Washashore

The Joys of the Architecturally Insignificant Home

Driving Route 6A, the road that runs past my front door, is like taking a Disneyworld ride through American residential-architecture history. Instead of animatronic presidents, 6A presents salt boxes, classic Capes in their half, three-quarter and full versions, Georgian and Federal style manses and Greek revival farm homes. Many of these long-lived wonders have been restored to their original appearance with textbook accuracy. You can stop at just about any point along this winding road and find a house with historic past worthy of conversation.

Unless, of course, you stop in front of my house.

Now, if you're working on some kind of obscure doctoral thesis on classic 1960s Cape design, you might find a wealth of worthwhile information within my four walls. The use of knotty pine in just about any vertical application, say, or the evolution of speckles in vinyl tile flooring - 1965 through 1967. Otherwise, the 1,300-sq.-ft. structure that I call home is just another shingled Cape. It would fit comfortably in many aging suburban developments throughout the Northeast, but, instead, it's been plopped down in the middle of the country's longest continuous registered historic district. It's simply new-old in a land of old-old.

After just a couple months of living in it, though, I find I'm falling in love with this undistinguished - and indistinguishable – house, despite its lack of pedigree. Life within its un-historic confines is proving to be surprisingly freeing. My neighbors have windows made from 200-year-old hand-blown glass and chimneys wide as redwoods, but I feel no sense of envy toward these historically significant Joneses. I drive past centuries of style with every supermarket run, and return to my 1960s Cape on its concrete-block foundation, knowing that if a pipe bursts or an electrical outlet shorts out, I won't need an architectural-history degree to make things right again.

My last two homes in Chicago each had their own unique historical aspects, each an example of a classic style unique to that city's storied design past. My spacious condo in a circa 1904, six-unit apartment building, had a gracious, airy floor plan made for entertaining, with a split-parlor living room, beamed-ceilinged dining room and original windows throughout. My most recent home, in the city's famed Bungalow Belt, was one of about 80,000 brick houses built between the early 1910s and the late 1920s, in a collar around the city's outer borders. It had two layers of crown molding, 9-ft. ceilings and built-in, glass-door-fronted bookcases on either side of the ornamental fireplace. Both of these places had acres of full-grained oak trim, still with the original finish.

Have you ever tried decorating with that much oak? There are, perhaps, three colors that go well with it, and I used variations of these dark, earthy, depressing hues over and over and over again. I could have simply painted the trim white to accompany a brighter palette, but covering original trim in Chicago is a violation akin to doubting the Cubs will, in fact, go all the way next year. And 100-year-old windows are only beautiful until you have to live with them through a Chicago winter. I could have parasailed down the hallway in my old condo, with the wind that passed through the ill-fitting sashes.

I went into each of these purchases understanding the possible shortcomings, but I had lived in older structures my entire life, and couldn't imagine calling new construction, "home." I saw these properties as valuable, yet ignored, resources in a time when society's quest for newness was forcing our consumption of ever-larger portions of the world's limited resources. Just as importantly, I think I felt a need to surround myself with history others had created, as I worked out what, exactly, my own legacy might be.

So I stripped wallpaper, pulled out rotting sculptured-pile carpet and sought out period-looking plumbing. I collected a forest-worth of paint chips and spent hours simply sitting on the floor, staring at the samples I'd taped to the walls. In time, as I got to know the history-rich quirks that defined these two residences, they each became a home I lived in, loved and, eventually, left.

The two-lane highway I now call home serves as the picture-postcard image of Olde Cape Cod, and local historic commissions make sure it stays that way. As a result, I still have to contend with history in my 1965 Cape – changing the color of my front door, for example, could require an appearance in front of the historic commission, to argue my case for, perhaps, "autumn harvest" red over the current forest green. But within my new home's walls, I work with a clean slate. And this little house that needs work just about everywhere I turn is giving me a chance to revel in its potential.

