another deposed monarch

This afternoon I've started reading Leslie Maitland's scholarly but accessible book, The Queen Anne Revival Style. It's reminding me how much I like the style - a little bit Gothic a little bit classical a little bit Tudor a little bit English rural life-ish. Big clues you have a Queen Anne? Dark red brick with white trim, terra cotta panels, bay windows, variety of window types, stained or frosted glass, irregular roofline, verandah with classical columns, corner tower, L-shaped plan with large gables at each end, deep brackets and vergeboard, interesting chimneys.

Maitland's detailed descriptions of the interiors of some of these homes, and of the social history that created them, is really evocative. I'm thinking baronial dark-wood-panelled splendour, pater familias uninterrupted by the fireplace , well-behaved women and children, lots of Victorian clutter...hmmm, some places I'd rather not time-travel to.

Enjoying this book is also reminding me that the house in these photos is the first building I ever really studied closely. I wrote a paper on it for Shannon Kyle's Ontario Architecture course, and later converted it (the paper) into a little article for Outlook, the journal of our wonderful local historical society. The neatest part about the research was the story of the tower - no, don't look up, it's gone. Interesting how often these third storey stories pop up - several houses I've explored since are missing towers. Notice the slight tilt to the building? In the case of this house, the tower was removed because it was too heavy for the shifty sandy soil beneath the foundation, and was causing structural problems...had to go! Third verandah, ditto.

Nowadays, the house is broken up into apartments, lacking the touch of a dedicated in-house preservationist. Mops on the porch, rubbish on the grass, and just recently someone has decided to paint the capitals on the porch columns bright brick-orange. Oh dear - still a grand house though. It's on my walk downtown through the leafy East Hill area, and I look forward to reconnecting with it every time I'm in the neighbourhood.

It's a sickness...

It's a sickness, but a good one.

Any enthusiasm - showing wolfhounds, building replica vintage and historic motorcycle frames, collecting early Heathkit sets or fine guitars - they are all intensely absorbing and very rewarding. They also lead to interesting connections with others who share the bug.

A gentleman I have just met through this blog has developed a Field Guide to old house styles he calls A Field Guide to Building Watching. It's at buildingwatch.blogspot.com.

Massive amount of work and research. Great photos and checklists for identification. A project I once had in mind - glad Ted got to it first, it's a big job! It will be a regular stop from now on.

Another contact researches Eaton's houses (those mail-order homes sold in kits or as plans in the early decades of the 20th century) and is anxious to hear from anyone in Ontario who knows of examples in this province. If you know of any, please contact me at the email on this blog and I will get in touch with her.

Must go. Feeling poorly. Need an infusion of the latest issue of Heritage Matters. Or maybe I'll work some more on my blog. Or perhaps a few more pages of Leslie Maitland. Then there are the minutes from Thursday's municipal heritage meeting to write up. Or I could work on my photo files for the ACO tour in October. Or my article on Glanmore house for Umbrella. Oh dear. It IS a sickness, isn't it?

Left: in Belleville, adjacent to Corby Rose Garden

Right: Hochelaga Inn, Kingston

Room at the Inn

I was talking the other day about how buildings go through transitions over the decades, centuries, leaving us with today's version, and only hints into what they were like before - bringing out the detective in all of us lovers of old buildings. Delving into the history of our local Clarion hotel, which is an historic building once called the Quinte Hotel, is a worthy exercise in time-travel.

The building was built in 1895 on the long-vacant site of the Dafoe Hotel, which burned in 1886. The Quinte Hotel itself was rebuilt after a disastous fire, in about 1909, adding a fourth storey in the process. It has seen many changes, has operated under several different hotel chains, losing a lot of its grandeur over the years. The Quinte Hotel was spoken of in superlatives in newspapers of its day. The Belleville Sun, in 1895, in the enthusiastic rhetoric of the time, reported that "there is no finer hotel to be found inthe province of Ontario than the Hotel Quinte". The hotel is associated with so many stories of Belleville, and of its illustrious citizens. Its a great story longing to be told.

When the Quinte Hotel was first built it is reported to have had many Romanesque Revival elements - that style said "we're important" in 1895. From what I can see in the photos I have viewed there were rusticated limestone foundation stones and piers for the prominent high porches (one removed in the 1960's, the other lowered and modernized), the deep red brick emulating the characteristic red sandstone, the round-headed arches and brick hood moulding above windows on the first floor and frontispiece on the Bridge Street side, rustication on the chunky pillars of the porches and the detailing at the top of the Bridge Street frontispiece, which all suggest Romanesque Revival. I can't see enough of the detail of the sun-room at the top, but it has a massive feel.

During the rebuilding after the fire around 1909, a brick fourth storey was added with a cornice separating it from the floors below, and classical features diluted some of the Romanesque Revival feel. The removal of the Bridge Street portico and the lowering and modernizing of the Pinnacle entrance were the biggest loss to its historical sense of style.

