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Historic Districts

I had to bring the truck over the hill to Bruce earlier this week. He had gotten a door from a fellow on Craigslist, but had driven his car to work not knowing that this guy would contact him so quickly and he'd have to pick it up that day. We decided to make a date of it. Those are few and far between in our world, so it was Carpe Diem 🙂 I pulled into town around 4, went to an antique store I rarely stop at because it is so wretched trying to find a parking place there, spent about an hour looking around, found a bazillion cool things, but didn't spend a dime (so proud of myself). Picked Bruce up (and the door) around 5, and did some fine dining at Burger King. Then we drove over to the Historic District, parked the truck, and started hiking. Bruce just got a new snazzy phone from work, so we decided to take a few pics while we were hoofing it. This is just a tiny sampling of the beautiful historic homes there.

 

2 shots of the same house, to show the pretty windows.

I felt weird getting too close to take the pictures. Wish you could see the detail of the way they painted these porch posts.

The porch, a couple of the brick walls and their windows on this house are all curved. That includes the glass in the windows. I bet they pray no kids with baseballs get near their house, that curved glass can't be easy to replace!

I love the fretwork on these old homes. It is very detailed.

I am about 97% sure that this house above was in an issue of This Old House magazine several years ago. It was a very interesting article about the near total renovation of this home while they lived in a teeny apartment above the garage on the property.

There are a few brightly colored homes, like the one above, but it seems for the most part in the district, the colors are pretty demure, or the homes are brick.

 

 

This house has a very large and pretty side lot that they have meticulously landscaped.

Here is a closer shot of the front of that house.

 

This plaque stands in the front yard of the home shown in the 2 pictures above this one. There is a lot of history intertwined in this home, the people who resided there, and the extended family.

See the picture window next to the porch on this home? There is a beautiful stained glass window at the top if you look. I felt pretty brazen taking a picture of this in broad daylight so I had decided to skip it, and Bruce just grabbed the phone/camera from me and took it! Nobody came out of the house and chased us with a broom or anything!

 

This tour only encompassed about a 6 or 8 block radius. There are many, many more homes in this area that are just amazing.

After looking at the above pictures, I decided it was only fair to share the Historic District where I live, so I took my iPad out for a drive a few days later (Glee came with and helped 🙂 )

Our little town has but one street where the affluent built big, fancy homes around the turn of the century. That was when the railroad really took off and the town started to grow exponentially. Here are a few of the finest –

This is called the Talcott Mansion. You should see this house decorated at Christmastime – gorgeous!

Presently, this house is on the market, listed for $449,500.00, which makes folks around here's eyes bug out. It is very pretty inside, but that's a lot of moolah for an in town house for sure! At least in this town.

A former B&B, this house now has new owners and is a private residence. It used to be the kind of house kids were scared of and was the subject of imaginative, gruesome, made up stories. It was completely covered in some kind of clinging vine type plant, neglected, and just downright scary! When the very old fellow that lived there passed away, a young couple bought it, and really polished it up. I went thru it several years ago during a B&B tour the Soroptomists or somebody had, and it is a beautiful, grand old home.

This is the old Catholic Convent. It has been a private residence for a long time. A girl I went to grade school with lived here and I was invited to her birthday party one year. They had 5 kids in their family. Even tho they did a lot of updating in the house, they left the bathroom the same way as when the nuns lived there, with multiple toilets in stalls, like a big Walmart bathroom! Being a kid, I thought that was a pretty neat set-up! I don't know if they kept it that way or not after all their kids moved out.

I used to babysit in this house a lot. Even as a kid I could really appreciate the beauty of this home. It had a ton of architectural detail inside: wide oak woodwork that had never been painted, a warming fireplace in the entryway, huge pocket doors between the formal dining room and parlor, the original wallpaper that had been hung when the house was built and it was still pristine, phenomenal light fixtures with blown glass globes that if ever broken I don't know how one would replace them. It was truly awesome. That family doesn't live there anymore. I hope the people that live there now kept the integrity of the home intact.

This home had fallen in terrible disrepair, and some lady moved here several years ago, bought it in it's sorry condition, and restored it to it's former glory. That makes me so happy to see an old house restored and loved again.

I hope someone does that with this old place. It was the first hospital in this town and has been a lot of different things over the years. It is currently on the market for $175,000.00. It is huge, right next to downtown, and will take globs of money to fix up.

Some people are willing to take on that kind of monumental task, tho. A few years ago someone bought this old school here in town that had been boarded up for decades. They have steadily been making improvements and it is looking pretty impressive compared to what they purchased. It is somewhat of a mystery as to what it is going to eventually be – I don't know anybody that has the story, which is odd, cuz folks in this little town like to speculate 🙂

This is turning into a mighty long post, so I'll shut it down for now. I'll do a post someday of the pretty churches we have around here, and also the train depot is pretty worthwhile to look at – they had some really skilled craftsmen and builders back in the day.

TTFN,

Teresa

 

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