Our 1917 Marsden

Hidden Feature

2009-11-13T21:22:00.004-05:00

You'd think that after living here a couple of years that there wouldn't be anything about the house that would have escaped my notice. Especially something that I had taken several pictures of and had looked straight at many times. But there is a difference between 'looking' and 'seeing'.

Here's what happened. I was walking around the east side of the house and glanced up at the small window of the closet above the dining room. Of course, I had looked at it before, but this time I noticed a detail that somehow eluded until this moment. I saw that it had a screen. Not just any screen. The original screen. Then a thought hit me: if the original screen is still in place, then the window would probably not be painted shut and would still open. So I headed upstairs to find out.

We moved the clothing rack that sets in front of the window (the reason why we've never paid much attention to it) and discovered that not only did it open, but the window is an exact match to the hopper windows in the dormers. Those are all painted shut, so we'd never had an opportunity to see how they worked. Now, not only can we see one in action, but we can tell how a screen (and presumably a storm window) would have been attached. Some day we would like to replace the unsightly storm windows that are currently on the windows with something more authentic. Having the screen will make that a great deal easier.

Here is a picture of the window and screen from outside.
From inside the closet. You can see why it is called a hopper window.
The simple but effective way the screen is held in place.

Clintonville: The Book

2009-01-31T19:40:00.003-05:00

One of the purposes of this blog is to celebrate Clintonville, the neighborhood in which our house is part. It's a great place to live and feels like a small town even though it's part of and surrounded by the city of Columbus. The history of the neighborhood begins as far back as 1800 when the federal government divided the land up to Revolutionary War veterans in hopes of encouraging settlement. It took another century for the northern boundary of Columbus to overtake the farmland that then occupied the area. At that point Clintonville began to grow in earnest and now boasts a population close to 30,000. And because it began to take shape in the early years of the 20th century, the style of architecture of the houses is predominately Arts and Crafts.

Last month Arcadia Publishing released Clintonville and Beechwold as part of their popular Images of America series. Books in this series offer a collection of vintage photographs of a given area and are great fun to read. The Clintonville book (Beechwold is a neighborhood in the northern part of Clintonville) was written by Shirley Hyatt, a longtime resident who has compiled over 200 photographs for this book. She put a call out to local residents for any photos they had of the neighborhood and managed to collect so many that she has created a website for the ones that did not make it into the book.

I've had a lot of fun flipping through the book, getting a sense of the history of Clintonville and truly understanding why people enjoy living here. I even found a picture that seems to have been taken in the same area of one of the photos I had posted in an earlier entry. While it solved one mystery it created many more questions. Just what a good book should do.

Catching Up

2009-01-13T15:12:00.007-05:00

Since I haven't written an entry in ages, I thought I would try to do so in one go. Hopefully this won't end up being too long.

Even though we did not plant a great many vegetables this year, we did get a good harvest from what we did grow. And for some reason, the bounty of the harvest were all given away to others since we actually grew stuff we did not intend on using ourselves. One plant we had great success with was okra. My wife was mainly interesting in growing them for their flowers, but fortunately we knew someone who eats okra and was quite happy to take it off of our hands. Here is a picture of one of the flowers.

Another large crop this year was hops. Not very spectacular, but the vines had a good number of flowers. Although we don't brew our own beer, we do know someone who does and they were very happy to receive a good-sized bag of hop flowers. Here's what one looks like on the vine.

While the beginning of September gave us an abundant harvest, the middle of the month showed that nature can take away as well as it gives. As most of you are probably aware, the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through Ohio, downing countless trees and knocking out power all over the state. Here in Columbus we had constant 40 mph winds with gusts up to 75 mph. We spent much of that day running out into the street removing debris that fell from our maple tree. Fortunately the tree survived, but the neighborhood was littered with others that were not so lucky. We were without power for a few days and our street was closed for nearly a week. Here's a picture of just some of the branches we removed from the street.

Another small disaster hit the neighborhood a few weeks ago when a condominium building that was under construction about a block or so away from our house caught fire. The fire began around 4:30 am, so we were awaken by the sirens. Trust me when I say that there are better ways of waking up in the morning than looking out your bedroom window and seeing it raining glowing embers. Fortunately, even though the wind was blowing directly toward the house, it was so cold outside that the embers were not much of a threat. As you can see, the building was pretty much a total loss.

That's the last few months in a nutshell. I'll be putting up another entry in the next few days to write about a new book about Clintonville.

And Now... The Back of the House

2008-08-06T19:56:00.003-04:00

I thought I would use this post to give some feedback on a couple of comments that were left on the blog this week. The first, from Charley, is a request for a picture of the back of the house since such views are rare. As you can see from the picture below, it isn't exactly the houses best side. And I should note a couple of deviations/alterations from the original design. First, the two windows in the dormer should be closer together, but are a few feet farther apart in order to accommodate the rear chimney. In the original design, the chimney would be in the back bedroom closet. As for alterations, there was a window just to the right of the back door, but it was removed during a recent kitchen remodel. Although it would be nice to have all of the windows intact, this particular one was taking up valuable real estate in a very small kitchen, so I'm not complaining too much.