Today the hotel is a viable Clarion Hotel, much changed, but still the centre of downtown life, and mindful of its heritage. We should be proud of its longevity.

Images:

1.Top :(coloured postcard) Quinte Hotel (after 1909 rebuilding, note fourth storey above cornice.)

2. Left: Quinte Hotel (as originally built in 1895, note the sun-room on the roof)

3. Right: Dafoe Hotel (note the carriage-way into a central courtyard)

4. Bottom: Quinte Hotel (now the Clarion Hotel) as it is today.

Baby please don't go...

Another article in ACO's Acorn-on-line has me thinking. We so often use their term 'demolition by neglect'' to describe a situation where a building is left to deteriorate to a point where only the staunchest preservationist is left standing to defend it against the developers. This article coins a new term - 'developer's lightning' (hastily rescued from the tactless use of a now totally politically incorrect term by a local politician) - in connection with a fire, later found to be arson, which destroyed an important old hotel standing in the way of the Toronto developers.

The little house with the fine chimneys, above left, is the Billa Flint house (1835) in Belleville, built for this important local businessman and politician, who became a senator in 1867. Good pedigree this house has. Just recently the house was targeted by vandals who found the long-abandoned building just too tempting. Shame the owner doesn't find his stated plans for the place just as tempting. The clear and present danger for uninhabited heritage buildings is always further decay resulting in demolition. So often fire or other irreparable damage seems to have played into the hands of waiting developers (and the suspicious among us wonder aloud about collusion).

The house at top right is less famous - haven't been able to find anything about it so far. It sits on rural property north-east of Trenton. It's a lovely place, low regency profile with a line of tall windows and French doors with lovely cornices. Frame, stucco, gable roof. Lovely setting among trees on a country road. This house, unlike the Flint house, probably doesn't have anyone to speak up for it. Not famous. But this house would have a story. I hope it's been a happy one - family, success, tradition, love. Like we feel when a human life draws to its close: I hope life's been good to it. I hope all that can be done has been done. I hope this life will be remembered.

I hope to visit this little grey house a few more times before it goes.

And now for something completely different...

Whew, too much research lately, need to lighten up. I've just recalled a thoroughly delightful day we spent last summer at the Albert County Museum in Hopewell Cape on the Fundy shore of New Brunswick. The museum is operated by the fine folks of the Albert County Historical Society. Albert County was founded in 1845. Hopewell Cape was the Shiretown and the structures on the site were the original Shiretown buildings in their original locations, spreading up a gentle slope from the shore.

Competing with more famous Hopewell Rocks, (which we kayaked in the afternoon), the Albert County Museum can hold its own historically. Hopewell Cape was the birthplace of Premier R.B.Bennett, who among other achievements, founded the CBC - and himself a Conservative!! - and the museum is proud to showcase his career, as well as the lives and work of the people of Albert County.

The museum complex features a fine exhibition hall of farming, fishing and social history displays, the original County Gaol with graffiti from prisoners preserved on the plaster walls, and the actual County Tax Office with files and space for researchers and genealogists. The Community Hall has a powerful display about R.B.Bennett and the Great Depression, which got us both interested in reading Boyco's new book about this complex man and his political times.

The building that most impressed us was the County Court House (rebuilt 1904 after a fire ). It is a solemn classically styled building at the top of the rise. The structure was designed by Watson Reid, a local architect, son of a carpenter. The interior of the building has exquisite woodwork.

And now for something completely different, something many locals don't know! Watson Reid was one of three architect brothers whose impact ranged far beyond their little village. In 1888, in the seaside resort town of Coronado near San Diego, the hotel designed by the lads, the lavish Queen Ann style Hotel del Coronado, was opened. It stands today, with several additions, offering hospitality now, as it did then, to the world's rich and famous. It is a U.S. National Historic Landmark. Small-town lad makes good.

Photo top right: Hotel del Coronado. Thanks to Wikipedia - and yes, I did send in my donation to Jimmy Wales.

It ain't necessarily so....

I'm taking a course on the history of Western architecture with Shannon Kyles through Mohawk College this winter. It's great fun, revisiting places I studied in my undergrad history of art courses - pulled out my old Janson History of Art text to work on an essay recently. Purchased it for a whopping $12.95 in my sophomore year! It's funny how the long-term memory works - terms and structures I studied in 1966 are etched in my mind...the names pop out almost without bidding - whereas the new ones take some serious work to fix in there.

I recall one of my big disappointments in my early study - it comes back even today. What I see in the photographs (or in real life in the case of some we've visited over the years) is not at all what people saw when the structures were new - as I write this I ask myself "what did you expect?" - but still,who knew...

-that Lincoln cathedral's exquisite early 14th century stone screen was originally brightly painted?

