2011 Eureka Heritage Society Home Tour

Once again the Heritage society put together a wonderful home tour in which some of the CR HPRT club members were available to be docents at several sites. Another notable HPRT activity during this event was the ANNIE B RYAN field school was open to the public as a supplemental home on the tour. It was an amazing turnout as we had over 50 persons sign the guest sign in at the field school. Visitors were greeted by Bill Hole and several club members and were given a tour around our field school and were shown castings, mill work, tools, and photos of the active work and material sciences that the students practice every Saturday in the fall.

We also would like to thank the Eureka Heritage Society for their invitation to the Eureka theater for a little after hours libations!

Arcata Scoop

     Our first meeting of 2011 will be at the Arcata Scoop. "Amazing handmade ice creams, late hours, all-natural ingredients, awesome new flavor combinations...." this is what one customer had to say about it. We aren't meeting at the best organic ice cream shop in northern California for their frozen delicacies, we will be addressing the bay window on the southern side. The window that gets the most sunshine and the harshest weather. 

     Isaac Minor built this house in 1884, along with a twin next door for his two daughters. They were built as mirror images of one another. The original "stoop" of the house was on the right side of the front of the house (as opposed to the center where it is now), and the stoop of the sister house was on the left side of the front of the house.

     Built as a residence, the building has been used for commercial purposes for the past 40+ years, with the front portion usually serving as the retail portion and the back as offices and storage. Mike Wilson first remembers the building being Red Roach Records in the 1970s and early 1980s.  In the mid 1980s it became Moonrise Herbs, and when they moved to the Plaza in 1997  the house served as a venue for massage/alternative medicine consultations. 

     Mike and Laura bought the building in 2004 and renovated the back 2/3rds of the interior as on office. They pulled out temporary walls, a lot of paneling, the drop ceilings, and what was left of the old kitchen counter and plumbing and installed a small kitchenette in what was the old wash room. They stripped the upper walls and ceilings (that which was above the drop ceiling) of layers of wallpaper and pulled thousands of tacks and essentially refinished the lids of both side rooms, including adding the interior windows to get light from the south room into the north. The whole interior was painted and laid with carpet. The large front room was rented out as is, and the tenants made minor improvements. 

     In 2005-6 they renovated the exterior with assistance from the city of Arcata facade grant for $10K. With that, and a bit more from Mike and Laura, they replaced the right front corner section of the foundation, which was essentially a piece of flagstone. Also replaced was all the plank one-by below the water table, portions of the water table, the columns on the side porch, several sections of roof soffit, a bunch of the dentils, and the entire front porch, (except the roof and roof members). Laura Kadlecik's father milled most of the trim package that was needed for the exterior work including the columns for the front porch, the watertable, the dentils, and the flat sawn balusters. The porch railing balusters were (originally when Mike and Laura first had the building) flat but plain, no decoration. 

     "From one of the historic photos of the house we saw the balusters sawn w/ flower cut outs in the yard fence. The house adjacent to our home (built in the late 1880s) had the exact flower cut outs as could be seen in the photograph, so we copied our neighbors flat sawn balusters and used them for the porch railing." recalls Laura.

      Then the exterior was painted.  In 2008 the Arcata Scoop started renovating the large front room, the north room, the restroom, the whole north yard, and installed the new ADA walkway and side porch and door (a sliding glass door, installed backward, was where the side door was up to that time). Mike and Laura installed a new foundation on the north side as part of the Scoops work.

     "There's more we want to/need to do to the house (of course)!  Other then more painting, the roof needs replacement and also I want to put a widows walk on the top, as shown in the photo." says Laura.

     I guess the most interesting factoid about the house is that Houdini apparently slept there.... or so they say.

     Mike and Laura  are "SUPER grateful" for our offer to help repair the bay window sill and trim.  They haven't had the the chance to offer much TLC to the building in the past couple years and that has been weighing on them.

     "I'm so stoked to have you and your club memebers lend some of yours.(TLC)" says Laura.

     They will have a historic report by Alex Stillman & Susie Vankirk to show us as well as some old photos

     

See you Sunday, January 30 at the Arcata Scoop, on I street across from Los Bagels.

Farnsworth House

This fall I got the chance to visit one of America’s most influential modern, historic homes, the Farnsworth House. The Farnsworth house is Located in Plano, Illinois about 60 miles west of Chicago. The structure was design by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a famous Architect of the modern movement and Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. By the time the residence was finished in 1951, Mies Van der Rohe had an incredible stormy relationship with its owner Dr. Edith Farnsworth. It was said that she was cynical about the architect’s brilliance and annoyed by his eccentric, sometimes arrogant ways. The pair was entangled in legal affairs for many years after the completion of the house. Regardless of all this, the site and home itself is inspiring to see. I arvisited on a perfect, warm fall day. Folks in canoes floated by on the near-by Fox River.

The concept of the house was to be as simple as possible. It was for one person and designed for weekends only. It is made primarily of glass, steel, concrete and travertine. The house is sleek and appears to be light as air, when in fact is incredible heavy and pinned to the ground.

The building has been survived several floods and restoration, and was bought in 2003 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Landmarks Illinois. It is visited April through November by thousands of students, architecture lovers and Mies van der Rohe admirers from around the world. You can read more about it in last months Preservation magazine, where they cover sixteen of the trust properties. More can also be seen at the offical website www.farnsworthhouse.org.