The old Rhody Delahunty complex, 1106 Rhode Island Street, is shown at left in 2014 after it was condemned by the city. The same building is shown at right in March 2016 with restoration work nearly complete.

Two adjoining lots at the southeast corner of 11th and Rhode Island streets are almost unrecognizable from what they were a year ago — just as architects Stan Hernly and Mike Myers had planned.

When Hernly, Myers and six others purchased the 145-year-old property at 1106 Rhode Island St. in 2014, the land had just been rid of a dozen-or-so Packard cars that were “sitting on their bellies in the mud” for years, Myers said. A fence and 8-foot shrubs kept a sagging, 90-year-old barn and rotting truck shed out of sight. A home on the adjacent lot, built in 1871, was breaking off from its 1890s addition.

Architects Stan Hernly, left, and Mike Myers, right, discuss details of the restoration of the old Rhody Delahunty house, at 1106 Rhode Island Street, on Thursday, March 10, 2016.

About 14 months after the group started restoration — a process that took the approval of state and national historic agencies, as well as five city boards — the property is almost finished, and Hernly wants people to see it.

“It’s been behind a fence and it’s been overgrown for so long that when people would drive by you just wouldn’t notice it,” Hernly said. “It was so covered over. So, part of what we’re trying to do is… as people are heading east on 11th Street, it’s really going to be a prominent thing to see.”

The site is part of the North Rhode Island Residential Historic District, and it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.

This 2012 file photo shows 15 deteriorating Packard automobiles in the partially fenced-in backyard at 1106 Rhode Island.

Rhody Delahunty, who emigrated from Ireland during famine in the 1860s, settled the property in 1871 in an area that was then known as “Merchant’s Row.” According to a history of the property compiled in 1989 by local historian Paul Caviness, the family’s transfer and storage business operated there into the 1930s, and the family stayed until 1964.

Another family owned the two city lots briefly before they were sold in 1965 to Raymond Barland, who had operated a Packard dealership in downtown Lawrence.

The barn and truck shed used by the Delahuntys for their business were then used to store auto salvage.

By 2013, the structures were deteriorating, and the Lawrence City Commission condemned the site. The city then took the property by eminent domain, paid for it, and sought to find someone who would restore it.

That’s when Stan and Joni Hernly, Mike and Nancy C. Myers, Leigh and Elim Myers, Nancy A. Myers and Dennis Brown formed an LLC with the purpose of buying and rehabilitating the complex.

“I live in the neighborhood, and I’ve been driving by it forever. I was interested in it,” Mike Myers said. “Then one day, Stan and I were talking and I said, ‘Maybe we ought to buy it and move our office down here.’ I was kind of joking, but Stan goes, ‘Well, maybe we should.'”

The three-bedroom home is now finished, as is a new two-car carriage house and apartment located directly behind it.

Carpenter David Bailey, of Lawrence, fits some trim inside the restored barn at 1106 Rhode Island Street. The barn will be the new offices for Hernly Associates, Inc.

On Thursday, workers were making final improvements to the interior of the barn and truck shed, into which Hernly and Myers will soon move their business, Hernly Associates Inc., from their current location on Massachusetts Street.

The LLC bought the property in 2014 for $90,000 (the city had paid $114,500), and the group has put in about $800,000 in improvements since January 2015.

With unanimous support from the City Commission, Lawrence gave Hernly and the rest of the group a $26,100 development grant for the project and approved an 85 percent, 10-year property tax rebate on the restoration.

The group was the only one to submit a plan when the city requested proposals for the property. Hernly Associates had worked with the Barlands on preservation plans before the family decided to let it go.

Because Hernly and Myers do preservation consulting in their business, they “had a pretty good bag of tools to get it done,” Myers said.

“In a way, we are uniquely qualified to do it,” he said.

A sliding door from the old barn is reused at the restored Rhody Delahunty complex, 1106 Rhode Island Street. Hernly Associates, Inc. will move its offices into the old barn in early April.

Besides the big changes — lifting the structures, laying new foundation, replacing some termite-eaten wood in the truck shed — the group has found little ways to improve the property while maintaining pieces of its history. A floor beam from the barn is now a kitchen countertop, and an old window was repurposed as a bathroom mirror. Some limestone from the foundation borders newly laid flowerbeds, and bricks from the historic sidewalk were used as flooring on the home’s back porch.

An old wooden toolbox used by the Barlands remains in the truck shed, which will be a conference room, and the sliding barn doors retained their use.

In the home’s dining room, the old light fixture hangs over a new table, and you can still peek through a burned part of the early flooring.

“There was a wood stove here,” Hernly said, pointing to the spot. “At some point, a log must’ve fallen out and almost burned the place down.”

Hernly said the group is planning an open house once the property is complete, so the city can see its investment.

By then, the group hopes to have photos displayed that show off some of the property’s history and the families who owned it.

“Its bones were really great,” Myers said.