Bought this two years ago. Built in a historic district in 1877. It is also a bed and breakfast along with an antique shop in the wash house. I love it! Thge only thing that works in the old homes though is the owner. I am right now in the process of building a nice size garage so I can get away from my wife Let me know when you guys want to arrange an overnighter. I make a kick ass breakfast! http://www.thekeepingroombandb.com/ http://www.zca.org/bus-keeping-room.html
Larry, I knew when I met you this last summer at B-ville you had some style brother! I just got one question. Where is the Berry Wagon gonna be displayed? Now that would be cool sitting in your living room. Don't tell me you didn't think about it. Awesome digs man. I showed my old lady and she said it looked like an antique store. Women. Will they ever understand?(I guess that was two questions)
The center 2 story part was one of the towns original schoolhouses built in 1835 and moved to this land during the Civil War. The dormers were added around 1920. The part on the left was also added around 1920 and was the new dining room. The 3 story section on the right I personally built in 1989-90. The broken TV antenna compliments of the storm! Total living area around 3500 sq ft, 5BR, 4 baths. 5 acres on top of the highest hill within 15 miles, at the end of a dead end road in a small rural town. Great farm land, Im growing at least 15 cars out back.
Damn Larry i never knew you had such an awsome pad! I might half to swing by and check it out and get some use out of all that cool stuff! I only live an half an hour from ya so I guess I don't have an excuise now huh?
Thanks Larry, Its cool, I don't have to worry about it a whole lot. The wife does most of it. Now we are re-decorating the spare bedroom. Got a baby boy on the way. Baby mid century funiture doesn't really exist so were having a time with that. She think its fun......
My wife and I both love old houses also. It's kind of starting to look like lot's of folks that like old cars like old houses and stuff also. I don't know if I'm just getting old or what but we love to go looking thru stuff at garage sales and antique stores looking for cool stuff. It just seems like everything was put together better. I wonder if my grandpa thought the same thing, um? Anyway here's a pic of our house. Built in 1929.
Hey Curbspeed, B-ville was the BEST! I'll never forget it. I would love to get the Berry Wagon upstairs but it is way too big to get on the old freight elevator. It would be too cool to get it in the living room. Its stuck in the garage until we get it cleaned up. Then I hope I can leave it in the museum up at Latimore for a while.
I've had my eye on an old brick building in town for 10 or 12 years (about a third of the size of yours Larry). Been boarded up for 30 years or so, amazing windows and brick work, 2 huge bays and a loading dock. I've been biding my time until I could swing a mortgage and the cost of renos etc., I've designed the entire building inside and out, and I've been to city hall a bunch of times to find out who the owner is and wade through the zoning issues. I'm about to sell my own house, so I might have a couple of bucks to put into it, and I finally made the decision to bite the bullet. I took my girlfriend over to have a look at the place, she's into old buildings too so she was pretty excited, and... it's gone. In the last 2 months some fucker tore my building down and it's now a parking lot. Yes, I'm pissed.
I own a house built in 1956. Just a poor person built house out in the country. It was the second house built on my road. And also there was one school house. Originaly it was just a front room and kitchen and in 1963 they added on a bath and bedroom. So I built the garage, a front dining room and a second bedroom in the back. I put a lot of work into this old place but it was a cheep place to start out with. First pic is when i bought it in 1995. The second the way it looks today. sorry about terrible photos, for some reason i couldnt down size any of the better photos.
Yep, hammy the hamber! Ham since 1955, started on my first custom (49 Ford) the same year. Only 2 of the 4 towers showing, the big one showing is 180' and commercial repeaters on it help pay the mortgage. And yes, Im the one who climbs them all! That house can tell some real stories. Signs of 3 fires, 2 went thru the roof. A 92 year old neighbor lived there in the 30's and tells of a drunken boarder who roomed upstairs starting a fire. The front door is where the big kitchen window is now. Story is he tossed a piano down the stairs and thru the front door! When we got it it was a summer home with no heat, no insulation and asbestos shingles. Ive got a bunch of in process pix. Even raised the schoolhouse up to replace rotted sills. Wiring hadnt been upgraded since the 20's; all post and knob. My wife, family and friends thought I was nuts to tackle it, they wanted me to tear it down and build a new yuppie box. After it was done I had several professional home restorers take pictures and feature it in some magazines. They were watching me thru the process but never said a word until it was finished. The town historical society shit their pants when they found out it was a long missing schoolhouse which they didnt realize still existed. I had NO intention of telling them either! Those busybodies would have filed suit to stop me had they known. My old neighbor had no use for them either and he and some other OT's gave me a lot of history on the place.
