In an upscale neighborhood in Atlanta, a man named Ruben Jones recently purchased the “Henry B. Tompkins House” (asking price $2 million) and among the renovations, he painted his 1922 Georgian Revival home. No problem, right? Except that he painted it ORANGE . . . a far cry from the original GRAY stucco, which, for 88 years, had mimicked an aged graystone mansion.
The historic property is located in a swanky historic neighborhood, home to high-profile attorneys and even an Archbishop. Needless to say, after the new orange paint went on, Ruben Jones’s neighbors made no plans to keep up with the Jones. (I know, that was bad). “The neighborhood is in an uproar because it destroys the historic character of the whole block,” said 
Wright Mitchell, an attorney who lives across the street and happens to be president of the Buckhead Heritage Society.
Besides the fact that Jones’s house in on the National Register of Historic Places (as one of the most complete remaining examples of a Neel Reid-design) and the fact that the orange color is not exactly historically accurate (he claims it mimicks an Italian villa), the house now also sports a BLUE door. Yet it might be a mistake to assume that Ruben Jones is an old guy with a lot of money and not a lot of taste. As Bill Torpy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted:
“One could argue Ruben Jones has impeccable taste. Once the owner of a high-end Buckhead antiques shop, he has spent the past year virtually rebuilding the home, which had fallen into disrepair. Interior walls have been painted with rich colors. Floor-to-ceiling pine bookshelves once coated with pink and green paint have been restored to their original wood finish. The rooms are adorned with 200-year-old Federal Period furniture and oil paintings. The decorating is all him, no outside designers.”
[For the full article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, click here.]
Sandra Bullock has joined a growing list of celebs who have purchased historic homes, as she begins her new life after Jesse James by purchasing a Gothic Victorian in the “Garden District” of New Orleans.
The mansion, known as the “Koch-Mays House,” was reportedly built in the 1860s and has 6,615 square feet of living space (!), five bedrooms, four and a half baths, ornate chandeliers, and a lagoon-like pool in the backyard. Bullock bought the house for $2.25 million last June with her now-estranged husband, Jesse James. For more photos (including interior shots) of Bullock’s NOLA gem, visit this link to a recent Yahoo! article.
The New York Times occasionally incudes a real estate feature called, “What Can You Get For . . .?”, in which it profiles sample houses for sale across the nation, and explores how “much” house you can get at a certain price in several different states.
This week, they did a piece called ”What Can You Get For $350,000?,” and featured a striking & stately Neo-classical/Colonial Revival mansion in Chester, S.C.
By the way, is 5,280 square feet of living space enough for you?!
The mansion, which is located in the historic district, looks the part of an 1830s (or earlier) antebellum plantation house; however, it was actually built as a “5 room cottage” built much later– in 1890 — and then expanded around WWII. But still, with its orginal hardwood floors & original fireplaces, and with the incredible curb appeal, it would certainly strike the fancy of many historic home lovers. For full article- click [New York Times].
We’ve written before about “preserving” historic homes through subdivision (for a look at some of these cases, see our article “‘Preserving’ Historic Estates Through Subdivision?”). Usually, this process involves cutting up a large tract of land (usually a historic farmstead) for the purpose of building a new subdivision, with development approval hinging on a caveat that the developer “save” or “restore” or “preserve” the historic house currently on the land. Most preservationists & old house lovers would argue that preserving a historic home in some form is better than it being bulldozed for a new McMansion. But sometimes, the end result of this process is a quick, obligatory facelift to a historic property, which ultimately loses much (or all) of its historic character. Without any regulatory teeth to force historic standards, developers unsensitive to historic preservation might basically gut & rebuild a new house on the “old bones.”
In Hillsborough, NJ, the nationwide development group Beazer Homes recently “saved” the 3,108-square-foot “Gabriel House” — an early 1800s farmhouse that sat on over 300 acres, until recently… Read more…
When I received my latest e-newsletter from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, I was pleased to find an interesting interview with Charles Drayton, which made me recall my own visit to historic Drayton Hall in 2007. [Click here to read that National Trust article].