Windows leak like sieves? Get new airtight double-panes! Think the fireplace mantle is just too wimpy? Chuck it! And what about that cheap, varnished-pine clamshell molding surrounding every door and window? I'm now buying Benjamin Moore Decorator's White by the contractor-size bucket to cover it all up. After years of having to consider architectural significance, I now have the chance to create my own, instead. It seems that, in this land of 300-year-old salt boxes, I have found new possibilities, and a home that belongs, not to history, but to me, alone.

Grave Yards but not Grave Thoughts

Cemeteries have always fascinated me, as far back as I can remember, the older, the better. There were at least two very old cemeteries in Duxbury, the small town about 30 miles south of Boston where I spent first, second and part of third grade. One of them, where my mother also is buried, is the final resting spot of Myles Standish. Stepping into one of these old, old grave yards is like stepping out of time for me, especially when it is filled with the ancient and worn slate stones, with their archaic script and fire-and-brimstone imagery.

One of my favorite places in Chicago has long been Graceland Cemetery (opened about 100 years before Elvis moved into his Memphis mansion). This grave yard is more like a well-groomed public sculpture park than a gloomy slasher-movie setting. It's surrounded by several very busy streets and an elevated train track, but step through its wrought-iron gates and you might feel yourself transported into the gardens of some wealthy steel magnate. This is all the more appropriate since some of Chicago's wealthiest former residents now call this address home. The grandest memorial, set waterside along the banks of a small manmade pond, is the open Greek Temple built for Potter Palmer, founder of the Palmer House Hotel, and his beloved wife Bertha (her family, the Honores now rest right across the small street fronting the Palmer temple). Wander the narrow paved roads of Graceland, and you'll also come across memorials for many of Chicago's most important architects, including Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Daniel Burnham, John Root and Louis Sullivan - whose Getty tomb, also in Graceland, is considered one of the pre-eminent examples of the first Chicago School of Architecture's design principles.

Of course, Cape Cod is filled with any number of smaller, old-fashioned graveyards (the prefered term, instead of "cemetery," here, I've been told). Some like the amazing Old Burial Ground, in back of the First Parish Unitarian Church in Brewster, are in the center of town or behind prominent churches. Others, like the Pine Grove cemetery, set in the woods off a community of mostly summer residences, are scattered and isolated, set up on hills or nearly forgotten in wooded groves. These remind me of the old grave yard in Thornton Wilder's fictional Grover's Corners, where once-active members of a tightly knit community now lie forgotten.

I think the thing that draws me into these spaces, more than the beauty of a well-carved stone, is the preternatural silence that seems to embrace them, no matter how urban the surrounding area may be, and the notion that each marker holds the story of a life within it. Crack that stone open and you could learn of the shores Capt. John Nickerson saw in his seventy and seven years - of the treasures he brought back to his wife, and the storms through which he led his ships. Break another, and you would learn who wept as little John Simpkins, aged 2 years and 1 month, was laid into the earth - what prayers his mother whispered - and what flowers or small mementos lay with him - as the first shovelful of dirt fell upon his coffin? Sit and simply listen in one of these ancient and sacred places, and that ever-present quiet can seem to give way to a cacaphony of voices, each saying, "I lived, sit here and I will tell you how."

Sometimes ignoring the problem is the best solution

As I've been learning since my move to the Cape two months ago, this region has its share of issues. The term "affordable housing" is an oxymoron here, rabies has invaded from the mainland and a tiny little creature may be munching its way through our salt marshes. In addition, scientists have recently discovered that the hot air released in the increasingly vociferous wind-farm debates is, itself, a greenhouse gas, which is now threatening to advance global-warming problems at a highly accelerated pace.

