April 9, 2019
Old Architecture – My Favorite Design
I’ve moved around a lot. My favorite house, architecturally, was this lovely old place in Holly Hill, South Carolina that was built in 1904 or 06. It was amazing.
It was bright without ever turning a light on, even in the hallways. It was two-story with an attic that had three hidden rooms in it! It had three fireplaces, but the one in the kitchen had been closed off. The upstairs had a landing that opened to four bedrooms and two bathrooms with a linen closet on the north end. The bedrooms and bathrooms interconnected! You could enter the bedroom on the far southeast end of the landing, that connected to upstairs bathroom number one, which then entered the northeast bedroom, which had a large walk-in closet that had a sliding door into the huge walk-in closet for the northwest bedroom, of course then you are in the northwest bedroom which connects to the second bathroom, and finally enter the southwest bedroom. In addition to a door into the landing, this bedroom had a sliding door to a very hot upstairs sunroom full of screened windows that could be opened. Daddy used it as a craft room but said it was supposed to be an upstairs conservatory for growing plants. One such conservatory was also downstairs, but it was about three times as large as the one upstairs.
Downstairs had a large room that we turned into the family room. There was also a huge, long room that Daddy said was supposed to be for entertaining and opened to the outside portico with a huge, heavy, beautifully carved wooden door. There were also two dining rooms! One was giant and long like the front “entertaining” room. The three big rooms wrapped the front of the house, connected to each other with double French glass doors. The entertaining room opened to the hallway at the base of the wide staircase with beautifully carved handrails and supports with the same double French doors. Daddy said that was for “grand entrances” like for sixteenth birthdays and weddings. The huge dining room connected to the smaller dining room with a heavy carved-wooden swinging door on double hinges that we loved going through because each way was the “right way” to open it. The smaller dining room was my favorite; it was a long built-in bench around a sturdy oak built-in table that angled along the back wall and around the bright window that jutted out from the house. It was warm in the morning and brilliant all day. Unless you ate after dark, you never needed a light. Every room was brilliant with natural light that bounced off of the 12 foot high white ceilings and soaked into the warm wooden floors and trim.
Daddy said the house was made for entertaining. His childhood house in Savannah, Georgia, was supposedly almost the same as this house, minus the three 6 by 10 rooms in the attic (I considered them “small” in relation to everything else in that house although that is the size of the girls’ barracks now!). Daddy said those were servant’s quarters, and just like the interconnecting rooms and tiny, steep, circular back staircase; they were meant to keep the servants out of sight of everyone else. Oh, yes, one of the walk-in closets had a sliding door that led into the linen closet which was large enough to have the access ladder into one of the attic rooms. The main attic access was this giant pull-down folding staircase. It literally started about two feet from the top of the stairs in the upstairs landing and was a full, sturdy, staircase. Daddy said this was because the original occupants probably had heavy furniture to be moved up and down depending on the season. There was a giant fan in the attic that sucked all the air through the house – you had to open the three outside doors and could have flown a box-kite in the wind it created! This was likely to be used in the summer to get the warm air out before air conditioning was added, but Daddy used it in the winter to freeze the entire house. (He liked the air cold.)
The remaining rooms downstairs included the conservatory off of the huge entertaining room. This was Daddy’s favorite room because he and Mom filled it with plants and our birds. It was Robert’s (a parrot) favorite room too – probably his favorite room from all of our houses. It was about 30 feet long and at least 10 feet wide, more than half the size of the house I live in now! There was also a small “study” with a half bathroom under the stairs. (It had an angled room and we kids would run downstairs just to use this “cool” bathroom’s potty instead of the two upstairs!) Daddy turned the study into one Computer Room. This study was the entrance into the grand master bedroom. This bedroom was sprawling! It had deep, lush carpet and spread 15 by 30 feet! Daddy measured all of the big rooms out of curiosity, and I was just entering my “designing” phase so I measured everything and drew “plans” of that house. This bedroom had double walk-in closets that reminded me of the ones in Princess Mia’s bedroom – the “lady’s” closet had built-in shoe racks for nearly a hundred shoes (Mom’s five or six pairs looked so lonely there), long dress racks, a fold-out ironing board, three tiered racks for shorts, tops, and skirts, cubicles for jeans and such, and dresser-drawers for underwear! Mom used over half of her closet for box storage (there was plenty of partitioned storage space on top of the racks, Daddy said it was for luggage and trunks). The “gentlemen’s” closet was a modest 5 by 10 feet, but still that was huge to me! There was a giant bathroom adjoining. It had double sinks, double cabinets, a shower stall, and a bathtub that looked like a small pool! (We kids used it as a pool!)
And finally, the most important room in the whole house: the kitchen. This kitchen was the first I’d even seen with an island. The sinks were deep and wide. The whole turkey roasting pan fit in one side. But my favorite part was the custom cabinets – they unfolded like an accordion with perfect storage space for quart mason jars (which left regular pound veggie cans with a little breathing room). The kitchen opened into the small dining room so the spectators would join in conversation with the kitchen workers or watch the show.
It was built of sturdy concrete and red brick with real wood everywhere. I used this house as a base for my dream house because it taught me three important designs I loved;
- There is never an excess of light and distributing it throughout a house can be aided by windows, glass interior doors, dutch doors, and bright paint.
- Having multiple stories rather than one increases the available light and allows for extra living space with less wasted yard. (A three story building is awesome.)
- Sturdy, heavy-duty materials are better at keeping weather out (We went through three hurricanes and three or four tropical storms while we were in that house!) and loud sounds out. (This house was on a busy county road yet we rarely heard the 18-wheelers going by.)
One day, I hope to have a similar home either to restore or build – I hoped I’d be able to raise my children in a smaller house designed bright, open, and interconnected like my favorite house, but I have enjoyed everywhere we’ve called home.
Think back to your favorite architecture, was it a childhood home? The home you are in now? A place you visited? Isn’t it neat to think about?
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart
