I barely thought about the tree-covered, dilapidated house next to the train tracks. I drove past it countless times, mentally filing it away as a spite-house along a busy commercial road. My sentiments changed during the summer of 2024 when I learned through a genealogy website that my paternal great-grandparents lived there; that my father spent time in that house as a child.

Around the time I made this discovery, the MASSDot project “Roadway Reconstruction and Related Work (Including Signals) on Sections of Route 5 and Damon Road” was 77-percent complete. The house had been demolished and in its place were mounds of dirt and sand, the aggregate upon which a traffic lane would swiftly usher drivers to Interstate 91-N or the nearby Walmart. The only readily available visuals of the house’s existence were on Google Maps. Sifting through this source material, I gravitated towards what the building looked like just before it was destroyed: the windows and doors were boarded-up with plywood sheets sprayed-painted with red “X’s.”

I’ve used Google Maps as a reference in previous bodies of work, specifically to make drawings of my maternal family’s property. Coincidentally, my mother lived on the same street as my paternal great-grandparents, and her family’s property was carved by eminent domain during the creation of Interstate 91-N.