When Jack Nelson would walk his father-in-law's white lab Cooper through Wiscasset's downtown village, the Lighthouse Point, Fla., man always admired the former federal customs house on Water Street.

“It was one of my favorite houses, structurally,” Nelson said about the 1870, brick and granite building. It's on the National Register of Historic Places.

Now it's his, and his wife Stacy's; they bought it this fall and plan to make it their family's part-time home.

On November 21, roofers were changing the boards and shingles over the federal-style building that was Charlotte Rust Hodgman's home for four decades.

She bought it in the mid-1960s, after the town rejected it as a gift from the federal government, Hodgman's daughter Cheryl Rust said. Built as the customs house, it had later served as a post office until it fell into disrepair and got replaced by the current one up the hill on Route 1, Rust said.

Rust's mother, a portrait painter, lived on the old building's upper floor and put the lower one to a series of commercial uses: It's been a gallery and studio; a federal program for arts appreciation; a gift shop and an antiques shop.

The man running that federal arts program, Crosby Hodgman, became Rust's stepfather. He and Rust's mother turned the building's lower floor into one of its best known incarnations: New Cargoes sold an interesting mix of items from cookware to leather goods.

In a couple of claims to fame for the building, Julia Child stopped by when New Cargoes was there; so did Benny Goodman. He wanted directions to the nearby Musical Wonder House, Rust said.

Charlotte Rust Hodgman died in 2009, a decade after her husband.

Rust and her sister Amba Coltman were delighted to sell the building to the Nelsons, who understand its special place in local history, Rust said.

“It's satisfying to see it go to people who share that sense of it. They totally get it,” Rust said.

Jack Nelson said he was excited to buy the home, but that now he's focused on building the interior for him, his wife and their three children. It's largely open spaces now.

“But I'm enjoying it,” he said of the work. “Everything I'm doing so far, I feel good about it.

“Maybe when it's done, I can pinch myself.”