This lovely old Victorian Painted Lady is slated for destruction here in town to make room for a new Dollar General store! Now granted I like the idea of the Dollar General being closer to me in a more convenient location (right now it is on the edge of town and a real pain in the ass to get in and out of) but I hate the idea of this fantastic house having to bite the dust!
This is a glorious old house that I don't understand why has sat empty for years. I attended an auction there about three years ago and got to tour her. She was beautifully preserved inside with a great fancy wrap-around staircase,gorgeous woodwook,wainscoting,fireplaces,etc.
The outside had been badly remodeled (or rather remuddled!) with horrible wide aluminum siding that was poorly installed. And all the fretwork was removed from the porches. I can remember this house when I was a kid (back in the stone age) and she was a very fanciful house, with the narrow clapboard siding, fishscales in the gables and gingerbread everywhere!
Painted up properly she would have been a great example of a Painted Lady. Someone tried to give her the look by painting that horrid aluminum siding in shades of purple. But the effect was like painting an old lady up like a whore.
I guess no one wanted her, she has been sold four times in the last three years and no one ever moved in! Something must have been horribly wrong with her. She had been wired for electricity, had central air and a fairly new heating system.
The location totally sucked, almost no yard space and on a busy street but there are other old homes in this town with similar spaces and people have restored them.
If I had the money I would have bought here and moved her to a more suitable locale.
Thankfully the current owner was smart enough to save as much of the good stuff as possible. She contracted a salvage company to remove the windows,woodwook,fireplaces,the stairs and anything else that could be reused to help restore someone else's beloved old house.
So many times when someone decides to tear down an old house they don't bother to save anything and some great stuff is forever lost.
The little green frame house next door meets an untimely death too, but it needed alot of work.
No comments:
Post a Comment