The second comment comes from fellow Dr Who fan and Marsden owner The Master, and she writes:
I also own a Marsden! Mine is in very bad shape, it was almost condemned before I bought it. Most of it's beautiful woodwork/bookcases/windows/hardware has been removed or updated to a more modern look. What were they thinking! I have just started plans to restore it, but was lost until I found your blog. You made me realize this house still has hope and she could be returned back to her original, unique, self.

I would love to hear from you, share some pictures, and maybe even do some brainstorming for ideas.

Great to hear from another Marsden owner. Sorry to hear that it has been the victim of a horrible remuddle, but it sounds like you're willing to do what it takes to bring it back to its former glory. Although I haven't posted pictures of every part of the house, there should be enough in what is posted to give you an idea of what your house was like when it was built. As fitting an Arts and Crafts house, everything is very simple, with very little detail, so restoring things like window and door frames or baseboards should be relatively easy compared to restoring similar parts of a Victorian. Other details such as doors or built-ins would vary from house to house, so just try to stay within the right time period and style and you should be fine. If you have any other questions, just post a comment. And good luck!

And if anyone else wants to see a particular part of the house or any other requests, just let me know and I'll see what I can do.

More Treasures from the Box

2008-03-31T19:35:00.022-04:00

Now that I've come out of hibernation after a nasty winter, I decided to go through some more of the pictures that the original owners of the house left behind. I had actually been putting it off for a while due to the frustration of not knowing much about the people in the photos. Sure, I could take some educated guesses as to some of their identities, but most eluded me. Dating the photos was problematic as well. If I knew more about turn-of-the-20th-century clothing, it might be easier. Fortunately one single picture became the piece of the puzzle I had been looking for.

I had a hunch that in this group of women workers outside the Columbus Pharmacal Co. was Estella Ankrom, daughter of the house's original owner (and eventual owner herself), but the picture is too small (2x3) to see much detail. Until, of course, I scanned it. It was an epiphany. There was someone I recognized from several other pictures. There was Estella (third from the right, bottom row).
So now that I've found Estella, I thought I would share some more photos of her.

I have no clue who the 2 young gentlemen are, but Estella seems pretty pleased with herself.
Another photo from the same day. Presumably the 2nd young man took this photo and the other young lady the previous one.Here she is posing next to a sundial on the Oval at The Ohio State University. This is probably before the Ankroms bought the house.
Estella hanging out by the pool with friends. Its possible that this is the pool at Olentangy Park, for many years one of the largest pools in the United States.There's not enough information in the picture to tell where it was taken, but it could be the park again. The location of this picture is a bit easier to identify since its the front of the house. I would guess that the picture dates from the late 20s or early 30s. It's the only picture I have of the four members of the family together.An interesting bit of trivia: my wife and I first viewed the house on March 15th last year. That was 20 years to the day that Estella's obituary ran in the local paper. And we took possession of the house only 2 days before her 119th birthday.

A Boxful of History

2007-12-03T20:07:00.013-05:00

Having studied archaeology in college, I obviously have a great deal of interest in the past. So it should come as no surprise that I was very excited when I found out that the original owners of our house left behind a box full of old photographs. I've spent many hours studying the pictures, trying to figure out who was who and when was what. With the help of Shirley Hyatt, a local historian, and Scott Hawley, a relative of the family in the photographs, I've managed to piece together a bit of the history of the house and some of its early occupants.

From what I've been able to piece together, the house was built in 1916-17 by Charles Cornell. Before this Cornell, a machinist, lived in North Columbus, the neighborhood just south of Clintonville. Unfortunately, for a reason I have yet to uncover, Cornell was forced to sell the house in 1918. The buyer was Solomon Ankrom, a blacksmith who also lived in North Columubus. The Ankrom family had moved to Columbus from Vinton County in the southern part of the state sometime after 1910.

Solomon passed away in 1935 and Lydia in 1948. Son Lindsay had moved to a house on the opposite side of Walhalla ravine after getting married in 1927. But daughter Estella remained in the house for nearly 70 years until her death in 1987 at the age of 98. And so thanks to Estella for leaving behind a fascinating treasure chest of her family's history.

Before moving into the house in 1918, the Ankroms lived in a large duplex on High Street. The duplex is still there, now rented by OSU students. This picture shows Solomon and Lydia on the left with their neighbors/landlords.

Here is a picture of Solomon standing on the west side of the house. Notice the screens in the kitchen windows.

This is son Lindsay in front of the grocery store where he worked after moving to Columbus. It was located downtown.

Lindsay, Lydia, possibly Estella, and Sonny the cat. The concrete barrier behind them is still there, acting as a guard rail above the ravine. Probably taken in the early 40's.

Here's a couple of interesting pictures of Lindsay and his wife Grace in what appears to be a camping area.

This is just a sample of the pictures, but I'll share the others with you some time later.

