The plot thickens. It turns out that the edifice in question was until some point in time no earlier than August, 2007 an "intentional community ... balanc[ing] work, ministry, and restoration." Here is a picture of a man with an alligator behind or to the side of the house:
Fascinating, the notion of buying a house with history attached.
The house was mentioned in Quaker Life's September, 2003 issue. "Renaissance House: A Ministry of Renovation". It is still linked to from richmondquakers.com, but the renaissancehouse.org domain is gone to the Bitbucket in the Sky, and no, the Wayback Machine only caches an older owner of the domain, not the 2005-2007-vintage site, which is a shame. Pictures would have been nice.
Update 2009-03-18: The alligator's name is Amos Moses, and the man himself is John Fitch, the director of Renaissance House and former owner of the edifice in question. It turns out he's a pretty nice guy (well, you expect that of Quakers) and the Renaissance House community is still going strong in two nearby houses with much lower payments.
So that's good.
