for a long time he has seen things through Jane’s perspective and he is so happy to see her where she belongs.
“I love when it snows. You go out and it is so cold and the sun is so bright and feels so warm. The seasons are spectacular,” she said. “We would still love to travel, but if it doesn’t happen I’m OK here. I love to read and I love to paint. And we have each other.“
