WESTERLY - While touring an old house at 72-74 Pierce St. that is being converted into condominiums, Carmela DeGroff recalled the years she had lived there in her youth.

The address was 68 Pierce St. then, she recalled, and the house was owned by her maternal grandfather, Frank Gencarelli. Her grandparents lived on the bottom floor, and DeGroff's parents, Richard and Mary Pignataro, lived on half of the second floor with their children. Her uncle and his family lived on the top floor, and an unrelated family lived on the other half of the second floor.

In all, DeGroff said there were 14 children living there at the time.

"This was a fun place to live. We had good times here," she said with a smile.

The old backyard, part of which will be the new parking area, was the biggest in the neighborhood and attracted all of the neighborhood children, DeGroff recalled.

"Not everyone had a lawn then," she said.

Her grandparents' backyard contained "a beautiful weeping willow tree," she noted, and individual gardens with a well that was used to water them. To get to school, she and the other children would trudge up the hill behind the house.

The houses surrounding them were filled with relatives on both sides of the family. DeGroff stood on Pierce Street Saturday and pointed out where her paternal grandparents and several aunts and uncles lived back then.

"There was family all over the place," said DeGroff's daughter, Donna DeGroff.

On weekends, DeGroff and her siblings would go with her father to property he bought on Linden Street, she said, to help him build a new house. The house was finished when she was nine years old, and she moved out of her grandparents' house to the new Pignataro residence.

"I cried when I left here. I didn't want to leave," she said.