The Three Great Lighting Companies
In the first half of the twentieth-century there were three great lighting companies: E. F. Caldwell Lion Electric Lightolier CALDWELL Caldwell was by far the best. The company made truly exquisite lighting and they were the #1 choice for architects across the country. Indeed, when McKim, Mead & White redesigned the White House in…
Continue ReadingDamn. Houses I Lust After (but cannot buy).
I am really mad. And frustrated. You see, I want to buy a lot of houses and restore them. Tragically, I cannot. My lust notwithstanding, a lack of endless finances precludes my snapping up every house attracting my special attention. I really hate when reality conflicts with desire. DAMN! So, this post is the best…
Continue ReadingFavorite Houses: 628 Cottonwood
A year ago I never heard of architect Charles W. Squires. Today I am — OK, I admit it! — a little obsessed with the man. I long for a time-travel app on my iPhone so I can go back to, say, 1925, and walk up to the Squires home at 613 Exchange, knock on the door,…
Continue ReadingA Weird Time/Space Continuum
The movie Willard came out in 1971. I was fourteen, and saw it four times. It’s a movie about….rats. But the main story is not what drew me in. It was the house. A big, old, fabulous house, featured prominently. I felt intoxicated at all the scenes showing the house, and even though I understood…
Continue ReadingHints of a Proper What Was
ABOVE: The living room of the Cross House, December, 2014. I always thought it odd that none of the rooms in the Cross House had a picture rail. Wasn’t this de rigueur for houses of the period? I mean, punching a nail in plaster walls to hang a picture was simply not done! One respected laboriously…
Continue ReadingHistory as revealed by Wallpaper. Part 2.
Today I had a real thrill. There are two radiators in the living room. It seemed like a good idea if they were temporarily removed so we could: Scrape off the old wallpaper behind them Repair the plaster as required. Repaint or re-wallpaper. Refinish the floors under. And so it was done. Behind the radiators…
Continue ReadingHistory as revealed by Wallpaper. Part 1.
When completed in 1894, the Cross House was elegantly finished, and fully wallpapered (including the ceilings). When the house was converted into a motel in 1950, I was told that all the wallpaper was removed (along with, it seems, all the original lighting), and the walls and ceilings re-papered. When the previous owner purchased the house…
Continue ReadingPeacocks in the House!
THE TIME: 1973. MY AGE: A pup of sixteen. THE PLACE: A wallpaper store in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. THE SCENE: My mom and I had made numerous trips to the store, and there was one paper we yearned for. It was by Van Luit and featured peacock feathers. We looooooooooved the paper but it…
Continue ReadingMy Love Affair With…Downspouts?
To everybody BUT me, the above is not a thing of great beauty or worthy of adoration. But I could not be more excited! This is one of my new downspouts!!!!!!! And look! WATER is coming out of it! WATER!!!!!!! You see, the Cross House has not had downspouts for a very very very long…
Continue ReadingCan I Get An Award For The Most-Ever Cracked Plaster Walls?
When one is working on on old house, one expects cracked plaster. No big deal. You repair the damage and go on. This weekend I scraped the wallpaper off the walls in the living room. This had been done throughout the whole house in the 1950s, so I was dealing with post-WWII paper. Which had…
Continue ReadingFaded Houses: 727 Market
One of my favorite things is coming across an archival image of an old house. I immediately think: Is the house still around? Then I go on the hunt. When I find the house my excitement is great. Occasionally, there is a near match between the archival image in my hand, and the actual house…
Continue ReadingWhew! 2014, What A Year!
It was a year ago that I — damn fool that I am — decided to purchase the historic Cross House. All 8900 square feet. Yes, you read that right. And all 8900 square feet needed work. In my first post I articulated the reasoning behind the decision. If such a decision CAN be reasoned. I closed…
Continue ReadingA Message From The Past
The interior of the Cross House was fully wallpapered when it was built. All this was pulled off in the 1950s, down to bare, never-painted plaster, and fully papered again. Poo. I wish I still had 120-years of paper on my walls — layers and layers of time. Today I was scraping the post-1950 papers from…
Continue ReadingLost Emporia: 811 Constitution
Since WWII American cities have been reshaped. Before WWII, cities were laid out based on patterns going back to ancient times. In short, cities were places conducive to walking. All this changed in the 20th-century, and vastly changed after WWII when cities became conducive to automobiles. If you look at aerial images of pretty much…
Continue ReadingA Most Extraordinary Restoration
Wow. In Brooklyn, New York, is the former Williamsburgh Savings Bank, built in 1875. For decades this majestic pile was grimy and overlooked. In 2014 it reopened, as an events space, after a extraordinary restoration. The building now sparkles inside and out and it has been burnished to perfection. There is a gallery of…
Continue ReadingBEFORE and AFTER
Most of the west facade has now been repainted in the original colors. An 1895 image guided me as to WHAT colors went WHERE (along with paint scrapes), and also confirmed that the distinctive huge curved cornices were originally painted all one color, including the dramatic stamped tin swirls. The…
Continue ReadingWanna See My 1894 Ice Chest?
When the Cross House was built in 1894 it was state of the art. Today, it would be like having a home built wholly wireless and with LEED green certification. In 1894 this meant: 1) Both gas and electric lighting. The former was a proven technology; the latter was new and unproven. Hence, being modern…
Continue ReadingThis makes me SO happy!
For many years I lived in New York City and, as a lover of architecture, walking around the city was a constant thrill. So much to see and admire! I moved to New York in the fall of 1978, when I was just a twenty-one-year-old pup. The city was a wreck, a dump, and looked…
Continue Reading1894 High Tech: Speaking Tubes
THE PAST When I was a wee one in the 1960s, my parents would take us kids (there were four) to visit Aunt Mabel, who was sweet, generous with a kind word, never lectured, and always gave each of us kids a whole dollar (back when a dollar could actually buy something). Aunt Mabel was also…
Continue ReadingA Love Affair With…Scaffolding.
I love scaffolding. I admit it. Some people love ladders. Some people love boom lifts. I love scaffolding. You see, ladders are all about up/down and up/down and up/down. A day of this at my age is tough. You can also only work a small area at a time before having to move the ladder….
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