So, to help myself get back in touch with why I actually moved here, I took an afternoon's sabbatical during yesterday's idyllic sunshine, dragged my bike out of the garage, filled up the tires and headed out on the Cape Cod Rail Trail. I've got to say, despite all the travails facing this extended spit, when the Cape gets something right, it really gets it right. I wandered through woods and alongside a salt marsh, riding as easily as if on a (occasionally potholed) city street. What an amazing resource - and I only made it as far as Orleans Center. I'm already looking forward to a trek out to Wellfleet.

On the way back, I checked out another jewel I'd previously overlooked - Nickerson State Park. O.k., now Massachusetts might really suck at health insurance, but it sure runs a mean state park. What a great place. The bike trails are wonderfully maintained (and seemingly most of the park is back in shape after last winter's storm), and there are several really pretty little kettle ponds that had me itching for a kayak. (Please don't sic the rangers on me for admitting this, but I even took a quick skinny dip in one and said hello to some extremely friendly fish.)

I made it back to my house exhausted and smiling. I suppose athletes would call what I felt an endorphine high, but, to me, what I felt was like a joyful reunion with a long-absent friend. I just wanted to stop strangers on 6A to say, "do you know, this place where we live is really amazing!"

So the next time the Cape Cod Times headlines have you imagining wind-turbine blades as politician-whacking samurai swords, and rabies fears have you locking your animals into air-tight containers for the night, head for a bike trail or beach or still-existent salt marsh. Walk through a wooded grove or spot some birds worth spotting. The problems here on the Cape aren't all that different from the issues facing others throughout the state, across the country and around the globe. But the places we have to get away from those problems are truly unique.

The Joys of Waterfront Property

Last fall, as I began my hunt for a house I could actually afford on Cape Cod, I had a little fantasy of stumbling across some down-on-its-luck, shingled matron of a home, on a bluff overlooking the bay. Of course, once I started getting serious, that fantasy was put away - even the poorest excuse for shelter in such a location was three times more than I'll likely earn in my lifetime. Beyond that, taxes and insurance would have been astronomical, and then there was the danger that the whole bloody thing could be swept out to sea in a storm. So now I live along the historic Old Kings Highway, about a mile's walk to a nearby town landing. A lovely setting, but water views are not part of my everyday life.

This changed, however, for an all-too-brief period during this past weekend's epic rainy spell, when I was able to live my dream of waterfront living. Arriving home Sunday night from a quick weekend jaunt to visit friends in Chicago, I pulled into my driveway to find that the mighty Considine (the drainage ditch that cuts midway through my lot) had overflowed its banks and filled most of my backyard with up to six inches of water. My pair of faux adirondack chairs were sitting on a barely-above-sea-level island, as a bed of nearby irises waved its leaves like marsh grass above high tide.

Apparently that tide was already ebbing from its high-water mark, because a quick trip to the basement showed that the water had actually made it up onto my little parking area and under the garage door. The area of the basement that had been dry after ugly water-heater and washing-machine incidents a couple of weeks ago now rested under about a quarter-inch of water - so did the bottoms of the boxes of books I'd moved over to this previously safe zone. Now I had to relocate those boxes yet again. (The pieces of the shelving unit that might have kept everything high and dry remained unassembled in the corner.) Once these labors were over, however, I decided to make the best of this wet situation - I shook myself up a nice, stiff vodka gimlet, looked out over my drowned backyard and imagined myself lounging on my own beachfront deck.

There I sat, my aging boat shoes propped on the deck railing, martini glass in hand. Wasn't that a sail boat on the horizon? Did I just see a dolphin break through the waves? And is that some trespassing nincompoop walking his poop-producing dog across my private beach?! I may not have had the plaid pants, but I was beginning to get the attitude down. 

By this morning, though, the waters had receded, leaving a couple small ponds behind (sorta like what the glaciers did when they pulled back). Soon, these, too, will have evaporated or percolated down into the sandy soil, and I'll be back to living almost a mile from any notable body of water. For a few short hours, though, waterfront living was mine, and now I know my tide might return with the next torrential rainfall.

Please don't tell the assessor, though - he might just have to raise my taxes.

