SOUTHARD BUILDING

BLYTHEVILLE ARKANSAS

 

The Southard Building (I have no idea if it is really called that, but it is the name on the moniker stone) is typical of turn-of-the-century commercial storefronts, containing a retail business on the first floor with a living/office space above.

This one caught my eye because of the faded signs on the west side of the building. I’m sure that it once housed the St. Francis Drug Company, if the only legible sign can be believed. Okay, I can make out the Coca-Cola sign, but that’s about it.

The west side has also seen its upper story windows covered (replaced) with plywood painted a brick red, as well as some non-historic white mortar repointing on the parapet and other areas below. A side door and first floor windows are also missing, their spaces filled with bricks. The first floor windows are placed where they are because shelves and counters lined the walls when it was a drugstore.

I understand that windows go by the wayside when store spaces change with the ages, but I like to see some artistic attempt made where such things exist. Why not paint the upper window plywood to look like windows? Then the ‘eyeless’ look would be avoided and the building enhanced. Repainting the signs is another way to dress up the building; I’d do it with local businesses and design the signs in a turn-of-the-century motif.

I’m not a fan of modern metal storefronts, as GQ Fashions has, but having an operating business in a store is far better than an empty shell. WalMarts will always sprout outside of town; let’s do some shopping in our downtowns to keep them alive and growing.

 

PLANTERS BANK

OSCEOLA ARKANSAS

Most banks built at the turn of the nineteenth-to-the-twentieth century reflect a solidity and permanence that states “Your Money is Safe Here.”

Planters Bank is no exception.

Built in the Neoclassical style so common with banks of the period, Planters has gone through a series of changes, as is evidenced by the missing sign. The dark elongated rectangle within the entablature (the massive lintel held up by the Doric columns and square pilasters) undoubtedly once held raised letters naming the bank, possibly painted with gold leaf.

But it wasn’t always Planters (I keep wanting to insert an apostrophe, but there was undoubtedly more than one planter and banks never used plural possessives). It became First State Bank, Citizens Bank (no apostrophe?), a mercantile store (redundant term, that), and City Hall.

Its present use is as a church.

 

Though I guess a bank could be considered a place of worship. Milburn Drysdale would agree.

An adjoining building to the left has since been removed, revealing a rather flimsy party wall made of cinder block. It is rather a thin structure compared to the massive, solid Bank façade presented to the public.

A lesson in economics, perhaps?

COMMERCIAL BUILDING

OSCEOLA ARKANSAS

While touring the town and photographing Vestiges, I came upon this interesting sign support. I’m strangely fascinated by sign supports for hanging signs. Most downtowns have stopped the practice of using hanging signs in favor of those that are mounted flat on the façade of the building. I think this practice takes away from the charm of commercial districts as well as fails to advertise the businesses to those looking down the street, as is pictured here. I suppose it has to do with less walking traffic and more car traffic. Sigh. We should all walk more in our downtowns. Maybe then we’d keep the businesses there.

 

The changes to the façade on this particular building could have been done better to accent the historic nature of the structure, though. The muntins (window crossbars) are unnecessary and nonauthentic; the originals would have been plain plate glass. The doors are also modern steel units, though a six-panel design is closer to the mark than a flat panel. Likely both doors had a single long window when the building was a business; it has apparently been turned into a residence, if the curtains and screen door on the first floor are evidence. The door on the right accesses a staircase to the second floor, which originally had either living or office space for the business below.

A nice paint scheme is another way to enhance a façade with very little investment, as well as some historically designed light fixtures. Of course it would be nice to see the transom windows reinstalled, but, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, most transom windows in these buildings were blocked up when dropped ceilings were installed to save heating costs.

I personally like high ceilings, but I may not be the best to tout them; my own 1690 Cape Cod has seven and a half foot ceilings in some rooms and sevens in others.

UNKOWN BUILDING

OSCEOLA ARKANSAS

 

This unfortunate early twentieth century commercial structure looks to have been the victim of high winds. The roof, made of PVC sheets annealed together with either heat or chemicals at the seams, was lifted as a single unit and now hangs sadly over the side of the parapet. Must have been one hell of a storm. The area was hit hard by a tornado in the mid-oughts, with neighboring Marmaduke taking most of the damage. This might be a result of that storm.