Holiday Surprise

2007-11-19T11:09:00.000-05:00

The Winter issue of American Bungalow came out last week and our house appears in the Family Album section of the magazine. It can also be seen on the American Bungalow website here. I submitted it back in early summer, so I've been waiting for it to appear. Glad to say that it holds its own against the other houses in the Album. And very cool to open up such a great magazine and see a picture of your own home.

Finally, Some New Pictures!

2007-08-10T09:19:00.000-04:00

I apologize for the long wait, as I know many of you have been checking for new posts, but its been a case of one-thing-after-another (usually not house-related, fortunately). At the moment I find myself at home sick and with some time to share a few new pictures.

A view of the fireplace end of the living room. For this seating area we decided to do something keeping with the period the house was built and settled on wicker.

Here's a photo of the dining room with the table and chairs.

And another shot looking the other direction. Ignore the out-of-place Victorian bench under the window. Its for the cats. :)

One of the last changes we made was to remove the shag carpet runner on the stairs and replace it with something more appropriate.

This is our bedroom. Honestly, I'm mainly showing off my wife's quilts. They're completely handmade. The one on the bed took around 7 years to finish.

This is one of our two cats. Her name is Spider. She's showing how much she appreciates those 7 years of work. BTW, sometime down the road I'll be doing a post about the house's original feline resident, Sonny.

Petunia Surprise

2007-06-14T20:44:00.000-04:00

The last couple of weeks have been rather busy, so I haven't had time to post anything to the blog, but I just had to share this stand of petunias that suddenly sprang up in the otherwise sad excuse of a patio. Hopefully, next week I'll have some time to share what I've discovered about the history of the land our house sits on and then report on the upcoming open house. Until then, enjoy the petunias!

Some Interior Details

2007-05-09T20:03:00.000-04:00

I thought I would share some pictures of a few of the interesting details around the interior of the house.

Door hardware. All of the doors have their original hardware. I love the patina.

Matching lifts on the first floor windows.

Ceiling light in the living room. I have no idea of its age.

Door stop. I need to reattach a couple of them, but all are accounted for.

Latch on one of the dormer windows. One of them is missing its ring, but all of the windows are painted shut, unfortunately.

If a dormer window could open, this chain would hold it open. All 4 of the windows have them.

A Look at the Exterior

2007-05-08T21:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a few pictures of the exterior of the house.

A full shot of the house

The front (of course)

The west side, looking towards the ravine

The east side and the backyard

The view from the front porch

Nelsonville Block bricks are ubiquitous around Ohio University, our alma mater, so I think it's pretty cool that we have a few along the front of the house

A Weekend of Painting

2007-05-06T19:13:00.000-04:00

We just finished 3 days of painting 6 of the 7 rooms in the house. Fortunately, we had lots of help from both my mom and sister, so everything went relatively smoothly. There was a bit of worry that the paint in the living room wasn't going to work out, but once the second coat was on everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Here are some before-and-after pictures.

The living room before:

The living room after:

The dining room (with the kitchen and living room in the background) before:

The dining room after (with new light fixture, too):

I didn't take any pictures of the rooms upstairs, but the changes there are just as dramatic as those downstairs. We also removed carpet from the upstairs, so that means several days of staple pulling ahead. Messy work but at least the floors have been liberated!

The 1917 Aladdin Catalog

2007-04-21T09:14:00.000-04:00

Here is the listing for the Marsden in the 1917 Aladdin Company catalog, pages 41 and 42:

"Each year the sales of this attractive semi-bungalow far exceed the preceding year, and best of all its rapidly increasing number of owners are invariably delighted with their new home. We wish you could read some of the entertaining letters, without solicitation, received from scores of Marsden owners. They will of course be sent on request. Just study the lines of this bungalow and note how artistically appointed is every part, - the straight line dormer with exposed eaves in exact keeping with the eave of the front porch - the extended bay window with roof and brackets, breaking the gable end - the windows of different sizes and styles and location - these and many other points make the exterior of the Marsden truly artistic.

In interior planning and arrangement, this modern bungalow presents what might well be said to be the last word in designing. On entering the large living room, 26x16, extending across the entire front, one is attracted by the beautiful bookcase arch separating the living and dining rooms. Beautiful in itself, yet this arch by means of its glass doors and adjustable shelves forms at once a convenient, attractive and useful piece of house furnishings. Notice the abundance of light in living and dining rooms. A well arranged kitchen with stairs leading to grade landing complete the first floor. Ascending to the second floor by the semi-open stairs at end of living room, one enters a central hall from which easy access is gained to each of the three large bedrooms and the bath. Please note the clothes closet with each bedroom - a most appreciated adjunct for every sleeping room. The price includes everything above the foundation to complete the bungalow. Front steps, grade entrance and cellar stairs. Siding can be substituted if desired for wall shingles at no additional cost."

Buyers had the option to make changes to the standard kit. In our house, the original owner opted for French doors rather than a bookcase arch between the dining and living rooms. To compensate for the loss of these bookcases, two larger bookcases were installed on either side of the fireplace. Another change was replacing half of the dining room closet with a built-in buffet and using the other half as a closet accessible from above the grade entrance.