Restoring Your Historic House


Book Description

Although there are other books about renovating old houses, this is the first that prioritizes the identification and preservation of the historic, character-defining features of a house as a starting point in the process. That is the purpose of this book: to describe and illustrate a best-practices approach for updating historic homes for modern life in ways that do not attempt to turn an old house into a new one. The book also suggests many ways to save money in the process, without settling for cheap or inappropriate solutions. Scott Hanson is a historic-building preservation professional and has 40 years' experience rehabilitating historic houses. He has illustrated this authoritative book with hundreds of step-by-step photos, illustrations, charts, and decision-making guides. Interspersed throughout are photo essays of 13 restored historic houses representing a range of periods and architectural styles: Italianate, Victorian, Queen Anne, Federal, Colonial, Colonial Revival, Greek Revival, Ranch, Adobe, Craftsman, Shingle, and Rustic. With interior and exterior photography by David Clough, these multi-page features show what can be achieved when a historic home is renovated with a desire to preserve or restore as much historic character as possible.




Historic Houses of Philadelphia


Book Description

"Historic Houses of Philadelphia" brings the region's most impressive museum homes to life with maps, touring information, and historical notes on 50 distinctive homes. 160 photos, 150 in color.




Bristol Historic Homes


Book Description

Bristol, originally known as West Woods, formed later than other Colonial towns. Bristol's mother town of Farmington was settled in 1640 and became a town in 1645, but pioneers did not lay out the remote and unpopulated section of Farmington until 1721. The Jerome, Matthews, and Lewis families created the New Cambridge Parish in 1742, and it was this parish that separated from Farmington and finally formed the town of Bristol in 1785. In Bristol Historic Homes, readers will meet these families and other important figures, such as Ebenezer Barns. Barns built the first permanent home in 1728, and this structure later became a tavern and community center. Through wonderfully preserved vintage photographs, this volume shows how an agricultural community grew and prospered as a variety of skilled tradesmen brought hard work and vision to this beautiful area.




House Histories


Book Description

Explains how to establish the history of a house by examining the building style and materials and searching for clues in old documents, and offers suggestions for running a home-based house histories business.




The Book of Old Houses


Book Description

Once upon a time, Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree was a hotshot money manager to Manhattan's rich and dreadful - until she left city life behind for a centuries-old fixer-upper in the quaint seaside town of Eastport, Maine. But even this tiny haven has its hazards - and they can be astonishingly deadly... What would you do if a long-buried book was unearthed from beneath your 1823 fixer-upper a book containing your name written in blood? That's the mystery Jake faces in the midst of her latest old-house renovations. But it's only the first in a town better known for its scenic views and historic homes than its body count. Now Jake is putting aside her hammer and fixing to find someone who's got the blueprint for a perfect murder.




Old Homes Made New


Book Description




Homes Down East


Book Description

HOMES DOWN EAST, by Earle Shettleworth, Christopher Glass and Scott Hanson, with fascinating history, gorgeous contemporary photography, and architectural insights on every page, is a book not to be missed by anyone who loves Maine, architecture, or the still--unsurpassed homes and cottages of a century ago.




Guide to Historic Artists' Homes & Studios


Book Description

From the desert vistas of Georgia O'Keeffe's New Mexico ranch to Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner's Hamptons cottage, step into the homes and studios of illustrious American artists and witness creativity in the making. Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, this is the first guidebook to the forty-four site museums in the network, located across all regions of the United States and all open to the public. The guide conveys each artist's visual legacy and sets each site in the context of its architecture and landscape, which often were designed by the artists themselves. Through portraits, artwork, and site photos, discover the powerful influence of place on American greats such as Andrew Wyeth, Grant Wood, Winslow Homer, and Donald Judd as well as lesser-known but equally creative figures who made important contributions to cultural history-photographer Alice Austen and muralist Clementine Hunter among them.




Maine Cottages


Book Description

Robert R. Pyle Our sense of place and community is made up of memories—personal memories of first-hand experience; oral memories that recount our ancestors’ experiences; and f- mal, codified civic memories set down in laws, ceremonies, and rituals. Together they are vital building blocks of citizenship. In a vivid and meaningful way this book p- serves memories relevant to understanding the roots of communities on Mount Desert Island, Maine. The surnames of many of Mount Desert’s earliest settlers are still found in today’s telephone directories. In these families many oral traditions are passed down from generation to generation, building outward from a historical core like the rings of a tree. “Dad used to farm this field,” Fred L. Savage’s great-nephew Don Phillips told me once, gesturing toward an alder growth. “His father grew vegetables for the hotel, and my great-grandfather grew grains. This road used to go right on up over the hill, and they used it to move the cemetery up there from where the hotel is now. ” Describing the field, Don ignores the alders and the towering evergreens beyond them, for in his mind’s eye he sees yellow, waving wheat and rye, bare ground, and a narrow cart track leading up the hill into the distance, on which his ancestors tra- ported the remains of their own forebears to a new resting place. Oral traditions, living memory, set the stage for him, and he accepts the reality of things he has never seen.




Houses of Maine


Book Description

"There have been many influences for us over the years but the defining factor in our firm's work is that we practice architecture in Maine, amidst extraordinary and ordinary beauty." Although it has become something of a cliché for architects to say they pay close attention to a building's site and surroundings, for Elliott + Elliott Architecture, residing, working, and building along Maine's rugged coast has translated not only into refreshing architectural forms whose roots in tradition are clear, but also into collaborative processes with local builders and artisans, in the spirit of the shipbuilders and craftsmen of the state's history. Featuring six of their most emblematic residential projects, Houses of Maine demonstrates that, in the right hands, the rough-around-the-edges individualism and often harsh natural environment for which this coast is known allow for a balanced, serene, and vernacular architecture whose links with the past create nothing less than a confidently optimistic preview of the region's architectural future.