Frozen in 1952

[Edward]

Stroy in the English press today about a house which was bought by a couple in 1952, decorated to their up-to-date tastes, and then maintained largely unchanged until now...

http://metro.co.uk/2015/07/16/amazi...-the-1950s-goes-on-sale-5298083/?ito=facebook

This is how I remember some houses still looking into the late 70s / early 80s....

 

[Shangas]

I'd make a few changes to that place if I moved in, but other than that, it looks pretty neat

 

[Wire9Vintage]

Oh that kitchen! And everything else... What a meticulous home--just gorgeous!

 

[Fading Fast]

The house is incredible and the woodwork and other 1909 details are at least as fantastic as the 1950s decor.

 

[emigran]

Alas... perhaps a much easier time to live...

 

[Shangas]

Considering that Britain was still under rationing in 1952, I'm not sure...

 

[LizzieMaine]

The kitchen appliances are modern -- note the digital readout on the stove -- but otherwise the place looks very well preserved. My grandparents' house had that same dark-brown varnished woodwork and it stayed till they died. It was, sadly, the first thing to be obliterated when new owners moved in.

 

[Fading Fast]

The kitchen appliances are modern -- note the digital readout on the stove -- but otherwise the place looks very well preserved. My grandparents' house had that same dark-brown varnished woodwork and it stayed till they died. It was, sadly, the first thing to be obliterated when new owners moved in.

That's heartbreaking. What I struggle with is the following. Here in NYC there are an incredible number of pre-war apartments that still have a lot of their original details - woodwork, moldings, floorpans, transoms, fireplace surrounds, etc. There are also an incredible number of post-war and brand new apartments that have all the sleek, modern looks that many people like. But I see people buy the pre-war apartments and rip out all the original details.

For example, we recently bought a 1927 apartment. At the time we bought our apartment, we also looked at another one for sale in the building. Both had much of their original detail, but we chose ours as it fit our needs a bit better. The couple that bought the other apartment just completed about 80% of their renovation and invited us in to see it. Prior to the renovation, the apartment had original floors, original woodwork (built in shelves, cabinetry, radiator covers, etc.) doors (thick with all the original hardware) and on and on - it even had the original oven and sink.

Well, they ripped it all out - all of it- and put down a new "blonde wood" floor that is some kind of composite and painted all the walls and ceiling bright (super bright) white. I don't begrudge them their taste one bit nor how they spend their money - it's their's, they earned it. But what I don't understand is the why. It cost them a lot of money to do what they did (they were complaining to us about how much it cost) and they could have gotten what they wanted in a newer building for less money (meaningfully less renovation dollars). I just don't understand it. I wanted to ask, but felt it would have been rude as we've just met.

But it goes on all the time. It absolutely breaks my heart as it doesn't make sense to me and all that wonderful history just goes away for ever.

 

[newsman]

Oh that kitchen! And everything else... What a meticulous home--just gorgeous!

What a stove! I could do without the pink...but that kitchen looks like a wonderful place to sip a cup of coffee.

 

[Nobert]

That's heartbreaking. What I struggle with is the following. Here in NYC there are an incredible number of pre-war apartments that still have a lot of their original details - woodwork, moldings, floorpans, transoms, fireplace surrounds, etc. There are also an incredible number of post-war and brand new apartments that have all the sleek, modern looks that many people like. But I see people buy the pre-war apartments and rip out all the original details.

For example, we recently bought a 1927 apartment. At the time we bought our apartment, we also looked at another one for sale in the building. Both had much of their original detail, but we chose ours as it fit our needs a bit better. The couple that bought the other apartment just completed about 80% of their renovation and invited us in to see it. Prior to the renovation, the apartment had original floors, original woodwork (built in shelves, cabinetry, radiator covers, etc.) doors (thick with all the original hardware) and on and on - it even had the original oven and sink.

Well, they ripped it all out - all of it- and put down a new "blonde wood" floor that is some kind of composite and painted all the walls and ceiling bright (super bright) white. I don't begrudge them their taste one bit nor how they spend their money - it's their's, they earned it. But what I don't understand is the why. It cost them a lot of money to do what they did (they were complaining to us about how much it cost) and they could have gotten what they wanted in a newer building for less money (meaningfully less renovation dollars). I just don't understand it. I wanted to ask, but felt it would have been rude as we've just met.

But it goes on all the time. It absolutely breaks my heart as it doesn't make sense to me and all that wonderful history just goes away for ever.

I read an article about this recently, in some architecture/design/fashion glossy that my roommate took. All about this trend of the well-to-do and in-vogue types buying old properties and redoing the innards with the approach of an oncological surgeon. I was saddened to discover that one of my favorite public figures, Rowan Atkinson, was among the gallery. I like white as much as the next person who appreciates that there is a sun, but really.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I always think of those stark all-white interiors as looking like cheap rentals. No character at all.