If you’ve never been, Drayton Hall is a stunning, circa 1742 plantation house outside Charleston, SC — and it is the oldest surviving example of Georgian Palladian architecture surviving in the United States. It is also the only surviving plantation on the Ashley River to survive intact to today, and is a National Historic Landmark. See the beautiful official website here.
My wife and I toured Drayton in December of 2007, and I probably snapped a hundred pictures. Here are a few of those, with more after the jump. The first is the rear facade of the mansion (Ashley River side):
Looking over the front lawn from a 2nd floor balcony:
Click here for more photos of Drayton Hall… Read more…
An Historic 2 bedroom, 2 bath House in New York City has just sold for $2.1 Million. In and of itself, that isn’t all that newsworthy, but owners in the market to sell historic homes that are on the smaller side can take heart at this sale- the house is 990 square feet, just 42′ long and only 9 1/2′ wide ! Located at 75 1/2 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, it is reported to be New York City’s narrowest house. It is squeezed into an alley between 75 and 77 Bedford Street. Today, every square inch of Greenwich Village is valuable space to build on, and that seems to have been true even back in 1873 when the house was built.
Alex Nicholas, listing agent with Corcoran Real Estate, described the inside: “The interior of the house is only 8-1/2-feet wide and 42-feet long and has a trapdoor in the kitchen floor that leads to a finished basement. At the rear of the house are floor-to-ceiling French doors on the first and second floor that open onto a tree-shaded back yard that is shared with neighbors. With a garret skylight on the third floor and oversized windows the house boasts an abundance of natural light.”
Sounds nice. Some celebrities over the years have thought so, too. Anthropologist Margaret Mead and Poetess Edna St. Vincent-Millay both called the skinny house home for a time. Author Ann McGovern also lived here, and her experiences inspired her to co-write the novel Mr. Skinner’s Skinny House. Actors Cary Grant and John Barrymore also allegedly once lived in the house.
Skinny houses seem to be popular the world over- check out these narrow houses across the Globe, and these, too. Boston also has its own famous skinny house at 44 Hull Street, though it’s not for sale. It’s just under 10 1/2 feet wide and is right across from Copp’s Hill Cemetery along Boston’s Freedom Trail. It was built in the 1870s or 1880s and legend has it that it was built as a spite house. According to the story, the property owner had a falling-out with the owner of an adjacent property and built this house to shut off air and light from the offending neighbor. There are other versions of the story, too.
At the height of the goldrush, in the year 1849, Daniel Ward left St. Joseph County in northern Indiana in pursuit of gold in California. Two years later, Ward returned with a “small fortune.” By the end of the Civil War, in 1865, he had erected a grand Itaianate mansion in Granger for his family, proud of this rare example of high-style architecture in rural Indiana.
However, the grand Italianate house is now threatened, and it appears the house will not stay where it was built. The Ward House and a large tract of surrounding land is now owned by State Representative B. Patrick Bauer, trustee of the Burnett C. Bauer Trust, and there are plans underway to develop the land — plans that do not include the historic Ward House.
A proposal to redevelop the land on which the Daniel Ward Home sits calls for relocating the historic structure, currently home to Flourish Boutique and Gallery, about 300 yards north, to make way for a drug store and other commercial buildings. Surprisingly, rather than fight the move, the Historic Preservation Commission, which enforces preservation standards in the county, has given it its blessing. “We all agree it’s going to be more sensitive to the historic structure itself,” commission director Catherine Hostetler said of the proposed new location, on Gumwood across from Toscana Park. In 1980, when the county first designated the house a local historic landmark, the surrounding area was still largely farmland, Hostetler said. But over the past several decades, development on Mishawaka’s north side has inched steadily northward, she said, threatening to engulf the two-story clapboard house. [Full story- South Bend Tribune]
One of the most fascinating things about historic homes is their unique story — and sometimes even the historical artifacts — associated with the home. Obviously, these historical tales and antique objects are powerful in connecting old house lovers with the one-of-a-kind past of their historic home. They also can be powerful marketing points when offering a historic property on the market; potential buyers may look beyond the slick photos and sticker price in search of a deeper emotional attachment to a future home. And of course, to actually make a discovery while living in a historic home might be one of the most powerful experiences one can have with an old house.
