Eleek are metal casters who sell a line of light fixtures. Most of their work is pretty modern, but there are a few that work within the realm of the Arts & Crafts Movement:
for sale: restored Horseheads NY home, $199,500
From Martha Horton’s recent article in the Star-Gazette‘s Twin Tiers Homes section:
John
Stevens, a Horseheads native, studied architecture at Cornell
University, and his wife Rosemary, originally from Owego, is a Cornell
graduate, but the two did not cross paths on campus. They met later,
when Rosemary was employed with Corning Inc. and John, an independent
electrician, was doing work there.John
had purchased a Craftsman-style house in the Village of Horseheads in
1993 from the Shappee estate. The original owner, who built the house
in 1920, was James Shappee, a prominent citizen and foundry owner. His
caricature by famed cartoonist Zim hangs in the Zim Center in
Horseheads. James’ wife Febe was a Horseheads school principal.When
Rosemary, an interior designer, first saw the house, she recognized its
"good bones," and thought it was well worth preserving and updating. So
the couple went to work on it, doing most of the labor themselves. "We
worked on the house every day after work," Rosemary recalls, "and every
weekend." They are still working on it.John
did extensive rewiring and updated the heating system. Rosemary, who
now operates her own interior design firm under the name of "Designs by
Rody," masterminded the aesthetics. "I wanted to keep the house in
character and bring it forward as it would have evolved through the
years," she explains. "Houses talk to you," Rosemary adds.The 3+ bedroom, 4 full bath, almost 4000 square foot house is listed by Kristen Dininny, a real estate agent with Signature Properties. There’s a map here.
Of course, where I live, a house like this would sell for well over $450,000, even with the market falling a bit in the past year. It’s almost tempting to move to New York and try to make a living doing freelance work or by beefing up this site and trying to make some money from the advertising … the $200,000 cash I’d walk away with from the sale of my own smaller home would cover expenses for several years.
off-topic: the new Google Maps and how to REALLY improve them
I posted this over at Urban Cartography, but thought some people here might be interested too, especially since my test use of this new technology will be to make a map showing the locations and some background data on all still-existing Greene & Greene properties here in California.
I was all excited to learn that Google is now allowing user-created
data in custom maps. This is great! However, when I went to go play
with it, I learned the current implementation – which in most ways is
an alpha release – is missing 90% of what could make it useful. Such as:- the ability to import, not just export, addresses. I want to
make a canonical map of all currently existing properties by the late
great architects Greene & Greene; this is not very easy by
hand-entering every single one. However, if I could import
tab-delimited text, I could have the full list of 200 up in a few
minutes! - the ability to display multiple maps at once – on top of each other
(i.e., LAYERS). this would make google maps a useful tool for data
analysis: you could display maps of different data layers at once, but
what would make this feature REALLY shine would be… - the ability to pipe in data from online databases. if you combined
#1 with the ability to bring data in from online databases, not just
uploaded text files, you could use this with the ability to see
different layers at once to see real causality – that is, you could see
how income, for example, and property values, tax base, parks, etc. all
interact. It would be a really democratic tool – the ability, for
example, to see if public works projects actually happen in poor
neighborhoods as they do in rich, or to see what zipcodes public
university admissions come from (if that data were available), or to
see what area codes had the most telemarketer calls originating, etc.
In fact, this would turn Google Maps into the ultimate social
researcher’s dream tool – the killer app that sociologists, activists,
criminologists and others have been waiting for.
Just a few (big) suggestions for the Google Maps folks to think about…
- the ability to import, not just export, addresses. I want to
installing Romex & receptacles in a plaster-on-brick wall
Our friend Matt Wyczalkowski with the St. Louis Rehabbers Club has a new set of photographs up on Flickr, detailing two different projects in the same room: running new Romex inside a wall from the basement and across a ceiling to a light fixture, going around a few corners on the way (something that many old-house owners have either had to do or SHOULD be doing soon – before our houses burn down, at least), and installing a receptacle in a plaster-on-brick wall (no easy task).
how to live within history – not on top of it
This is one of the most delightful things I’ve read in a newspaper since long before the current war began, and it’s almost enough to distract me for a few minutes from Kurt Vonnegut’s death, the rising toll of wounded and killed overseas and the idiocracy we seem to have saddled ourselves with in Washington.
