“The ‘Old Tudor House’, Warwick” by Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, UofT is licensed under CC BY 2.0
I have always dreamed of big, old houses. Not the newer huge suburban cookie-cutter houses or the ostentatious McMansions that inconsiderately replace perfectly livable modest single-story dwellings in low-profile neighborhoods. Mid-century ranchers? I have lived in a few. California box-style apartments with avocado green carpet? Ditto. I have even lived in a 1960s-throwback trailer park.
My fantasies have always been about Victorian, Tudor, Colonial Revival, and Craftsman multi-roomed homes with gingerbread, scrollwork, leaded glass, and similar charming touches that speak of artisanry and mystery.
I came close once, arguably twice, to living my vision. My great-grandparents’ farmhouse in a tiny town in Eastern Montana has an upstairs, an enclosed porch, and wavy-glass windows, but no artistry to be found anywhere. I live there now. I have great affection for the place. The frame exterior is pleasingly attractive and the house functions effectively enough for one low-maintenance person. But while I have looked deeply and listened carefully for even one hint of a long-lost secret, I have found none.
The core of the house was built when the family migrated from Minnesota during the Homestead Act boom. It was a rudimentary shelter from the elements on the plains, later moved into town and expanded for mixed generations. Drafty, with questionable seams and a shifting wood-beam foundation, it has withstood for over 100 years the harsh Montana winds, summer storms, and winter ice and snow. It suits me well enough, its weaknesses only bothersome when visitors arrive, or stay — a small makeshift bathroom on the back porch, one sink for the entire house in the kitchen, one tiny closet on the second floor, and no room for typical travel appurtenances like luggage, laptop computers, or coats.
The most interesting feature is a scrolled ironwork grate set in the floor upstairs. As a child, my brother, and occasionally my tribe of cousins, enjoyed surreptitiously — or so we thought — watching grownups in the living room below. My grandkids are still quite tickled with this today.
That’s the second-closest I’ve come to my dream house. The first was an apartment in the once sleepy beachtown of Santa Monica, California. It was a few blocks from downtown, in a Victorian frame home divided down the middle. The tenants next door had the stairs, with a lower and upper floor. For a while, those tenants were a couple, and then there was just one, a man who told me not to worry about playing loud music and to let him know by beating on our shared wall if a guy ever started giving me any trouble.
We also shared a ceiling/floor. His foot punched right through it over my head one afternoon, unnerving me to put it mildly. Thankfully, it wasn’t the middle of the night, when the shadows in that place routinely overfed my imagination.
My place was ground-floor only, with high ceilings. There was a bay window in the front room, an outlawed unvented gas heater, a large bedroom, a large kitchen with back and side doors and a California wire cooler pantry, and a rickety bathroom with ancient plumbing including a clawfoot tub and a sink with separate hot and cold faucets. From the back porch off the kitchen I could climb on the roof and see summer fireworks from the beach seven blocks west, or — as I frequently did whenever a love affair was on the rocks — I could sit and talk to the moon. I loved that place. For years after I moved, I dreamt about it, and it still evokes a nostalgic mix of eros and noir. I can’t say I was ever truly happy there, because I lived there during a period of self-imposed artistic melancholy. Given my state of mind then, the house held the ever-elusive promise of mysteries half-remembered. It inspired me in ways both good and unhealthy. Behind the original house where I lived was a smaller 1940s-style bungalow and a defunct hamburger stand converted into a studio apartment. The backyard paths were decorated with shiny found objects — Christmas baubles, gnomes, plastic flowers, and such — by the quirky and most wonderful landlady, Ruby. The buildings and Ruby are sadly gone now, replaced by a glass and steel condo complex that towers over the street. I adored her. I might never have left until forced out by the wrecking ball, but when my relationship with my future husband became serious, we needed larger quarters.
Earlier this year, I visited a new museum of local history nearby, just before the pandemic hit. I hardly recognized the street itself. All but one of the old homes had been razed to give way to new, nondescript development. When an old historic building is demolished, the cumulative stories of the occupants and the structures are reduced to rubble. It breaks my heart. I literally feel deep sorrow and pain, doubly so when it’s a place where I have personal history.
