Fenceposts: A Story of Deferred Maintenance

Sometimes a fence is more than just a fence. When I built our house back in 1992, I needed something to help “enclose” the small space created when I pushed the garage back about 15 feet from the front of the house. With an entry to the kitchen placed in-between and room for a small patio on either side of the driveway, the result was a modest “courtyard” that begged to be enclosed by a fence of some sort.

I eventually settled on a white picket fence, which runs only about 8 feet on either side of the driveway, connecting to the house at one side and ending at the property line on the other, then turning back along the boundary there for about 15 feet before ending even-up with the front of the garage. The result was a nice, semi enclosed space, where I could keep a table and chairs on one side and storage/waste bins on the other, all hidden behind a 3 foot fence.

To frame it all off properly, I asked the fence contractor to include some large gate posts on either side of the driveway; something about five feet high and reasonably substantial—about 8” to 12” square. I may have given him a rough sketch, but the design he came up with was almost exactly what I was looking for.

Here you can see the way the fence was designed to wrap around the house and tie it into the landscape.

Before he had started on the project, I had looked at the plans and decided that all of this going on at one side of the house needed to be balanced by something on the other side. As a result, I added an 8 foot length of fence (and a gate post that matched those on the other side) on the opposite side of the house; this also turned at the property line and went back about 24 feet along the boundary, enclosing a small part of the yard surrounding our enclosed porch/garden room. Eventually, this area hidden behind the fence would become known to our children as The Secret Garden.

New Life for New Jersey’s Natirar Mansion

The historic Natirar Mansion, built in 1912 for Walter and Kate Macy-Ladd, had served as a private estate for many years, as well as a convalescent home.
In 1983, the Peapack, NJ estate was purchased by King Hassan II of Morocco for his children, and subsequently sold back to Somerset County in 2003. The county has recently leased the site to a local developer, who is renovating the mansion to serve as the centerpiece of a high-end recreational and residential development.

Visually, the 40-room Tudor-revival mansion pays homage to grand Tudor palaces like Henry VIII’s Hampton Court, though in a much smaller scale. Nonetheless, it features a great deal of authentic detail, including intricate ironwork, leaded glass and authentic wood and stone carving.

Stucco is Stucco, Right? Not Exactly.

If you love traditional Old English homes, there can be no doubt you will run into some type of stucco or exterior plaster at one time or another. It may be on the exterior of an ancient cob house, the roughcast finish on a Voysey house, the fancy plaster pargetting of an Elizabethan townhouse or even some exterior panels on a “stockbroker Tudor”.

Built in 1914, the traditional-styled English Cottage I lived in for 8 years in Akron’s Goodyear Heights had asbestos stucco covering its first (ground) floor and foundation, with cedar shingles on the upper floor. (I’ve always thought wall shingles were a poor-man’s substitute for the clay tiling used on many English vernacular houses.) The stucco on that house had been painted over, and due to some neglected maintenance, had begun to crack in several places.

On the driveway side of the house, the stucco and its expanded wire lath were both coming loose from the exterior sheathing, to the extent that I could easily insert my hand fully into the gap for almost a foot, which was right next to our dining room window. This could have been the result of some foundation settling and some moisture penetration, but it eventually resulted in the decision to remove a 6’ x 4’ section of the stucco and make a major repair.

Of course, I did not know this was asbestos stucco at the time—but it came off in large pieces, and not being too concerned with short term exposure outdoors—I have no regrets or adverse effects some 25 years later. There was horse-hair in that stucco, too!

Historic Neighborhood Tours: Goodyear Heights

One of the more gratifying things one can do is to be able to put knowledge to good use, and I was able to do exactly this last weekend as I was able to lead a historic neighborhood tour of Akron’s Goodyear Heights through @Akron2Akron, a local group that helps organized and promote city neighborhood tours in an effort to help residents discover and appreciate the places where they live.

This pedestrian pathway and steps was dedicated to Clara Bingham,  a 47-year Goodyear employee who was popularly knows as "The First Lady of Goodyear."

I won’t go into a lot of detail in this post—there is a downloadable brochure I prepared; a PDF Dropbox link is HERE if you’d like to read more about it. In short, Goodyear Heights is one of the better American examples of the Garden City Movement as it was transformed into a high quality community for industrial employees of Frank Seiberling’s Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Planning began in 1912, when Seiberling used his master landscape designer, Warren Manning (who had already designed the grounds at his landmark Tudor-Revival mansion, Stan Hywet) to layout a small town for his workers.

And You Thought the Academy Awards Were WHITE...

Years ago, when I first dreamed of building a house of my own, I often dropped into newsstands and book stores to pick up copies of magazines like Country Life, British Home & Garden, Period Home, BBC Homes & Antiques and many others, seeking inspiration. I knew I would never have the means to build what I really wanted, but I hoped that by reading, training my eye and getting a “feel” for what was appropriate, I could come fairly close to envisioning my dream.

Over the years, I have amassed quite a library of books on English architecture and traditional home design. I also managed to horde a lot of those old magazines, which are still well-preserved in my basement.

On The Radio: Local History & Its Impact on Architecture

While we’ve always been focused on a specific area of architecture and design, there can be no doubt that preservation of historic buildings—as both a principle and a cultural and economic benefit—is something that deserves attention. Having reviewed how economic, social and geographic forces have had an impact on the architectural landscape of my own city in a recent Medium post, I wanted to share not only that story but also a recent conversation on the subject I had on local radio.

That Medium essay, LITTLE BIG TOWN: How Akron’s Unique History Has Impacted its Architecture – got a fair share of reads. The essay goes into some detail on how several consecutive waves of economic development have impacted Akron’s built environment, resulting in a situation where very few buildings from the canal-era or late 19th-century still exist. It also outlined the successes and failures of 20th century development, including downtown urban renewal, mid-century highway construction, and the failure of city government to embrace historic preservation within city neighborhoods.

The article made enough impact that I was invited to discuss the subject on one of the local radio stations, WAKR-AM. The entire segment, from the Jason Sokol Show, can be heard HERE.