-that the statues and carvings in those brilliant white Greek ruins we see were once bright reds and blues?

-that the arches in triumphal Roman arches and coliseums were boarded up and used as public housing in the middle ages? Nicks in the walls show where roof supports were once anchored, and carved niches were used for fireplaces and dovecotes.

-that the Parthenon was originally covered with sculpture (poached by a British collector); that its 40' tall ivory and gold statue of the goddess Athena disappeared somewhere along the way, likely in a fire; that its romantic ruin today is in large part due to an explosion in 1687 when the temple was being used by the Turks as a munitions dump?

-that the marble, gold and bronze fronts of great buildings were removed and used in the building projects of kings and emperors of subsequent empires? (and popes were good at that too)

-that many of the wonderful stone houses in England were constructed of stone from nearby abbeys, disgraced and destroyed in 16th century, and that the romantic ruins we see today (think Tintern Abbey) were just the churchy bits that would be too obviously nicked to be useful?

-that stone structures like Stonehenge may only exist today because the stone was too heavy for subsequent civilizations to remove for building material?

-that the cathedrals of Europe and England were 'improved' over the centuries; Romanesque carving removed in favour of Gothic sophistication, new styles for old??

-that the brilliant palace of Knossos (how amazingly well-preserved I thought) built in 1900 to 1450 BC, was buried by an earthquake, rediscovered and rebuilt in early 1900's by Sir Arthur Evans? He did the best he could, but scholars have disputed its authenticity over time.

-that so much of what we see today is the result of passionate and painstaking preservation work by governments and individuals, and that for all that we see, there is so much more lost to us?

The fires, the earthquakes, the wars, the changes in taste - deliberate and accidental tragedies, the rich history of accomplishment and catastrophe that these structures represent - I've observed before in connection with old Ontario houses that old buildings are a portal to the past. I am experiencing this so powerfully in this course. Wouldn't care to guess how many European and British history books I have piling up around my desk?

Back to the Palace of Knossos for a minute. I recall my first visit to Minoan civilization in my sophomore year at Carleton (since Grade 9 mythology with Mrs. Ross), and the palaces of this peaceable artistic Mediterranean kingdom. The Palace of Knossos was rebuilt by Evans during a lifetime of work, using the knowledge and tools available to him in the early 1900's. And even he got it wrong, according to scholars. What remains is only a hint of the brilliance of that culture, an invitation into the history and the myth about this kingdom, its rulers, the palace, bronze age civilization.

The other day I made up a term for what happens when I see a ruin or a reconstruction and imagine it to be 'the real thing". (It's a great conceit to think it's original, but I haven't seen anyone else use it yet.) I call this the Knossos effect - reconstruction using modern materials, rebuilding based on what we know, what we wish, what we need (tourism leaps to mind). From ancient structures right up to c19 Ontario houses - all an invitation to do our research, do some time-travel. Because in the words of Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward....what we see today? "It ain't necessarily so".

If wishes were houses...

There's a lot of interest in mail-order houses. I was doing some research on early catalogues recently for an article in a local arts newspaper. This all started when I rediscovered a facsimile edition of the 1910 Eaton's catalogue on my bookshelf, and spent an enjoyable few hours looking at merchandise that has long disappeared from our lives...automobile coats and bicycle skirts, cuspidors, mangles and two-horse harness. And houses.

I remembered a visit to several south Saskatchewan communities while we exploring 'the Big Muddy' from our base in the Coronach municipal campground few years ago. A local guide pointed out the house at the upper left - a weathered husk of a house, standing in a field of harvest-ready wheat. The house, going back into the earth, to nurture future crops? Our guide explained that this was an Eaton's mail-order house - whether local legend or not, the idea was new to me, and I was hooked.

Most sources suggest that the mail-order house, available from around 1910 to 1930, was a prairie phenomenon, necessary because of the shortage of timber for house lumber. Makes sense, looking at the countryside surrounding these little buildings. There were a number of companies: Eaton's and Aladdin were the two main ones. Lumber was shipped from B.C., and everything else needed to build a home - windows, hardware, nails, paper, optional plumbing and heating kits - arrived by boxcar from Winnipeg. Plans and material for barns, school-houses and other buildings were also available. Plans were available for those who had local access to building materials. Lots of homes in the East may have been built from the catalogue plans - that would be interesting to know.

I have come across some interesting websites in my research, created by community heritage associations or ranches. They contain all sorts of interesting images and stories. A visitor to this blog is looking for news of Eaton's houses in western Ontario - I am doing the same in eastern Ontario. Let me know what you know about mail-order homes!

The photo of the faded little yellow house with the red roof was taken near Sceptre, Saskatchewan, on a tour to find the Great Sand Hills. The little school-house photo is from a historic tour we took in South Saskatchewan, out of Coronach. My heart tells me they came in a kit from one of the mail-order companies. More houses with stories to tell.