A century-old Oak Bluffs bungalow with a historic past has grown too run-down to be saved, its owner and her architect told the Martha’s Vineyard Commission during a public hearing Thursday night.

The commission reviews demolition requests for buildings that more than 100 years old, or considered historic for other reasons.

“The house is a disaster,” said second-generation owner Andrea James, who is seeking to demolish the dwelling at 5 Dorothy West avenue and build a new family home on the property her late parents bought in 1981.

While the building is not structurally unsound, architect Guntars Lakis said, nearly every part of it would need costly and extensive renovation.

“We’d have to lift the house [and] shore up the foundation. The floors are in such poor condition, they’re so uneven, that we’d have to rebuild the entire first floor deck,” he said.

The rooms, hallways and doors don’t meet building codes, the walls lack insulation and the plumbing is failing, Mr. Lakis said.

“To rehabilitate this home to a point where it would satisfy the … needs of the homeowner or a family is just unrealistic,” he said.

The existing house also was built directly on the property line for the next-door neighbor’s lot, Mr. Lakis said.

From the 1920s to the 1940s, the Craftsman-style bungalow known as Maxwell Cottage was a boarding house for summer visitors from the African American community, similar to nearby Shearer Cottage on Morgan avenue.

Maxwell House guests included pastor and politician Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and his wife Isabel, before they bought their own Oak Bluffs cottage in 1937.

The Martha’s Vineyard African American Heritage Trail includes Maxwell Cottage in its virtual tour of black-owned businesses, noting that owner Martha Maxwell’s nieces continued to run it as a bed and breakfast into the 1950s. The property has changed hands just twice since then.

Ms. James, who joined Thursday’s commission meeting online from her other home in Roxbury, said she also comes from a longtime seasonal family.

“My great-grandmother, who did not own property, was a washer woman with another historic group of black women who came to Martha’s Vineyard to make money in the summertime,” she told the commission.

“My parents, Matthew and Delores Goode, were the first people in our family to be able to own property on the Island, but we have not skipped a generation since my great-grandmother … in coming there,” Ms. James said.

“We don’t rent our house,” she added.

The Oak Bluffs historical commission has not opposed the demolition, but chair Barbara Baskin told the MVC she would like to see Mr. Lakis’s design reflect more of the Craftsman-style elements of the original home.

“Very little construction has happened in this neighborhood through the years, so it’s quite pure [and] it’s very important to us as a committee to maintain the historic integrity and respect for that neighborhood,” Ms. Baskin said.

Ms. James, whose mother died last month, said she is eager for a home where she and her children can follow the family tradition of Oak Bluffs vacations, and where she can live year-round once she retires.

“This house means everything to us,” she said.