The historical society was a bit upset that they were...

The historical society was a bit upset that they were demolishing the original building but they (the home owners) had been making ongoing renovations and they just weren't going to be able to bring that building up to code. For obvious safety reasons, nursing homes can't be wooden structures anymore; they must be built with steel construction. Because of that, as well as many other reasons, the two eventually made an agreement that they would design the new building to have many similar features of the original mansion and then the original would be destroyed. If you look at some of the old pictures I really think that they achieved what they had wanted to do.