Homesick farmer
During a Sunday drive we came across this display in a good solid neighbourhood of Kitchener, Ontario. It looks like a farmer moved to town and wanted to bring his toys with him. The Ford 9N or 2N (painted like an 8N) on steel wheels is not a common thing but probably best as a static display. I wonder what the neighbours think of the manure spreader.
4 comments:
To hell with the revenant farm eqpt (I say this respectfully), that house is more interesting to me. Its beautiful wraparound porch seems locked in struggle with the rather prim rest of the place.
You seem a good bet, Mr. G, to be conversant with residential-architecture fashions and movements of the 19th c. If that guess is good, would you kindly say a little here about the style that guided the designer's hand, and maybe generalize about that style's distinctive features? I will sleep better for having the knowledge.
James, a.k.a. rats
Ahhh, the house. It's built as a good typical plain house in a Post-Victorian neighbourhood. Not a lot of decoration on any of its neighbours. It stands out by the use of the local yellow brick, most other houses around it are the more usual red brick of the time.
I think the wraparound porch is a later addition, there is evidence of a porch roof on the side of the house, still accessed from a door by the bay window area. The front entrance seems to have had a small formal porch with second floor access with railing.
I've added a side view of the house to the post from Google streetview. There is a modern addition, possibly a kitchen, at the back of the house, with a roof pitch that could have been steeper (to my taste). The bay window wood treatment is newer and more decorative than the original house, which would probably have been a single contrasting dark colour.
I wonder if it all was done at once, part of the redo that added the big limestone block landscaping. I'd like to see a picture of the house twenty years ago.
The yellow brick used in 19th c Toronto and Western Ontario is distinctive, red brick is the common material. It's made of iron-rich clay, hence the red colour. I've not sorted out the source, anything I read says the Don Valley brickworks had access to the yellow limestone clay, as did brickmakers from Kitchener through to Sarnia. Yet houses are mostly red brick. More research required!
Thanks very much. Yep, the (kitchen?) add-on looks sadly shackish, or at least cheap. It kind of murders the bay window too.
There is, or was, a tiny town on the Michigan side of the lake: Silverwood. It arose around a quarry, if that's the right word, that yielded the very same yellow clay. Nowhere else in the Thumb (went the story) was that clay available, and it was a bit of a distinction for some semi-distant house to be built of Silverwood brick.
The quarry dried up and the town went bust -- mid-1930s, I think. When last seen, the dozen or so buildings there looked as if the town had been heavily shelled.
James/rats
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