By Katy Scott
Springfield News-Sun

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio - The hammer's steady bam, bam, bam escapes from deep within the center of the Westcott House and echoes through each sickly room, like a heartbeat sparked back to life after nearly a century.

Scaffolding tightly hugs the outside of the home, making the surgery difficult to see from the intersection of High Street and Greenmont Avenue. But the changes are there.

And they're dramatic.

Those changes, or rather restorations, include a half-finished historically correct roof, the opening of formerly closed porches and structural reinforcement.

"All the additions have been removed, and the full cantilever of the porches is visible," said Courtney Vandiford, restoration project coordinator with the Westcott House Foundation, a group working to bring the house Frank Lloyd Wright designed in the early 1900s back to its original splendor.

Inside, layers of age are being ripped away. Mr. Wright's original vision has begun to peek through large holes in faux-finish wall coverings and brightly colored paint that was slathered on in the five decades the house served as an apartment complex.

"One of the difficulties in restoring a house is, after about 50 years, everything becomes historic," Ms. Vandiford said. "At what point do you restore the house to?"

The foundation resolved that common debate by taking the home back to the beginning in 1908, after construction was finished for Orpha and Burton Westcott, whose company manufactured luxury touring cars.

Contractors are nearly finished with the first phase of the three-phase project set to be completed in the spring of 2004. The first phase includes roof and structure work, so the house will be protected during the winter.

Next, workers will start restoring plaster, flooring, hardware and other details inside. Landscaping and other outside work will be done in the final phase.

Once that first phase is done, the foundation will offer hard-hat tours to the public to raise money. The group needs $4.55 million to restore the house.

Ms. Vandiford said the foundation has some of that money - enough to keep working through the construction phases. But the group also needs to collect money to move forward with programming after the house is complete, she said.

"We hope to gain more community support and more regional, national and even international funding," she said.

Once finished, the house will become a house museum that foundation members hope would attract tourists to the area.