Ennervating Renovating

Renovating on the Cape can, indeed, be an ennervating experience. One would think, with all the money that gets poured into residential construction on this small spit of land, that the building pros and their suppliers here would have the process down to a science and that the relatively modest redo of two small bathrooms would be a piece of cake. Instead, one gets the feeling that contractors and, especially, retailers feel the need to reinvent the renovating wheel with each new project.

To me, it all comes down to the perceived boundary of the bridges. Boston is a mere 90-minute drive away, and its wealthy, South Shore suburbs are even closer. But Cape homeowners appear to be oblivious to the world of product- and service-providers that exist just across the Bourne and Sagamore bridges - or they're just too lazy to drive the extra half hour to find some decent options. Either way, this insular thinking means residents here, though within easy reach of a major metropolitan area, might just as well be living in a Midwest rural outpost when it comes to market competition.

First off, finding a supplier with a decent, well, supply of plumbing products on the Cape is well-nigh impossible. The local contractor resource of choice (whose geographically oriented name will remain anonymous, at least until my toilets are delivered) appears to be a firm believer in the Henry Ford, any-color-so-long-as-it's-black, school of customer choice. Even their big-city Hyannis showroom displays a grand total of what seems like 3 toilets, two pedestal sinks and a couple of vanities. And if you want to know what any of these products cost, you'll have to sign in and speak with a representative - keeping price tags up to date on this comprehensive inventory is, apparently, beyond the abilities of even this "Complete" retailer.

Home Depot in Hyannis is a bit more forthcoming about price, but, again, inventory leaves a bit to be desired, and when you're trying to find a sink to fit a 20-inch-wide space, selection is crucial. Even specialty plumbing "showrooms" display little more than a few obligatory fixtures alongside the bookshelves of black-and-white catalogs that are supposed to suffice in place of actual, three-dimensional products. It's like stepping back to the time of Sears & Roebuck's old Christmas "Wish Books."

So, I've been spending a lot of time on the Internet - printing up spec sheets for products I've used in the past in an attempt to recreate the success of those projects. I work the phones, make repeated visits to minimally helpful "showrooms," and hope for the best. Of course, I could follow my own advice and seek out suppliers across the canal...

But, then, I'd have to cross the bridge.

Well, here I am

Brewster Bound 

It's been a while since I've written, and in the meantime I've found, purchased and moved to my new home in Brewster, just down the street from the old General Store on the right.

It came together as a kind of example of kismet - my back-up offer actually being accepted after a primary offer fell through - and now this house feels like a home I've lived in for years.

Like all of my previous homes, this one needs work - both baths need gutting, the kitchen could stand a good $10k in floors, cabinets and counters and the huge yard is a huge mess. Of course, these classic Chuck's-house problems only make the place seem more familiar. They enable me to don the metaphorical rose-colored glasses, through which I generally prefer to look at the world, with abandon. I walk through rooms or across the lawn, cup of coffee or glass of wine in hand, and see visions of slate floors, soapstone counters and a fern-banked stream. (O.k., so the stream is really a drainage ditch - but that's why I like my glasses.)

Spring has really settled into these parts. On the Cape, spring appears to be a real season - instead of the three days between 35-degree weather and 80-degree weather one generally gets in Chicago. It lingers and teases a bit. Daffodils are in bloom all over town, the weeping cherry tree that I see through my office window is covered in feathery red blossoms - and traffic is picking up noticeably as snowbirds return from Florida and weekend homeowners visit to prepare their retreats for the summer. Bart and I even splashed ankle-deep through the very cold Atlantic this weekend, walking out on the sand flats that stretch almost a mile during low tide.

So, new season, new beginnings. A cliche, perhaps, if this were fiction. But this is my life, and I'm enjoying the chance to start up a new chapter.

Will it be my dream or my nightmare? Tune in regularly for the answer. 

Chuck Ross, chuck@chuck-ross.com