About the Building, its History and its Residents:
(As with so many other things, this is a work in progress. Amendments and/or additions may appear from time to time.)
December 02, 2007

This home was built in the style of the American Foursquare also known as the Prarie Box or Prarie Blockhouse and features four sides of equal length. Because of the straight lines and basic, square shape this style of house was particularly suited to being manufactured as a kit ... and this is what Sears & Roebuck did. They manufactured this kind of home as a mail-order kit. These may be identified by the vendor's stamp on some of the beams.

As is common for the Foursquare, a suburban development style which grew in use from the 1890's and maintained it's popularity right into the 1930's, this is a two and one half story structure. Also typical is a four-room floor plan. This house has four bedrooms on the second level plus a bathroom in the center in the front. Also typical for the Foursquare is what appears to be an addition on the back. While the kitchen may look like an addition, it is an integral part of the design. Atypical is the sunroom (aka solarium, Florida room, etc) on the second floor above the kitchen.

Being such a basic, clean style, this sort of construction was a pallette upon which builders and designers could decorate - drawing liberally from many other styles. This home, for example, is built in the Tudor Revival architectural style with a Craftsman Porch on the front. Also typical of the Craftsman style are the exposed rafters, low hipped roof (as ours) or pyramid shaped with deep overhangs and wide center dormer (in the case of this home, there are dormers on the front and the back.

This home was not a Sears kit. It was custom-built, along with its twin on the north boundary, by the first owner and his partner. Built in 1921, they framed these buildings in hemlock. The builder and his partner being plasterers ran their business out of a shop at the back of the property and shared the length, all the way to the back, evenly. As a benefit of being master plasterers, the first floor, with its nine foot ceilings is decorated with the most stunning plaster crown mouldings. The diningroom is pure luxury with very fine plaster work and deep crowns on the ceiling. Unfortunately, the french doors to the livingroom were lost may years ago.

This foursquare, considering some of its architectural features and decorative styling, the fact that it is lath and plaster, the use of high quality woods - is typical foursquare although the architectural styling of Tudor Revival is not so common. (Today you will find restoration websites dedicated to the American Foursquare.)

This house traded hands several times over its history. One owner so loved this house and the potential he saw in it (the owner previous to the residents before us). He removed every piece of the bannister and stairs, and the doors and the main floor door frames and baseboards and took them into the garage where he stripped and refinished them exposing a bannister and baseboards of hickory. His legacy is some stunning wood!

The second floor fireplace (in the northeast bedroom - in the back by the driveway) is all plaster including the mantle and is decorated with charming plaster medallions.


Since construction that fireplace had always been fitted with an electric unit although the chimney, currently capped, could be opened to accommodate a different (gas or wood) fuel. This northeast bedroom is the only one without a closet. Even when the house was first built, that bedroom was furnished with an armoire.

The daughter of the first owner, Vera Barrie (nee Hewson), was born in the northwest bedroom (the front-driveway side of the house).

In 1960 a farm family with seven children (one of which was named Larry) moved into this home. They bought this house for $21,000. At that time the lawn stretched stretched back another eighty feet and had two maginolias (the red one had since been cut down) and a pear tree. The woman would clean the chandelier every Friday and the boys would scrub the wooden floors, she loves so much, with a stiff brush.

Over the years, fences were moved and the lots re-cut. The fence at the back was set in about 1975.

The exterior (freshly re-painted in spring of 2006) is concrete with crushed gravel. The roof and eavestroughs were redone in June of 2004. The furnace was replaced in the autumn of 2005. Hard-wired carbon monoxide/smoke detectors were also added to all floors while the basement and main floor detectors are wired together for increased protection.

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