Monday, July 28, 2008

Arriving at The Blank Canvas

Unlike the owners of some older homes, we are not faced with the issue of fidelity to any previous interior design schemes. Our front hall, for example, was "decorated" with thick seafoam green wall-to-wall carpet (bearing numerous stains of suspicious origin), and refrigerator white, texture-coated walls. At some point the door between the hall and the next room (the dining room, to be used as our library) had been removed, perhaps in the interest of creating a more modern "open floor plan."

Fortunately, the missing door was located in the basement, and had not been cut down to accommodate the inches added to the floor by the plush carpet. Less fortunately, a past-handyman had attacked the door with a disc sander, in an effort to remove the old, darkened finish. I imagine we should feel grateful that Mr. Past-Handyman quickly abandoned his efforts, probably because the heat-softened shellac gummed up his sanding disc and hopefully burned out his power tool. 

A single-leaf pocket door between the hall and front parlor was immobilized, having been walled in by the removal of its floor track during the carpet installation. A good friend of ours with welding skills was able to replicate the missing pocket door track.

The previous occupants of the house owned pets, and were smokers. I have allergies to both. So... that carpet had to go, and fast! When the carpet was removed, we found that the floor was softwood, probably pine, and that it had been damaged very near the front doors by a previous termite infestation. Never painted, this soft pine was the 19th century version of a modern sub-floor, and had always been covered, either by carpet or sheet goods (linoleum or oilcloth.
On the second floor, the boards were painted a particular shade of butterscotch brown, which must have been the industry standard, for we have seen floors painted the same color in Victorian houses from New Jersey to California. The staircase balustrade and newel had been stripped and refinished in modern varnish, the color too light and a jarring contrast with the shellacked trim and doors.

Texture coat had been applied to the walls (and some ceilings) on the first floor to hide cracks and other damage to the plaster. Removal of the texture coat from both walls and ceilings yielded but a single hint of any previous decoration: a thick black line, as if from a grease pencil, on the walls about 18 inches down from the ceiling, perhaps to indicate where a wallpaper frieze and fill once met.

Time and taste had also wreaked havoc on our front doors. Mid-20th century hardware had replaced all the original, save the cast iron hinges. An especially nice streamlined deadbolt lock, which could have been the invention of Henry Dreyfuss is a great period piece worthy of display... in MOMA, but not on these doors. Cheap slide bolts that shouted "I'm brass plated" and rattled every time the door was opened or closed were a constant reminder that these doors needed attention in the worst way. 

The cherry on the top of this sad presentation was the imitation stained glass. A nod to actual stained glass, this noble attempt at providing color and privacy possessed all the charm of refrigerator art. All that was missing was a signature in pre-adolescent scrawl, followed by 'age 9'. Only a parent or the artist themself could stand back and admire this artistic genius. A razor blade quickly swept away the illusion. The product of what must have been hours of intense labor had vanished and clear pure light once again shone through our entryway doors.

Monday, July 21, 2008

It is literally the first step that counts

In the 19th century, great symbolic importance was placed not only on the functions ascribed the different rooms of the house, but also on the manner in which the rooms were decorated. Harriet Prescott Spofford emphasized that the appearance of the entrance hall would be seen as both reflection of the house's decor as a whole, and (perhaps more importantly) as a reflection of the character and hospitality of the home's owner:
"Too much thought and attention, indeed, cannot be given to this first step within the portals of the house. It is literally the first step that counts. The empty and careless hall, with its hap-hazard carpet, its chance table and chair, or its common rack and stand and its bare wall, cannot but chill the owner, every time he enters, with its unhomelike aspect; cannot but tell the stranger that guests are few and not expected - perhaps not too welcome; while the comfortable one where thought and time have been spent, if not a mint of money, stamps the house with the seal of some trained taste, refinement, and intelligence, and with a sense of warmth, of comfort, and of cordial hospitality, which latter, if some think to be a matter choice others, in the love of their fellow man, like the Arab, hold to be a duty." (Art Decoration Applied to Furniture, 1878)
While a typical representation of the domestic entry-hall in the popular press or plan-book might have been that of a capacious room (with fireplace, inglenook, elaborate multi-landing staircase and floorspace enough to accomodate hall seats, a hall table, hall tree, coat rack, card receiver, stick-stand, statuary and a potted palm), it was also acknowledged by the decorating advice writers that those illustrations were anything but typical in practice. In 1882, Maria Oakey Dewing wrote in Beauty in the Household:
"There is nothing more gloomy than a little, dark passage-way of a hall. For one large hall there are a thousand small ones..."
Our entrance hall is narrow and long, extending fully one room deep and with half of the the double front doors opening directly onto the staircase. Reflective of the "in-town" and compact design of the house, our side hall would be equally appropriate in a more urban setting - indeed, with just a single window at the top of the stairs, the effect of the outside wall, nearly devoid of openings, echoes the party walls found in row houses or a British town house:
"The general arrangement consists, as a rule, of a narrow entrance-hall, widened out to make room for the staircase which stares you in the face as you enter.... lighted from back or front." (Robert Edis, Decoration of Furniture and Town Houses, 1881)
Writing in her book How to Furnish a Home (1881), Ella Rodman Church wrote (rather unoptimistically):
"The question is what to do with the hall as it ordinarily exists. With a hall like that found in many moderate sized city houses - where the long flight of narrow stairs seems to have started on a run from the upper story and just to have stopped short of rushing out the front door - long and narrow, all the width being needed for the parlors, very little can be accomplished in the way of beauty. There is only to cover floor and walls to the best advantage, and put as little on them as possible."
Oh dear! What hope can there be for a long, narrow and all-too-ordinary hall, such as ours?

Image: "Entrance Hall of a Modern New York House" (from The Art Amateur, December 1889)