Some pics of my place... designed in 1958 by Olaf Harringer and Erik Friis, two Chicago architects who were contemporaries of Keck & Keck and Edward Dart. We have all the original blueprints. The house was completed in Spring 1959, and we bought it from the original owners in '97.
This house makes me feel like I'm in the Movie "North By Northwest"...!!! Kind of "Frank Loyd Wright-ish"...!!!
Mike, Your house is cool. The design reminds me of an california architect. Joseph Eichler. He did cool c-shaped houses with courtyards.
Any chance you're as traditional in your Ham tastes and a SPAMer (Soc. for the Preservation of Amplitude Modulation)?
My house was built in 1852 just a couple years after Iowa became a state. It is the oldest still standing building in my county. Timber/balloon framed and sheathed in hand hewn oak, with pine trim inside. It will be a total gut and rebuild by the time I'm done, with 99.9% of the work done by myself. I couldn't afford it any other way. It will look like it was originally when all is done.
Here's mine in Bluff Park, Alabama... and you can have it for a measily 150K! Built in 1956... I have the original blueprints with it too...
I just have a little 2 bedroom semi in toronto that was built in 1931. Nice little place with lots of charm. Fine for just me once I rebuild the original garage into something useable that is not about to fall down.
Lucky -- Our house is actually shaped like an "H", two courtyards, with a glassed-in dining room connecting the two sections. Man, I really dig Eichler! One of my favorite architects, along with Mies (the architect who did our place was one of Mies' students), Richard Neutra, Bertrand Goldberg, and Ed Dart. Luckily there is a big modernist conservation movement in California and most of Eichler's homes have been given historic designation. In Chicago & 'burbs, completely different story as dozens of modern 50s-60s homes are getting knocked down yearly to make way for godawful McMansions. My wife and I are part of a group called 'Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond' that got started to preserve these places. We're trying to replicated what LAModern and the Eichler clubs have done on the west coast.
My house was built in 1913 when Ferndale was still farmland, was clapboard siding but the guy who bought it in the 40's was a Mason and he bricked it. I love old houses, I just redid my kitchen in a period correct style but it's been stealing wrench time from my cars.
Some cool HAMBer cribs on here. Like the 50s places with furnishing to match, but am too easily distracted and too addicted to flea marketing to stick with one style. Here's my place a few years ago. Now the paint's all peeling off and it looks like the Bates Motel. Inside the different rooms have time period decor themes from Victorian to 60's. This allows me to collect all kinds of weird shit and have somewhat of a place for it. I'd like the house lots more if I had a big garage, but since it doesn't and since the neighbors and the city don't much like cars in my yard, I'd like to finish some things and get the Hell out. One good thing about it- the place was pretty cheap.
Now that Zenor has brought up the name Frank Lloyd Wright... I wonder if anybody on the HAMB is modest enough to step forward and say they own an original FLW home? and show pictures. Anybody?? That'd be neat. Travis
Here's an older pic of mine. Built in 1912. I believe it is a kit house from Sears or Montegomery Ward. Still not happy about the trees getting hacked sometime before I bought it, but they are growing out ok now. and that is my realtor's thumb.....
Man, I wish. Luckily I live in an area that has a few FLW homes to ogle at, including the landmark Ward Willits House near Wright's first professional studio in Highland Park, IL. One of my company's clients is SCJohnson (Johnson Wax), whose 1939 headquarters in Racine, WI is considered one of Wright's ultimate masterpieces, and still is in use as an office today. I've had the pleasure of working/touring in that building several times. About a mile away from me is the Allen Friedman House in Bannockburn, IL, which was the very last residence Wright ever designed -- he finished the blueprints in 1959 and the house was completed in 1960 after he died. A couple of years ago, the house went up for sale and a developer bought it, with the plan of tearing it down to subdivide into McMansion lots. The house was about $1 million (an incredible steal for a genuine Wright house if you had the dough) but had the misfortune of sitting on 3 acres of land where the market is $1 million + per acre for bare dirt. Needless to say a giant public stink ensued -- http://www.pbs.org/wttw/handymaamtv/handyProject405.htm Thankfully the house has been saved, but not without a lot of arm twisting on the Village Zoning Board. Most original Wright houses are beyond the reach of the typical Joe (there's one for sale in Oak Park, IL right now at $6.5 mill) but Wright designed a line of small low-buck prefab houses he called "Usonians". Quite a few of those still exist throughout the country and can be had at reasonable prices.
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