I'm what some folks refer to as an "Old House Geek". I love old houses - and buildings. I've always believed that you cannot know where you're going until you know where you've been. In other words, if you don't know your history, you can't move forward with any sense of where you came from. If we tear down all the old houses and buildings, we won't have any sense of our heritage. And one of the houses threatened with extinction, unless something is done soon, is the house pictured here, build in 1828 by Colonel John Singletary of Streetsboro, OH. Already having been moved twice, it now sits up on a truck flatbed, lacking the funding to have a foundation built for it since its most recent move to make room for.....you guessed it, yet
another Wal-Mart SuperCenter. Wal-Mart most generously paid to have the home physically moved, but.....not for a foundation on which to set it. So now it is being threatened with being burned down as a fire department exercise, unless some badly needed funding can be come up with very soon so that the home can be saved. It's a gorgeous old house that deserves to be saved. I just hope that some way can be come up with to do so. It's suffered enough in its 180 years and now it deserves a permanent place that could become a historical society and a building that could be open for tours to remind us from whence we Northeast Ohioans came.
This beautiful old house is on the near west side of Akron and was built in 1913, the home of a prominent Akronite. But over time, it fell into disrepair and neglect and was, not so long ago, falling down on itself despite still being inhabited by a lonely little old lady and her many cats. It was bought (for a real bargain) by Akron Beacon Journal columnist David Giffels and his wife and they set about spending many long years restoring it to its former glory, the subject of his touching new book,
All The Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling Down House. It's funny, it's sad, it's touching and I just plain out could not put it down once I got into it. I live in an old house myself and I know what it's like to have to hassle with old house foibles. In the years that I've lived in my apartment, which occupies the front upper floor of the house, built in 1912 shortly after Kent State University opened, I have dealt with invasions of bats, squirrels, rats, mice, birds, yellow jackets, moths, carpenter ants.....and a leaky roof, funky wiring and unpredictable plumbing. Fortunately, the house has had considerable work done on it since I moved in, and is nice and secure now without all the numerous problems that plagued it in my early years of occupation. So I could perfectly identify with Giffels descriptions of life in a run down old house and the effort to fix it up, often learning how while he was doing the lion's share of the work himself, often scrounging and scavenging the materials needed to do said restoration. I really admire someone who has the courage to take what sounded like a perfectly horribly dilapidated old house and fix it up and make it liveable again. I'm sure that the work took both an emotional and physical toll at times, but the reward is a beautiful old house that is once again a home, occupied by a family who will care for it, and by someone who I have always felt absolutely breathes a love of Akron with every word that he writes, including this book. Sure, the city that once stunk of burning rubber has fallen on hard times in the past quarter century, but to read about someone who loves the city so much that they are willing to restore a part of its old forgotten glory reassures me that there is some small shred of hope out there. I loved this book and recommend it to anyone who has ever dreamed of buying a "fixer-upper" and doing an extreme makeover of it and restoring it to its lost glory. Thank you, David Giffels, for once again writing an inspiring work, like so many of your newspaper articles in the Akron Beacon Journal. You make me laugh, you make me cry, you make me smile. And that's what being a good writer is all about.
I'm what some folks refer to as an "Old House Geek". I love old houses - and buildings. I've always believed that you cannot know where you're going until you know where you've been. In other words, if you don't know your history, you can't move forward with any sense of where you came from. If we tear down all the old houses and buildings, we won't have any sense of our heritage. And one of the houses threatened with extinction, unless something is done soon, is the house pictured here, build in 1828 by Colonel John Singletary of Streetsboro, OH. Already having been moved twice, it now sits up on a truck flatbed, lacking the funding to have a foundation built for it since its most recent move to make room for.....you guessed it, yet another Wal-Mart SuperCenter. Wal-Mart most generously paid to have the home physically moved, but.....not for a foundation on which to set it. So now it is being threatened with being burned down as a fire department exercise, unless some badly needed funding can be come up with very soon so that the home can be saved. It's a gorgeous old house that deserves to be saved. I just hope that some way can be come up with to do so. It's suffered enough in its 180 years and now it deserves a permanent place that could become a historical society and a building that could be open for tours to remind us from whence we Northeast Ohioans came.
This beautiful old house is on the near west side of Akron and was built in 1913, the home of a prominent Akronite. But over time, it fell into disrepair and neglect and was, not so long ago, falling down on itself despite still being inhabited by a lonely little old lady and her many cats. It was bought (for a real bargain) by Akron Beacon Journal columnist David Giffels and his wife and they set about spending many long years restoring it to its former glory, the subject of his touching new book, All The Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling Down House. It's funny, it's sad, it's touching and I just plain out could not put it down once I got into it. I live in an old house myself and I know what it's like to have to hassle with old house foibles. In the years that I've lived in my apartment, which occupies the front upper floor of the house, built in 1912 shortly after Kent State University opened, I have dealt with invasions of bats, squirrels, rats, mice, birds, yellow jackets, moths, carpenter ants.....and a leaky roof, funky wiring and unpredictable plumbing. Fortunately, the house has had considerable work done on it since I moved in, and is nice and secure now without all the numerous problems that plagued it in my early years of occupation. So I could perfectly identify with Giffels descriptions of life in a run down old house and the effort to fix it up, often learning how while he was doing the lion's share of the work himself, often scrounging and scavenging the materials needed to do said restoration. I really admire someone who has the courage to take what sounded like a perfectly horribly dilapidated old house and fix it up and make it liveable again. I'm sure that the work took both an emotional and physical toll at times, but the reward is a beautiful old house that is once again a home, occupied by a family who will care for it, and by someone who I have always felt absolutely breathes a love of Akron with every word that he writes, including this book. Sure, the city that once stunk of burning rubber has fallen on hard times in the past quarter century, but to read about someone who loves the city so much that they are willing to restore a part of its old forgotten glory reassures me that there is some small shred of hope out there. I loved this book and recommend it to anyone who has ever dreamed of buying a "fixer-upper" and doing an extreme makeover of it and restoring it to its lost glory. Thank you, David Giffels, for once again writing an inspiring work, like so many of your newspaper articles in the Akron Beacon Journal. You make me laugh, you make me cry, you make me smile. And that's what being a good writer is all about.
3 comments:
Any good ghost stories?
I love the Haunted Ohio series (subtitle: The Haunt of it All)
Presumably you don't have the legislation we have in the UK by which buildings of historic or architectural interest, are given legal protection by being "graded" I , 2 or 3, according to their significance. If Grade I virtually no alterations can be made. Certainly not demolition, and the other grades also restrict what can be done that might alter the character of the building.
Th whole business of ghosts is rather unfair. Nearly everybody in this village seems to have one, except me. And here I am with one of the older houses (c.1800) and not even a glimpse of ectoplasm!
Well, even a house or building that makes the National Register of Historic Places cannot be protected from demolition. The US doesn't have such legislation protecting historic sites, homes and buildings. Many a Civil War site, for example, has been destroyed in favor of development, and many historic homes and buildings that made the National Register have been demolished.
The US has a rather backward view of history, sadly. We tend to have painfully short attention spans and a sort of collective amnesia of our own history. Most people in the US don't know when major wars were fought and couldn't tell you the date, let alone knowing what rights are contained in the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to our Constitution. This demonstrates the sad state of our educational system in the US, where history is no longer taught as a stand-alone topic. History, geography and other topics are all lumped into some nebulous subject called "Social Studies", which goes a long way toward explaining our collective historical amnesia.
And Lemming....as for ghost stories, read the David Giffels book I mentioned. His house presumably has at least one ghost in it, from what he says in his book!
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