Osceola, located in northeast Arkansas, is a city with a lot of interesting architecture but little going on to preserve it. Once a prosperous farming town that boomed with rice and cotton, it was also quite a bustling river port, though the river is actually a few miles outside of town. Presently the town is turning the direction of steel manufacturing, as is the entire area. Rail car wheels and rail tanker cars are made a little ways off in Marmaduke, and nearby Blytheville has made its mark as one of the most modern steel towns in the U.S.

I’ll be featuring a number of interesting Vestiges from this area in the next month. Thanks to everyone for being patient with my absence since my move to the Northeast; I just got phone and internet at The Standish Farm last week, so I’ll be posting more often now.

                    A LITTLE (ROCK) BIT OF PRAIRIE

   Others may argue that this is not officially Prairie Style Architecture, but the shallow roof, wide eaves, and vertical design to the windows yells Wrightesque to me. I need to get away from the 'esque' thing, I guess. Exposed rafter tails and divided columns lend it an Arts and Crafts note, but that's just the nose and not the total palette.
   Located somewhere on the south part of the Central High Historic District in Little Rock, Arkansas, it just grabbed me and wouldn't let me go until I took its picture and promised to make it famous. Or so it thinks.
   It's a beautiful house, nonetheless, and one of only a handful of Prairie houses in The Rock.

  

            RUMFORDESQUE FIREPLACE

 

  This is a photo of the kitchen fireplace, woodbox, and bake oven in the Standish House, of which the original section (see previous posts) was built in 1690. The fireplace itself cannot be older than 1720. This is why and also why it was likely ahead of its time.

  When the house was originally built in 1690, it was a two-room cabin; located in what was then a nearly complete wilderness, it may have had a fireplace, but it certainly wasn't this one. Fireplaces at that time were likely crude things built of stone mortared with whatever was at hand. Brick was available only where there was clay and lime mortar where there was limestone, neither which exist in quantity around Preston, Connecticut. This is granite, basalt, gneiss and schist country. It is possible that mortar was available from the seacoast twelve miles away, where huge oyster beds sporting oysters the size of Volkswagens lined the bays and inlets. Their shells were often burned and slaked for lime.

  But the house was abandoned and reinvested, then raised and a cellar dug under it, when a proper fireplace was built. Which is the problem.

  Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, designed the Rumford Fireplace in the late 18^th century. Before his design, most fireplaces were deep rectangular things that used enormous amounts of wood, hardly heated a room, and often spit smoke back into the house. His design incorporated a taller, shallower firebox with angled sides and a nearly nonexistent rear wall. This allowed for smaller fires that radiated a lot more heat into the room.

  The firebox at the Standish House has a wider rear wall than an official Rumford fireplace, so it is not authentic (and so dubbed ('Rumfordesque’). And though I have no idea just how old it actually is (the stone hearth and structure in the cellar is said to be 1720 or thereabouts), if it is older than the 1790s, it predates Rumford’s design and utilizes nearly the same angles and height. I believe it is authentic to the 1720s, as the rest of the house was built around it and the lines haven't really changed.

   All I know is that a small fire really heats the room to a toasty degree. The dogs like it, anyway.

  
                            And that’s what really matters, isn’t it?

 

 

MY FIRST POST IN MONTHS

AND AN EXPLANANTION AS TO WHY

 

 

 

 

 

 

   This is the Standish House as of the day after I closed. I just HAD to remove the 1960s topiary; it didn't go.
   Actually, it did. Once Me and my Stihl were through.
   If you look closely, you can see the storm windows are open. This was taken in Late October. They are tightly shut now.
   This is why.

   I arrived with no water, heat, hot water, working kitchen, shower, or working toilet. It took me until just after Thanksgiving to resolve all of those issues, but I'm very comfy now, as are the dogs.

                                                    
                                                                        Puppies Happy in Front of the Fire

   I still have no internet to speak of, unless the stars are right. Tonight they are, but all weekend they were not. Alas, I will break down and get a landline (there's no phone, either, and no TeeVee) and pipe in DSL or Broadband or whatever ridiculously expensive type of soon-to-be-obsolete technology all of you are using at this time.
   So my best wishes to all of you until I get that hard wire, probably next week. All I can say is that it's nice to have the stars right for once. I'll have a nice post on that Rumford Fireplace of mine next time.
   Right now I'm going to post, because the internet around here is likely to crap out in the middle of wh