The property was triangular, trees shrouding most of the view. But what little you could see was magnificent: the Hudson River at the left periphery of vision and the monumental George Washington Bridge.

What a piece of property, but what an old house. The provenance documents stated that you couldn't have pigs or reduce iron ore to its basic elements. I mean, stuff like that went on in the 1800s. OK, I won't do it. No pigs, no smelting. But what about the pipes that are rotting? What about the roof and the shingles that were falling off like autumn leaves in the wind?

ON BROADWAY | Mr. Shatner played Robert Lomax in 'The World of Suzie Wong,' which opened in October 1958. He lived with his family in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. Friedman-Abelles/Photofest

I was a young actor in the late 1950s realizing that I was in a hit play called "The World of Suzie Wong" and I needed a place to stay. New baby, new wife, old car. In Hastings-on-Hudson, the house and land cost $19,500. It was my Mecca. The fence posts needed a lot of attention, by that I mean I needed new posts and rails. But, hey, the far ends of the triangle contained a tree house. I never had a tree house before. Mind you, this house needed the same attention that the fence needed. Oh, boy, a lot of work to be done.

The screen door on the porch slammed with a snap, a familiar sound that brought me back to my childhood in Canada's Laurentian Mountains, with insects that would devour you unless you had a quickly shutting screen door. The music of home. Inside, the kitchen had a wood-burning stove. Gas and electricity are highly overestimated. A little-known fact: Heat rises and warms the upper rooms. I didn't think of it at the time, but smoke also rises, black ash on the ceiling and the scent of burning wood penetrating the entire house. It became the scent of home. The floors creaked, the windows wouldn't go up and, when they did, they wouldn't come down. That beats air conditioning anytime. The roof leaked, but if you put pots down, you had fresh water, which was useful to put in the toilet tank in case the water pressure was weak, which unfortunately it was.

It was my home for two years, and I think back on it with great joy. The traffic then on the West Side Highway wasn't too bad going to the theater in the opposite direction of rush-hour traffic. I parked on Ninth Avenue and walked/ran the distance to the theater and became familiar with the half-clad men of the street who looked up as I scurried by but who were fast asleep when I went to get my car to go home. Going home was peaceful—black night, black river, old car speeding through the night at all of 40 miles an hour. I'd stop off at Howard Johnson's every so often, pick up some of the fried clams and munch them on the way home to Hastings and think of how well everything went in the theater that night.

THIS OLD HOUSE | Mr. Shatner paid $19,500 for the home in the late 1950s. It now has an assessed value of $756,000. Mark Abramson for The Wall Street Journal

But the most glorious moment of that house happened on a Sunday afternoon. It was a day of rest and time to play with the child, fool with the dog, hug the wife. Except somebody—not me—let the toilet overflow on the upstairs floor. Not a simple overflowing toilet with enough rags, mops and various sucking paraphernalia to manage it. It was an overflowing toilet that leaked through a 100-year-old floor/ceiling—a real problem. When the plumber finally came, he drilled holes in the plaster of the ceiling, saying we need it to drain for a few days and it will probably crumble and turn to dust and we will need a complete plaster job to fix it. I was an actor counting every penny. A whole plastered ceiling, I couldn't afford. I was staring at debt, blind, black debt. (An actor shouldn't have any debt.) Each day we emerged from our bedroom and looked up at the ceiling in our living room waiting for the avalanche. Was that a bit of a crumble? Is that a crack? Hold your breath! But, no, two days went by, and nothing stirred.

Three, four days and then the plumber came back. He looked at the ceiling and said, "Nothing is going to happen to your plaster. It is as rock-steady as it was when it was first put in. It was first put in 100 years ago when they used pig bristles in the plaster, not what they do today. That ceiling is going nowhere." He plugged up the few holes made by the drill that drained the water and that was it. No monstrous bill for redoing the ceiling.

That ancient house that was over 100 years old and had stood the test of every major storm that came to the New York area and is probably still standing there today is there for one reason only, for which I am eternally grateful—pig bristles.

—Mr. Shatner's one-man show, "Shatner's World, We Just Live in It," goes on tour beginning Nov. 8 in Stamford, Conn.