Seeing my old neighborhood gone without even a nod to the intricacies of past memories hurt like hell. I personally see buildings and homes as an extension and reflection of the people who built and inhabited them.
Rarely do money-motivated developers think twice about the histories they expunge. When a building is gone, its memories and mysteries silently transition into the forgotten past unless some clues are memorialized for posterity.
I have a few photos of the front of the house, but none that I know of showing the interior or the back porch. I lived there before the ubiquitous advent of smartphone cameras, so the images are in my head. They are admittedly wrapped in the romanticized gauze of fallible memory, which may please the storyteller, but not the historian, in me.
When all was said and done, though, the Santa Monica Victorian was not mine of course. And it was a modest two-story middle-class dwelling, rather than the large, rambling, ornate multi-room configuration with endless doors, stairs, windows, and secrets I dreamt of. I have always craved secrets. And mystery. And, above all, magic. Like a child believing in impossible other worlds, I have always wanted to peer beyond the wall of present time into the realm of past memories both real and imagined. The houses of my dreams are the settings that inspire me. Clean white walls not so much.
Which brings me to my current temporary place in Coeur d’Alene, in the northern neck of Idaho.
I’m looking around this mid-century building with its flat brick and wood façade. My apartment is light and bright, punctuated on the south side by two large windows overlooking a wrought iron balustrade.
These newly painted interior, walls, and ceilings are relentlessly white, clean, and empty. This is an experiment, an adventure in trying on different surroundings, like trying on a new-to-me different pair of previously worn shoes.
The kitchen has a short strip of scalloped trim above the sink. Besides that, there are no curves, archways, whimsical touches. No happy incongruities, no unexpected irregularities. This is a clean, plain, quite adequate two-bedroom landing spot. Were I to plan on staying long-term, I could approach it as an empty canvas, but I have vowed to disavow clutter and live simply for a time.
Absent innate charm in architecture or decor, this place is functional and not uncomfortable, a nexus of sparsely furnished symmetrical white rooms. It’s a warm, safe place to work and sleep, out of the cold Idaho rain and snow. I am most grateful for it.
It gets dark here early in the winter. Nightfall always catches me by surprise. I have to remember to set out early if I want an afternoon walk — which I do most days. The neighborhood is labeled “The Garden District” with small plaques on gates and picket fences that surround magnificent old two- and three-story homes on tree-lined streets.
Garden District property owners, none of whom I have ever encountered outdoors, have poured much love and money into restoration. The homes are well-kept and beautiful, even as last year’s plantings are now frozen and brown. I am old enough that owning one of these grand dames (for some reason, I attribute feminine gender to them) myself will most likely never be realized. Ahh — but what if?
I’d like to stay in one more than overnight or a week, more than from the distance of the street. I think about coming back here next fall, after we’ve emerged from the worst of the current pandemic, to find a special upstairs flat with a bay window, vintage appliances that have stood the test of time, and perhaps a woodburning stove or a fireplace — working, or even faux if it’s been preserved with care and respect for original lines.
There’s a Tudor-style brick building I discovered one block over that I walk by daily. Was it once a mansion, boardinghouse, hotel, luxury apartment building?
I haven’t discovered its provenance yet, although I know it was built in 1905, but my research isn’t done. I love its chimneys, courtyard, mullioned leaded glass, double doors. More than any other place potentially within my reach, ever, it holds the promise of magic.
So, I await Serendipity to show me the way to renting a home-away-from-home within the building. If the capricious Miss S. is not forthcoming, I’ll take the initiative. When the time is right. When the stars are aligned accordingly. When work and relationships become clearer. When the Universe sends me a sign, which may be as unambiguous as “For Rent” on a stake, or perhaps just the wisp of a hint from a falling leaf — more magical, more random. I will know it when I see it. Magic, after all, is what I’m after.
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“I choose the rooms I live in with care.” — Leonard Cohen, Tonight Will Be Fine
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