 

[Fading Fast]

I always think of those stark all-white interiors as looking like cheap rentals. No character at all.

Yes, as someone who has rented apartments for the prior thirty or so years - prior to purchasing the apartment I referenced - when I walked into their all white (and I mean, all white, except for the blonde floors) apartment, it reminded me of several modest rental apartments I had moved into over the years.

When we hired a contractor to do the work on ours (in NYC, you have very little choice but to hire a contractor in these coop apartments as both the Department of Buildings and the Coop Boards won't let any work, other than very, very simple stuff, be done without a licensed contractor), we interviewed the contractor who did our neighbor's "all-white" apartment (shouldn't even put it in quotes, as it is all white) and he was meaningfully more expensive than the other quotes we received; hence, they paid a lot to get that look.

Again, your money, your apartment you can do what you want. It just hurts me to see something that can never be replaced turned into something that looks like all the sleek new apartments I see. And, if, as Nobert says, this is some designer trend - well, oh my God, what a shame. Those people will all be "bored" with their all-white apartments in a few years, but the apartments will never re-capture their original beauty and character.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Somewhere around here I have a copy of the Sherwin Williams "Style Guide" for 1940 -- a huge bound album-type book with Kodachrome photos of the latest trends in real-world home decor, and modern people to whom I've shown this book are invariably astonished at how colorful rooms were. Granted, the purpose of the book was to sell paint, but the types of rooms shown square with what you see in "Better Homes and Gardens" and other such homeowner-oriented publications of the Era. And one thing you *never* see in any of these types of publications is an all-white room. Never. The walls are either papered or painted in color, and those colors might include oatmeal or tan or beige, but are never, ever just plain white. A working-class rental house or apartment would likely be shabbier than a privately-owned home or middle-class apartment, but even there you'd see wallpaper or colored walls.

I think the rise of the plain white room in the 80s and 90s was a symptom of the intellectual and emotional sterility of that era, and unfortunately it shows no sign of abating.

 

[Fading Fast]

I was stunned - truly stunned - to see how white - bright, bright white - the apartment was. And that the walls, ceiling, doors were all in the same super bright white was jarring. These apartments have beams in the ceilings, some built in nooks, baseboard moldings (not elaborate, but of-the-period), etc. By painting everything one bright-white color, you loose the nuance of all of that.

It seems that the entire post-war arc of architecture and style has been toward minimalism - away from anything that smacks of style for style sake - away from classical architecture. I think some of the efforts have been incredible and interesting. There are some outstanding buildings - apartments, hotels, offices - built in the '50s in this city that were modern in the sense of not pre-war classic, with an emphasis of straight lines, minimal stylistic details, etc., but still a very thoughtful approach to how people would use the buildings and how to capture light and air, etc. in a way that enhanced their beauty and function. While those will never be my favorite buildings, I deeply appreciate what the architects were doing.

Then it seemed that the drive toward stark minimalism overtook everything, including how humans would use the buildings, and we ended up with the Soviet-era style architecture of the '60s. Since, then, IMHO, architecture has just been floundering around with no common theme or sense of overall purpose. Most buildings still hew to some version of minimalism but with a twist (like these crazy glass and steal structure that have gone up in the last ten years where they twist the shape of the building to look like crinkled tin foil). And, occasionally, one goes up with some very classic lines - always fun to see the modern version of classic architecture (15 Central Park West is an interesting example of this).

Is there a connect to the intellectual and emotional philosophy of the society - probably, but I'd need to think a lot more about that. Simplistically, I think that after the beautiful pre-war classical architecture had been done - and with the break of the depression and WWII - society wanted something different and architects wanted to do something different. And while early modernism had something to offer, when it reached its natural end (when it no longer enhanced the people using the buildings experience) - they just kept driving it forward anyway to where we are today - muddled.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A lot of that trend came out of postwar Germany -- and if you look at some of Herr Speer's plans for postwar Berlin, you can see the seeds for much of it.

Our architecture here was never particularly "classical" -- it was functional, but not built in such a way as to say HEY LOOK FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION, and dignified without being encrusted with unnecessary rococo pretentiousness. Our downtown area, built for the most part in the mid-to-late 19th Century, is simply a mix of brick and wood-frame-clapboard buildings thrown up without any particular overriding aesthetic in mind, and our housing stock is largely a mix of late Victorian and New England Practical. The one really "modern" building we have downtown, a concrete brutalist motel built in the '70s, is known and renowned for its ugliness -- it looks for all the world like a giant, extended cement litter box.

There are plans, however, to build a five-story reflective-glass monstrosity on a downtown side street, which according to preliminary drawings will look very much like a Manhattan parking garage circa 1980. It's being built as a secure storehouse for "world class art collections" and a high-end gallery, which no doubt will please the black-turtleneck crowd. The rest of us will be imagining how it will look encrusted with seagull turds.