Things have started to settle down. Jill is getting used to her new apartment in Columbia and beginning to like it -- I think. She certainly likes the idea of being ten minutes away from work instead of being on the highway for almost an hour and a half each day. She likes being close to her friends and that opens up some new social opportunities. Her new neighborhood has everything she needs and offers some interesting places to discover. We will have to wait and see how the finances work out but it will certainly be better. Beatrix, her cat, moved up on Christmas day and is not as excited about the move but she is also getting accustomed to the new place.
I have been settling in as well. When we moved Jill up to Columbia I gained more space. I'm having some struggles with what to do with the house to make it mine while still having some semblance of Jill's ownership....she is my landlord, after all, and she wants to be able to recognize her own house. She intends to sell the house in about 18 months so she doesn't want me to do too many drastic changes.
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| Golden Hammer |
From the picture below, you can see that it is a medium sized brick Victorian vernacular house - American Folk Victorian style. It has about 1,400 square feet of space and is 1 1/2 stories with a full basement. The house won the city's "Golden Hammer Award" for the renovation and rehab work that was done by the previous owners. Jill added a new furnace and the wall across the front of the yard (recently installed in this picture).
Before and after...
The house was built sometime around 1905 but we really don't have a solid date of construction. The 1900 census doesn't seem to have house numbers higher than the 900 block on West Main Street. In 1910 there is a house numbered 1125 W. Main St. At that time the resident was Bruns Schreiber and his wife, Millie, and two children. Bruns was a foreman on the railroad. In 1920 the house is listed and the resident is Orbray Goff and his wife, Clara, and two children. Orbray was a car repair man for the steam railroad (trolley car?). The same family lived at this address in 1930 but Orbray was shown as a streetcar mechanic. One lady purchased the home in the 1940s and it stayed in her family until Jill bought it in 2009. She was the cook at the Governor's Mansion for many years and served under several Governors. She kept a small kitchen garden in the back yard that still produces spearmint and wild sweet peas as well as a large and persistent grape vine.
The neighborhood was made up mostly of working class families except for the big homes across the street. Sam Cook, president of Central Bank and Thomas Price, president of a local oil company, lived across the street. The Cook home was demolished (along with another large home) in the last decade to make room for the expansion of Heisinger Bluffs retirement home. The Price home exists as part of Heisinger Bluffs. The old West School, now divided into apartments, was (is still) located two doors east and it still offers an imposing face to the street. Kids in the neighborhood would have benefited from having a modern school close by and one that was well constructed and reasonably spacious for the western edge of town.
Although a working class neighborhood, it was probably interesting to watch the comings and goings at the Cook and Price mansions. Price, the son of Jefferson City's first mayor, was very active in local politics and business. Cook acquired and expanded Central Bank (Central Trust) into one of the largest banks in the state. Both were "movers and shakers" in the community and the state. Cook served as Secretary of State. In recent years it was the former home of State Treasurer and Governor Holden.
Across the street and just to the west is St. Joseph's Cemetery, an old Catholic cemetery on the river bluff. There is a good view of the river from the rear of the cemetery. There is also an older and small cemetery located on the bluff about two blocks east along the edge of the Heisinger (Price) property. This is maintained by Resurrection Cemetery but little is known about it. It is old enough to have been outside the city when it was in use.
Sometime around 2005 this neighborhood was designated as a the "Lower Jefferson Conservation District" in an effort to support preservation efforts and control infill development. The guidelines were adopted by the city council and a district description is found at web.missouri.edu/~wardla/ljcd/ljcddesignguidelines.doc. For some reason, the neighborhood was originally called Lower Jefferson even though it is elevated on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River and the mill bottom area of the city (Wears Creek).
The house itself has been through several apparent renovations and expansions. The original house was smaller and L-shaped but sometime in the 1930s or 1940s a frame addition was constructed to give it a squared footprint. Solid brick walls indicate where the original exterior walls were. The addition might have been an original sleeping porch that was closed off and incorporated into the house. Sometime in the 1940s or 1950s the house was covered with green wide clapboard style aluminum siding. The siding remained until the recent renovation in 2009 and was a mixed blessing. It protected the brick to some extent but it also damaged the brick and the stone window lintels and sills where it was anchored to the exterior walls. The green siding made the house very ugly and it was a surprise to the neighborhood when it came off and revealed the brick house underneath.
Bathrooms were added at some point. There is a small half bath downstairs and a large bathroom on the second floor that might have served as a third bedroom at some point. The previous owner recalled that the only shower was in the basement and it is still there although there is now a large walk-in shower in the bathroom as well as a claw-foot tub.
The house was built during a period when fireplaces were out of fashion. There are no fireplaces in the house although there is ample evidence that they used wood or coal stoves when the house was built. There is only one chimney observable from outside but it appears that each room had a wood stove and a chimney/flue that has since been removed and covered up. The chimney stacks protrude into the rooms and make for interesting furniture placement challenges. There was once a chimney fire in the one existing chimney based on the smudged and slightly scorched wood beams in the roof (observed only in the small attic).
The current dining room was once a formal parlor with a separate entry door on the front porch (now sealed off). Many homes in this style have the second entry door leading to the parlor which seems odd. There is a large pocket door that can be closed to seal off the parlor from the living room so there may have been times when it was isolated from the rest of the house. I'm guessing that funeral visitation or some other formal events might have been the basis for that type of design. As in all older homes there are no closets to speak of. Some closets have been retrofitted into corners or under the eaves but these barely qualify as closets.
The additional room constructed sixty or more years ago is a sunny south-facing room with a half bath and (yes!) a closet. This served as a bedroom at one point but now is a sun room used for reading or just enjoying the sunny day. The wood floors in the house are made of narrow strip hardwood, almost as narrow as what you would see on a bowling alley.
The basement has four distinct rooms. At the foot of the steep stairs there is a room with stone foundation walls and a brick floor. This is the original basement but it opens into a second room with stone walls and concrete floor that has the shower and laundry. This then opens up to two other rooms. Stepping down into a slightly lower room, again with stone walls and concrete floor, to the main utility area and furnace room. The fourth room, under the later addition, is above grade and offers a walk-out exit into the back yard. The basement is reasonably dry considering the age and the stone foundation. Some water seeps in and trickles across the floor to a drain during wet weather.
There is a cistern in the back yard that just recently was exposed thanks to the efforts of our local ground hog. The cistern is located close to the rear of the house and the gutter downspout on the east side still seems to empty into the cistern. It is still stable but will need some work in the near future. There is also a garage in the back yard that dates probably from the 1930s or 1940s. It is wood frame and has carriage doors for an entry. It is still in sound condition but is not in pristine shape. One window is missing so owls and other birds, bats and mud daubbers go in and out as they please. We are currently using it for storage. The driveway off the alley is steep and only partially paved.
We had a snow storm yesterday so I'm staying home pretty much. I'm spending the New Year's holiday getting organized a little better and sorting through various closets and cubby holes. I think I'll hang a few pictures.
