The House in My Dreams

I was lucky enough to grow up in the same neighbourhood where my mother grew up, and where my grandmother and several sets of cousins lived. The area was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted,Jr. who took into account the shape of the land when he laid out the streets and pathways. Olmsted and his father are most well-known for the landscape design of Central Park in NYC. The houses in the area are mostly Queen Anne, English Tudor, Georgian and Shingle styles.

While I was at my mother's today, we looked through piles of old photos and I came up with some of the interior and exterior of St. John's, the house where I grew up. I am still looking for the detail shots.

This house is where my mother grew up, and which was recently sold and completely renovated. It had an old carriage house behind it, with room for seven cars. Mostly my mother and her siblings used it to have parties in.

This is the house where we lived when I was young, and where we had the original compost heap and the wonderful grape arbour. It was solid stone and stayed cool in the summers and warm in the winters. The front porch was a great place to sit and read.

We moved to this house when I was about ten. In this image, you can get a better idea of the width of the front porch and the detailing along the wide wall that surrounded it. The porch extended about twelve feet beyond the sides of the house and was about twelve feet deep. The east side of the porch was shady in the mornings, so we ate breakfast out there in good weather. The west side was shady in the afternoons, so that's where cocktail hour took place. It was also a great place for parties.

One Christmas, I made a huge Williamsburg-style decoration for over the door. I remember that we had a few warm days and the pineapple started dripping!

Two of the bathrooms had tiny hexagonal tiles with a Greek key trim around the edges. You can see that the house shifted a bit!We all hated the sinks in this house because they didn't have modern mixing taps. It was impossible to wash your hand without freezing or burning them, or filling the sink. It looks like there's a center tap, but it's the drain.The window seat on the landing was a great place to sit and read. The windows were originally like the three at the top, but my parents had them replaced to let in more light and so they could see out to the back. The center window has my mother's family's coat of arms in it. When we moved, we had that window redone and took that special piece and had it framed. I loved the fireplaces in this house. We used them a lot, especially at parties, of which there were many. This has matched granite stones, two carved stone heads and huge mahogany planks for the chimneybreast. Unfortunately, they were painted later on.

This is the library, always a quiet place in the house. There is an oak mantlepiece, again with two carved heads, and a scroll with the words "A clear fire, a clean hearth and the rigour of the game", a quote from Charles Lamb from Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist. This was also removed from the house.

This is the view looking down into the center hall from the landing. You can see the huge chandelier at the top if the image. Someone's friend was bragging about his kicking prowess and managed to hit the bottom tier of crystals. The living room is off to the right and the dining room to the left. I remember rolling back the rugs and everyone learning to shag!

The dining room was such a great room. We ate dinner there nearly every night. The bottom two-thirds of the walls were paneled with a plate-rail along the top. The paper was handprinted in China and the curtains matched it. There was another huge chandelier above the table. There were pocket doors that sometimes closed and weighed a TON! This and the other snowy picture above were from the blizzard in 1996. This is the lower section of our back yard, and you can see the door of the sunroom, which was filled with plants. The picture below is from the opposite angle, probably four or five months later. You can see the garage in the top left and the path leading to the sunroom at the bottom right.

Seeing all of these pictures just makes me realize even more how lucky I was to have been able to live in such an incredible house. As you see, it's truly a special place. Thank you for letting me share it with you.