For today’s Los Angeles Times, William Deverell, a history professor at USC, has written a quiet and beautifully moving paean to his home, his neighborhood and how he has learned to "live amid history:"
Houses and neighborhoods seduce us. They always have. What
starts with limitations — cost and location — often blossoms into
habits of living and cherished memories. Our love affair began in
Pasadena eight years ago.It was the fall of 1999. We knew we
wanted to be close to Caltech, where I was teaching at the time, and
near the Huntington Library, where my wife, Jenny, works. So we drew an
imaginary rectangle on a map of Pasadena, hoping that somewhere inside
this space we would find our perfect home and our perfect neighborhood.When we first saw it, the house hid behind 20 years of benign neglect.
It was a Mission Revival with old wooden awnings sagging atop wrought
iron braces. In the yard, worn-out grass fought a losing battle with
brown spots and weeds. Here and there, a few succulents hung on.Built
in 1923, the house was tired. The bathrooms needed work — a lot of
work. Every window had heavy iron bars on it. An apartment attached to
the garage was decrepit, and a freestanding building out back, with an
incinerator plunked down in a corner, was a mess.The owner
had been in the leather business in downtown Los Angeles. He had
retired years earlier and brought his inventory home with him. Bolts of
leather stood stacked in rooms and corners of the house: raw leather,
finished leather and leather in some stage in-between. A couple of
rooms were off-limits because we couldn’t open the doors; leather was
in the way.Our real estate agent apologized to us on the sidewalk as we left.
"I really like it," Jenny whispered to me.
Hewn & Hammered on Flickr
We have had lots and lots of additions to our photo pool on Flickr; if you want to see pictures of A&C neighborhoods all over the country, interior and exterior remodels, new homes and all sorts of other bits and pieces, please come on over and visit. Flickr accounts are free, too, so feel free to make your own and share your photos with us!
Redfin: find, buy & sell homes online
Redfin is a real estate listing service with an integrated blog, which gathers neighborhood information, maps, photos and other information on a particular for-sale property all into a nice neat package. They bill themselves as "the industry’s first online real estate brokerage," and brings the whole web 2.0 package to MLS listings. And unlike customer-hostile realtors and newspapers who hide MLS listings behind layers of logins, security measures and other barriers to a halfway decent customer experience, Redfin puts the listings themselves right there in front of you, to browse and bookmark and share as you see fit.
A recent listing in their San Francisco Bay Area section shows a small, attractive, and – as usual – ridiculously overpriced bungalow in one of my favorite Berkeley neighborhoods. Unlike other real estate tools, though, Redfin is much more upfront and honest about pricing, forgoing hype for honesty; they point out that $602 per square foot is just short of criminal, and present alternatives like this more expensive overall but only $396 per square foot home with a beautiful view just up the hill.
foreclosures mounting in Detroit, Michigan
our friend David forwards us this sad news about the possible upcoming loss of many fine bungalows in Detroit:
There is a current meltdown of foreclosures in Detroit, Michigan. Some bungalows are selling for $20,000 or less; here is the auctioneers website.
I’m afraid at these bargain-basement prices and the exodus of renters who can’t find jobs, many out-of-state buyers might chose to tear down the houses and sell the salvaged materials. Or whole neighborhoods could be bought cheap and torn down for future development.
Architectural Salvage V: Turning Trash Into Treasure
From Kaleena Cote at Yankee magazine comes this article on everyone's favorite weekend pastime, bargain-hunting at architectural salvage yards:
Home salvage yards are like garage sales. Once you find that hidden treasure, the whole trip becomes worthwhile. For more than two decades, homeowners have searched for treasure at Vermont Salvage, an architectural Warehouse For Lease that has stores in White River Junction, Vermont, and Manchester, New Hampshire. Doors, windows, appliances – items that have outlived the houses and buildings they used to grace – fill each warehouse, much of it tagged with bargain prices.
Bargains are what I’m after on a damp and dreary February afternoon as I drive up to the half-brick, half-concrete Vermont
Salvage store in Manchester. Old toilets, tubs, and trash lie out in the yard, as well as a few abandoned vehicles and an old rusting trailer, while a few red spray-painted squiggles splatter the sides of the building. The place looks as if it needs to be salvaged itself.But inside, it’s easy to see why people enjoy searching through the rows of different colored doors, walking past the pastel pink and yellow toilets, and toying with the little trinkets ranging from outlet faces to small brass hooks for hanging clothes. The place has character, and the employees there are eager to please. They're not the in-your-face “buy this now” types of salesmen; they let the customers browse freely. At the same time, they're willing to help and offer suggestions. Just ask.
Read the full article and see pictures at Yankee magazine’s site. They’ve also compiled a good list of New England salvage firms and shops, which follows the article.