Brian Lees and Gay Carter Lees, a couple from Kent Island, MD, began unearthing historic artifacts almost as soon as a construction company tore out their old kitchen a month ago. In the dirt, under what used to be the floor, were parts of old shoes, part of a pipe, bones from a wild boar and other animals, oyster shells, bells, bottles and many pieces of pottery. For now, the artifacts, most still covered in a thin layer of dirt, are being held in bins.
The Leeses knew their home was historic, dating back to the mid-18th century and featuring the same kind of brickwork common at London Town in Edgewater, but just how historic remains to be seen. An archaeologist and a team of volunteers began an extensive examination of the site this weekend. After that, the space will be sealed off and the kitchen renovation will resume with Taurus Enterprises of Edgewater, Gay said. Meanwhile, experts will start to catalog the findings, date them and put the information into a database.
The hope is that some of the artifacts might be from the earliest settlements on Kent Island in the 17th century, said archaeologist Mechelle Kerns-Nocerito of Severna Park . . . Read more at the The Capital (Annapolis, MD).
In America, the Greek Revival style was sometimes called the “National Style” because it was so dominant and widespread through all parts of the nation. Archaeological discoveries in Rome and Greece fueled renewed interest in Classical architecture initially during the Federal Period.
This interest peaked because of 4 factors during the 1820s: 1) The War of 1812 caused many Americans to turn away from copying the styles of their Britis
h enemies, which was a death blow to the “Adam” or Federal style; 2) the Greek’s involvement in a War for Independence gained the sympathies of the young United States; 3) most Americans were reform-minded in the 1820s-1840s, and many saw the young “democracy” as a method towards a better society, and celebrated this by mimicking Greek style; and 4) the proliferation of printing allowed the style to be disseminated widely through guide books for carpeneters, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Practical House Carpenter (1942) and Minard Lafever’s The Modern Builder’s Guide; The Beauties of American Architecture.
The Greek Revival was very adaptable, and permeated all qualities of building, and all types of buildings—not just houses, but banks, churches, public buildings–from high end to low-brow. The style is very recognizable in large Southern plantation mansions with 2-story, Greek columns on the facade.
What to look for:
Perhaps the most prominent feature of the Greek Revival style was how the building, itself, was oriented – with the gable to the front. This way of building was called the “temple form” in Greek Revival because it mimicked the Grecian temples that inspired the design. Also common is a lower pitched roof, a departure from the more steep roof on Georgian and Federal homes. This style usually includes a wide band of trim on the cornice beneath the roof, representing Greek entablature carvings.
Most Greek Revival buildings have porticos or porches with Greek-style columns, as well as a front door surrounded on three sides by narrow rectangular sidelights and transom lights. Also, for the first time, shutters became popular (called “blinds” at the time). In Cape Cods built during that era, it is common to observe frieze band windows — “half” sized windows in the half-story upstairs. Another major change arriving with the Greek style was that WHITE paint became very common, which mimicked the light-colored marble of Greek temples.
Read more…
On the stately, tree-lined Reeves Drive in old Grand Forks, the stories have gathered for more than a century. The stately homes with sweeping yards that stand guard over the old neighborhood seem to have endless tales to tell. And one of these historic homes can now be yours: 504 Reeves Drive– a restored Queen Anne Victorian house with great stories and even the picture of Jane Russell (all grown up) – for just a tad more than a half-million dollars.
The house was built about 1901 from a mail-order architectural plan for Gustav Rhienhold Jacobi (1866-1949) and his wife, Amelia. Its construction likely reflected the Jacobi family’s prosperity during what was called the Second Dakota Boom, a period of rapid growth for banks and other institutions in the Red River Valley as mortgage-seeking immigrants swarmed into the state.
And one of the Jacobi’s daughters was Geraldine, mother of the famous actress Jane Russell. Russell apparently lived in the house when she was a young girl, and she was actually born in a lake cottage the family also owned nearby. For more info, visit this article at [Grand Forks Herald].
