Michelle Hodges was having a meltdown.
For years, she ran a real estate business with a partner in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and served in leadership positions on community boards. She relished staying home with her new baby girl after the business sold and moving permanently to Ocean Springs, a town that she and her husband had grown to love.
Two years later, she wasn’t sorry. But her 3-year-old was social and thriving. Hodges missed talking to adults, she told her husband, crying; she missed all the projects she had been involved in. They prayed together.
Three days later, it happened. She pulled up a new listing on a real estate application that she frequently checked. This wasn’t just any listing, though. It was for a house that she had noticed a year earlier. At the time, she wished it was for sale instead of the one she was looking at across the street as a possible rental.
She called a real estate agent immediately. The house hadn’t even appeared yet on the Multiple Listing Service. Hodges was one of nine or so potential buyers who put in an offer. She wound up with the house.
These days, Hodges is pretty excited. She found her passion project.
And she’s involving the community because the house is one so many people know and love. Historically, it was called the Lang-Madsen Cottage or Lang’s Seven-Gabled Cottage. The two-story, Queen Anne-style house is one of 21 properties listed as pivotal in the nomination form for the Old Ocean Springs Historic District, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
While Hodges is relatively new to Ocean Springs, she has lived in the city long enough to know how passionate residents are about preservation of historic homes. Wanting to reassure everyone that she will take care of the property, Hodges created a Facebook page to share progress.
Moving from Foley, AL, to Ocean Springs
Hodges grew up the youngest of four siblings in Foley, Alabama, as she says by way of introduction on the Seven Gables Downtown Ocean Springs Facebook page. Her family’s home was built in 1918, so she has an affinity for old houses.
After she and her husband Reed Hawkins moved to Ocean Springs with daughter Stevie, they settled down in a home close by that she loves and is not at all sure she wants to leave.
She’s not sure what she will do with Seven Gables, as she calls the house, when it is completed. Right now, she’s focused on returning as much of the home to its original features as she can and adding on so that it will be livable for a family. She wants the original house to stand out from the addition because it is such a recognizable part of the city.
People had all sorts of fears about what might happen to the house when she bought it. Seven Gables has only 1,275 square feet of interior space. It sits on an acre of land at the corner of Dewey Avenue and Calhoun Street, just east of the Little Children’s Park and a short walk from downtown shops.
Residents worried the high-profile property would be subdivided, but Hodges has no intention of doing that. In fact, she’s going to have a landscape architect draw up plans for the land.
Home contributes to National Historic Register listing
But first, the house. It was built around 1890, according to the Mississippi Department of Archives & History. While historical records credit New Orleans resident Emile J. Lang with building the house, it might have already been erected when he bought the property and moved there in 1894, according to MDAH records. Local historian Ray Bellande details what is known of the home’s history on his website.
Lang sold the house in 1899 to Margaret L. Madsen, the MDAH history says. The home remained with her heirs until Hodges bought it in 2023.
The home has a multi-gabled roof and porch gable that features a unique chevron pattern. The house has been altered multiple times over the years, most notably with stacked bathrooms added where porches used to be and an interior staircase that a mountain goat might have a hard time climbing.
It has one bedroom downstairs and two upstairs, with a bathroom on each floor. The living room is tiny and the house doesn’t feature a dining area, laundry room or pantry. Hodges is working with Henry Furr of H.H. Furr Architecture & Development in Ocean Springs on renovation and expansion plans. Plans for the house have been approved by the city and Furr is now concentrating on detailed drawings, Hodges said.
Plans for home renovation, addition
She will return as much of the house as possible to its original appearance, which will mean demolishing the stacked bathrooms, back porch and a garage. The bathrooms will be returned to porches. And windows cut down on the first floor will be returned to their original height. The windows were shortened along with the first-floor ceiling so that central air conditioning could be added at some point.
But the air conditioning no longer works. The interior will be gutted to the studs, with new electrical, plumbing and HVAC planned.
The addition will be one story at the rear of the home so that the original architectural features will continue to define the property. A new kitchen will bridge the old house with the 1,750 square-foot addition, which will also include a primary bed and bath, along with a dining room, laundry, pantry and garage.
The finished home will have two bedrooms downstairs and retain two upstairs bedrooms.
“I want it to be functional for a family,” Hodges said.
She expects the project to take about two years. When she starts selecting finishes for the interior, she’s thinking of posting options on the Seven Gables Facebook page so that people can give her ideas on what might work best. She just hopes nobody gets mad if her selections don’t match theirs.
The finished home will have lots of windows with beautiful views, Hodges said. She’s hoping the community will join her on her adventure. Hodges has never renovated an old house, but is looking forward to the partnerships she will form and the people she will meet through the project in her new hometown.
She wrote on her Facebook page: “So many people from the community have memories of this home while they were growing up or visiting the area. The meaning it holds for so many, including the sellers who still reside in the area, makes my heart warm and is a reminder on how important it is for me to proceed with renovations in a manner that will honor this home’s past while pulling in the modern elements of today’s family homesteads.”
