Mourning the entablature, weeping for the 12 foot ceilings lost in the fire

I'm an architecture optimist: Neither great architecture nor great design should require millions or mansions.

When this bungalow with a Greek temple for a front porch burned last fall, we nearly lost a great small house in a modest neighborhood. They are rebuilding. It will be the best of modern living. But we lost the porch's entablature, the Parthenon porch.


I can't find anything about the history of this house. All I know is that it was "neck-snapping good."


It's not on any historic preservation list.


Only the very best new houses approach this. This reminds me a little of Spring Island in South Carolina by Historical Concepts.


They saved the columns.


They restored the wonderful windows.


It's looking good.


But you can't tell from here ...


... but we lost the porch's entablature.


Before:




Why?

The original house had 12 foot ceilings. With rare exceptions nobody would rebuild a 12 foot ceiling. So they are doing 10 foot ceilings. It's huge cost savings, much cheaper to heat and cool, and provides livable space upstairs where there was none before.

The house is back better than ever But I continue to mourn a bit.

2 that burned this fall

I'm participating in Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch. Thanks to Susan! Not a nice metamorphosis now, but let's hope these come back.

Few drive Whiteford Avenue in Atlanta. It's a short cut for Architecture Tourists on the way to grandmas through the Edgewood neighborhood. It's hardly a street of high-style homes but it's very interesting and "sets my mind a wandering." This was the belle of the ball. Always meant to stop for some pictures, always thought there'd be another day.



Now this.


Queen Ann, classic revival, greek revival, trglyphs and metopes, cross-gabled hipped roof, pretty metal fence, arbor, lived-in yard, overhangs, what windows ...




Words fail me. They don't do porches and windows like this. If you can bear it, there are more pictures in the slideshow below.


On the Druid Hills side, on the "good side of the tracks" Paideia School's "Mother Goose" burned. It's a re-purposed Druid Hills beauty, now in ruin.

Whiteford Avenue parallels Moreland Avenue in the transitional Edgewood neighborhood. As with many Atlanta streets Whiteford changes it's name at the tracks: Oxford in Druid Hills to the north, Whiteford in Edgewood to the south, leftovers from segregation. Edgewood is in the string of neighborhoods that begin east of downtown just south of the tracks with Cabbagetown, then Reynoldstown, Edgwood, Kirkwood, Eastlake, Oakgrove.

There is more in the slide-show but it's not fun:



Let's hope they can restore these houses.

Thanks,
Terry

Thanks to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch.