Town officials said this week that they’re hoping to remove the foundation of Irwin House and so complete the site’s demolition by Christmas.
Both the main house at the Weed Street park and adjacent garage have been knocked down and are being “trucked out,” according to Public Works Director Tiger Mann.
“The only caveat is how hard the footing comes out,” he told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held Tuesday at Town Hall and via videoconference. “That’s a large footing, [former] bomb shelter. And if it doesn’t come out of the ground easily, then that might take a little bit of time. But the goal is to be done by Christmas.”
Irwin House demolition site on Dec. 3, 2025. Credit: Michael Dinan
The comments came during an update from Mann on Public Works projects throughout town.
Shared publicly during the last budget season, the town’s plan to demolish Irwin House followed years of speculation about whether and how to use the public building. The brick house was constructed between 1961 and 1963 after the original 1920’s shingle-style house—once owned by IBM founder Thomas Watson, Sr.—burned down in a fire. In September, the town approved a $700,000 contract for the demolition.
During the meeting, Selectman Amy Murphy Carroll asked whether the foundation needed to be removed or could be filled with soil.
Mann said that “it has some issues with it,” possibly referring to contaminants.
“So we’d rather just give it a complete clean slate, because then you don’t know what you’re going to do with it later,” Mann said. “And the last thing you want to do is have a foundation in the ground, they want to build another building on top of it, and you’ve got to still take care of that foundation. It’s just better to have a clean slate in the end.”