Cuyler:

Thank you so much for your essay on BP. It has helped crystallize some of my
own thinking as my mother gets ready to move out of her house in Lincoln,
Nebraska. The parallels of your story to mine are uncanny: our house was
built the year I was born, and it too has become a record of our family's
life there. While this was an "ordinary" contractor-designed house, my dad
was busy adapting it to our needs before it was even completed. The day the
flooring subcontractor arrived he grabbed a hand-full of asphalt tiles and
set up his scroll saw out in the yard to make a 3' bucking-bronco silhouette
for the middle of my bedroom floor and handed the interlocking cutouts to
the installer by noon-time. Many other "improvements" were made over the
next 40 years. My mother now sits in her living room, which she calls "my
museum" which is decorated with the many works of art and craft produced by
our family over the past 50 years. Perhaps the significant difference is
that the wrapping up at our house has taken place since my father passed
away 10 years ago.

Many times in recent years my clients will say, "Oh, our house is not
significant in any way," meaning that George Washington never slept there. I
explain to them my theory of building significance (family, local, state,
national, etc.), and point out that "family" is listed first for a reason. I
tell them that the highest order significance is family, after all, this is
the place that is most important to them and their own family; and far many
more buildings have family significance that national significance.

John

John Leeke, Preservation Consultant

mail: 26 Higgins St., Portland, ME, 04013, USA
Phone: 01-207-773-2306
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website: www.HistoricHomeWorks.com