The 'richly sculpted bulk' of Victoria Hall, Cobourg

Spent a lovely late afternoon wandering around Cobourg yesterday, with Katherine Ashenburg's excellent Going To Town tucked under my arm, camera in hand, reading/walking/looking/snapping photos (awkward but do-able). Ashenburg writes an especially useful preface to each walking tour of the 10 historic Ontario towns featured in the book. She describes "two Cobourgs" , one "a Tory town with great expectations and repeated frustrations" and the other, a summer retreat for wealthy nineteenth century American industrialists - a fascinating invitation into research on the social history of the town. We strolled the short boardwalk through a preserved beach ecosystem beside a placid Lake Ontario, prior to a dash around town to catch the fading afternoon sun on some of the buildings constructed when Cobourg's star was rising in the early and mid c19. Victoria Hall, designed in a style as grandiose as the aspirations for national importance held by the city fathers, was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1860. Shortly afterwards, the death-knell sounded - the Cobourg Peterborough Railway dream (and its bridge) collapsed and the town fell into decline. For another visit - Cobourg rises from the ashes as "Newport North."

Look, Jerry, look. Look and see!

Did anyone learn to read from the Alice and Jerry readers when they were in Grade one? Siblings Alice and Jerry prompted each other, albeit in a rather stilted language occasioned by the limited sight vocabulary of their readers, to look about themselves and see the world. A study of architecture makes one a looker, and a see-er of details. As an individual with a global-holistic style learning style, I have always experienced exquisite old houses in their entirety, and my response has has run to wonder, longing, a sense of loss, curiosity...my response has been deeply emotional. I've noticed that after a winter of study and revisiting my history of architecture library from as far back as my undergrad art history courses, my response is changing. It's no less emotional, but now it's supported by a rational checklist of ways to see ....what style, what roof, what doorway, what windows, what brick or stonework, what finish details....Look, look and see!

So many houses, so many experts, so little time...

I spent a lovely few hours yesterday sorting my architecture photos into 'style' folders. Admittedly, that sounds a teeny bit OCD but it's actually a wonderful exercise in really seeing detail and consolidating what I learned in my Mohawk college course about architectural styles in Ontario. In the course of some Internet research into a few hard-to-identify houses, I came across three wonderful sources - one fellow has more photos that I will EVER produce, in a Flickr slideshow - and he responds in an erudite and gentle manner to all comments made by visitors to the site. His name is John Fitzgerald and he's based in Toronto. Two other ''go-to" sites feature great photos and spot-the-style lists: HouseProud at www.housepride.ca hosted by Brian R. Booth, which is also a Canadian site, and architecture.about.com which is part of the wider About.com empire. I look for Canadian sites, as the terminology is used differently in the US in many cases, and the last thing I need is to be more confused! But despite all the help, I can still post photos of a few houses that are, for the moment in my "guess the style" folder. (I expect when I find the answer, it will be a Homer Simpson "doh" kind of moment.) Have a look and help me out!

Left - This old stone house started life as a 1 1/2 storey, with a magnificent trellis verandah (photo in Peter Stokes' The Settler's Dream) so I'm wondering- could it have started out life as a Regency cottage? It's got Georgian presence, but the roof's wrong, and Italianate brackets without a wide cornice. And the state of decline is sad.

Centre - (I don't seem to have any control over where these photos land when I upload) was built of marble in 1857. Again presence, but no ornament.

Right - I'll admit the dark second storey makes me think of period revival, but is this just a sedate Queen Anne? I think it's quite lovely.

Off to take more photos.

Long Live the Queen!

On a drive in the country the other day I came upon this incredible vernacular frame Queen Anne style home in a riverside location. The lady is definitely showing signs of age - an aging dowager in genteel poverty. Although there is a conservation area to one side protecting the natural setting, a widened intersection has encroached on the property, detracting from the presence that the property must once have had. I had to take a number of photographs just to "take in" all the detail! The obligatory Queen Anne verandah...check. Actually, I counted five. Tower...check. Or two, if you count the very unusual 'bump' in the center to the left of the gable end.

