Last MAJOR INTERIOR Project, REALLY!

I know it's been quite a while since anything was published, but I want to say that the LAST MAJOR INTERIOR PROJECT at Foxcroft is well underway: THE KITCHEN.

Every time Lisa has asked when we would do the kitchen, I have answered "Last." This is because nearly every other project required us to track materials in through the back (kitchen) door.

Over spring break we had plasterers come to fix the corner where we had removed the bump out that was Bess' closet from her bedroom. We had removed the closet a mere 10 years ago in June of 2005.

While I will flesh this out and give details about what we've done in the near future, here is a photo montage of the kitchen from when the house was built (1928) through today, in progress:

BLUE PRINTS
Here is the kitchen layout from the blueprints. The back door opens between the half wall of the nook, and a bump out bedroom closet. This would have been extremely narrow. The small area marked "Brooms" was another closet, that opened in the kitchen. The fact that Bess was getting an ELECTRIC REFRIGERATOR rather than an icebox was a big deal, and noted in the plans:

One of the most charming parts of the kitchen plans was the breakfast nook. Bess had found separate images of how she wanted the table and the benches to look, and given them to her designer:

1928 Photos: 

THESE 4 PHOTOS WERE ALL TAKEN SHORTLY AFTER THE HOUSE WAS BUILT.
For ALL PHOTOS below click on the image to see a larger version:

This photo was some time after 1928 and before 1948:

In 1948 the half wall and bench of the nook were removed.
These photos are probably shortly after that:

The next three images show what the kitchen looked like the first time we were in the house on Dec 19, 2003:

The next four photos show removing the broom closet, and the bump out bedroom closet
on June 9, 2005. Read about that here:

They're Here!

We had to put a header over the back door to carry the load of the gable we added upstairs. the first photo below shows that. The second photo shows the  light switches shown on the bump out above that had to be relocated, this would be about a week after the pictures above.

So here is the kitchen after the plasterers came, and I just finished varnishing the floor. There will be more updates to come.

My Favorite Bookshelves

This post is written in response to librarian extraordinaire Maeve Clark's Facebook page My Favorite Bookshelf. That got me thinking... I have a LOT of favorite bookshelves. Here is a bit about the biggest one.

The first of many jaw dropping aspects of Foxcroft when we came to look at it was the library. I've written about it and the wall of bookshelves before. Here is the first mention, from June 29, 2005. A Little Bit of Completion.

Here is how the Foxcroft library looks today:

Bess built the library to fit her bookshelves. There is a seven inch gap between the far left hand side of the shelves and the wall. That was deliberate as Bess wrote to the builders "I want a space to store my card tables there." I have found Weis Bookshelf Company catalogs from 1916. That seems to be when she purchased them. That predates the building of Foxcroft by 12 years. I've also found a letter where Bess asked her moving man if they could transport the bookshelves with the books in them. Thankfully he replied "No."

Buying Foxcroft did not include the contents of the house, but we happily purchased these from Helen's cousin. She also told us to keep whatever papers or books we wanted, especially anything related to the house. That is how we were able to merge our collection of books with those already here.

Christmas in the 'Teens

I went through more old photos today. The scrapbook I've never looked at too much is the one that covers the era before our house was built. Helen, who we knew for nearly a year prior to her passing away, was born in March 1911. Every Christmas after that her mother, Bess,  took her picture in front of the tree. Since Helen's father was a doctor they were relatively well off. For the first 7 years the pictures presumably are from their home in Waucoma, Iowa. In 1918 they were in El Paso, Texas, at Bess' sister's home. At that time Bess' husband, Walter was a captain in the U.S. Army stationed at Ft. Hood, Tx, prior to going overseas.  So here  is Helen from her first Christmas to her 8th:

 1911, 9 months

1912, almost 2

 1913 almost 3

 1914 almost 4

 1915 almost 5

 1916 almost 6

 1917 almost 7

 

1918 almost 8, taken in El Paso Texas, with a cousin?

A couple notes:

• The morris chair to the left in the 1912 picture is currently in our library. 
• The wicker rocker (1912, 1913) never seems to have been moved to Foxcroft, nor was the "death's head" tabouret table in the 1911 picture. 
• "Bill" was the dog's name.
• I think the number and type of presents indicates the relative wealth of the family. 

Looking at the pictures in full scan is wonderful for details, the wallpaper (1911-13) is phenomenal. I don't know if they moved the tree location or painted?

Also the rug in the 1917 picture is the same from the 1930 Christmas picture, the first one I can find  at Foxcroft, even though they moved in fall of 1928:

I wrote more about this picture here:

Christmas Then and Now December 13, 2005

Merry Christmas 1953

I haven't posted for quite a while due to other facets of my life taking up lots of time, and that actually plays into today's post.

When we were emptying the contents of Foxcroft in 2005 and getting ready to renovate, I put some items in the upstairs storage space at my office and promptly forgot about them. We moved to new offices this fall, and as I was going through things I found several boxes of memorabelia stored away. One box contained a stereo viewer and 2 boxes of stereo slides, the viewer didn't work so I'd never looked at any of the slides.

I brought it home and took it apart and replaced the 2 D batteries and lo and behold it was functional. Then I started to look at the slides.

Apparently Helen and Mick bought a stereo realist camera some time in the late 1940's and began to take and make their own stereo slides. The two boxes have scenes from Foxcroft (when they would have been visiting Helen's mother, Bess prior to their moving in with her in 1955) and from vacations in the South Dakota badlands and Yellowstone National Park.


Here are a few scans from Christmas Day, 1953. They don't begin to do justice to how good the images look in stereo in the viewer, but it is a start. I passed the viewer and slides around to my family on Thanksgiving and we spent a very enjoyable two hours discussing the images!

Here's the companion to the above pic of Helen at the Christmas tree in the living room:


And the stereo view of Christmas dinner, which appears to be two whole chickens for 4 people!

Why the name?

After buying the house last year I discovered that Helen had donated her parents' WWI correspondence, along with her own WWII letters to the special collections department of the UI Library. As I went and started reading I found details Helen had not told me. Bess' husband, Walter Fox, was a 1905 UI Medical School grad. Bess studied for her master's degree in English Literature at UI before they were married. Walter became a small Iowa town doctor after teaching anatomy at UI for 2 years. Helen was born in 1911. At age 39 Walter volunteered for the army at the outbreak of WWI. As a captain and doctor he was sent to France and served in field hospitals. At the conclusion of the war he was sent to Serbia to fight a typhus outbreak, contracted pneumonia, and died in 1920. Bess was widowed at 36, Helen was 7 years old.

I found that Bess, Helen's mother, had built our house when Helen was starting as a freshman at the University of Iowa. Her plan was to move out the small town where she had remained since Walter's death, give up her many civic commitments (school board, lecture series, Daughter's of American Revolution) and retire to her gardening and reading.

Bess bought 2+ lots in the new development just outside Iowa City limits called University Heights. She had enormous vegetable and flower gardens, and according to her letters to Helen when she wasn't reading or gardening she was listening to Chicago Cubs baseball games on the radio.

So given the original family name= Fox, and the old English word for a small farm= Croft I knew exactly that if we had to have a name for our home it would be Foxcroft.