Eclectic....check. There's a Mansard roof on the tower, and a truncated one with a dormer effect in the square wing at the left in this photo. There's a lancet arch window under the central porch. There are the expected large paned mostly rectangular windows, with some stained glass transoms. And the woodwork is eccentric to say the least. I have never seen anything like the surround on the large plate glass window. And the awning style hoods above the windows in the tower are unusual too. And the front door...and the gable vergeboarding....and the stick balustrades on the verandahs....and the paint....and then there I was sitting in the spring sunshine with my fancy-work, listening for the sounds of an eagerly awaited horse and buggy, on one of the two decorated verandahs looking over the sparkling river. Shiny new traffic lights, curbs, filter lanes, crosswalk signs and bossy traffic - all gone. Thanks your majesty, for a lovely bit of time travel.

Stoned again!

We spent some time in the Harrowsmith area yesterday. Fell in love with some heart-breakingly beautiful stone houses; my neck's still recovering from all the head-turning as we travelled the backroads and villages looking at all that beauty and history.

I spoke to the fellows who are renovating the house pictured at left and reluctantly declined their invitation for a tour due to time constraints. Inside are all the original fittings, including built-in hutches, original floors and woodwork, stone fireplaces and a brick bake oven. The main house dates from 1843; the wing to the right in this photo was the original settlers' home, built in 1811. The windows look to be the original 12 over 12 sash, the panelled door and sidelights appear likewise. The lads told me that Harrowsmith magazine did an article about the house some time back, so I will have to try to find it.

The refined and imposing Georgian in ashlar finished stone at the right sits above the mill-pond of a hamlet we explored on our way home. Exquisite. We reminded each other that at one time in our lives we'd each wanted an old stone house - he in England, me on the upper St. Lawrence. Glad in so many ways that we didn't tie ourselves to the life's work that loving such a house would have been. This way we can flit promiscuously from one limestone beauty to another. Or flirt with river-washed cobblestones. Or cut-granite fieldstones.

Things to do with Bricks

I am always amazed at the variation in brick craftsmanship that reveals itself when I look closely at old buildings. So many details capture the eye first - applied stone or cast iron cornices, dichromatic effects, flamboyant vergeboarding........ But a close look under the eaves, or at the corners, or close to the top of a facade of many brick structures offers up countless variations on a brick on brick theme. I imagine local builders solving construction problems while showing off their signature style (it pays to advertise), working in less than ideal conditions with basic tools, referring to pattern books perhaps, or just drawing on experience. The end result is a legacy for us to enjoy over a century later in warm, rich, enduring red clay brick (no suburban cement versions here)

A nod to the Classical,

and a Medieval touch

Victory!!

I have intense memories of several months spent in a tidy neighbourhood like this one, comprised of hundreds of houses just like these when I was just five years old. Coming from a large farm and a rambling old farmhouse, I found the uniformity and density of the neighbourhood overwhelming. Shy and introvert, I found the hundreds of kids and their boisterous social ease disconcerting. Although I had longed to go to school, the city kindergarten where I spent two months with my cousin Terry was full of unexplained terrors. My lovely English war-bride aunt and my Hasty P's veteran uncle had their own troubles but they took me in nevertheless, while my mother was pregnant and very ill. I spent three months with them and by the time I returned home my little brother had arrived and stolen their hearts.

Neighbourhoods such as this were created after WWII for returning military men and their families, through the Veteran's Land Act. The houses were prefabricated, neat one-and-a-half storey clapboard, with steep roofs, shallow eaves, multi-paned sash windows and no dormers. The busy neighbourhoods had street names like Montgomery and Victory. Life changed with the building of these little homes; the working class now had its own home. Suburban living had begun.

Someone once told me that the homes in one of the Victory neighbourhoods in our city were finished in surplus aircraft aluminum - unpainted I assume, as she tells me the area was called Tintown! Must check into that.