Show us your vintage home!

[jamespowers]

If I were single and childless, I'd give it a shot. I like Detroit as a whole, but I can't say how good or bad any of the neighborhoods are.

Check them out.

I am not so sure with even the sellers describing it as an older blighted neighborhood. That usually is code for ghetto. :eeek::eusa_doh:

 

[David Conwill]

I am not so sure with even the sellers describing it as an older blighted neighborhood. That usually is code for ghetto. :eeek::eusa_doh:

It could be. In Detroit it also could be code for "desolate wasteland".

I still think it would be interesting to be an urban pioneer.

 

[Late to the Party]

I don't know how generally interesting this may be, but I love having the chance to talk about vintage stuff, so I suppose I'm in the right place!

I live in a very modern, very generic California McMansion. Sigh. However, I have loads of furniture and stuff from my grandparents and parents, so I've decorated a corner of the bedroom to please myself.

Let the tour begin!

Working left to right, you see the corner of my parents' "early matrimonial" dresser with my great grandmother's clock.
Then a milking stool that my mother brought back for me from Scotland, and a chair from the University of Michigan's Engineering department, topped with a crocheted throw (double bed size) that my grandmother made.
A antique sea chest with a small tea service, and a small settee.
A framed hydrographic map - 1954 printing, and then a lamp that my dad and grandfather made as a copy of grandma's favorite lamp.
Finally, a dresser that I picked up at an antique shop, topped with a small wall cupboard that my mom found at an antique store, filled with odds and ends.
The rug is modern, as is the corner of the Pendleton blanket in the foreground.

My great-grandparents were married in 1890. This is their clock, probably a wedding present. I had it refurbished but I need to take it back in for adjustment. It is a one day clock.
I have lots of doilies and dresser scarves from my grandmother and from estate sales.
In the mirror is reflected a ship model my dad built of a Mackinaw schooner. My parents owed an old schooner in the late 40s, early 50s. The boat was vandalized while stored for the winter, so they hauled it out to the channel and sank it. The sails and masts were donated to a Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario maritime museum years ago.

Mr John Bonin was associated with the department of Geodesy and Surveying at University of Michigan. Somehow my grandfather, a Civil Engineering professor there, ended up with his friend's chair. My mom did the seat.
The chest is pine, and came from an antique-gathering trip my mom made. I've tung-oiled it, and I need to do it again.

This is my paternal grandmother's tea service.
The bud vase is from my aunt. I also have my other grandmother's tea service, which is rather overdone compared to this one.
When my grandmother was a young woman, her mother's married female friends each asked her over for tea and presented her with a cup and saucer. This is one several I have. Grandmother could have told me from whom each set came, but that information is long lost. The teaspoon has G on the handle for her maiden name.
The tray is a mid-century aluminum wonder, probably from my parent's wedding gifts.
The two small copper oil lamps came from the Keweenaw Penninsula in Michigan, where my maternal grandmother was born and raised.
Look! More linen!

Detail of the settee that my grandmother salvaged from in front of a fraternity house in Ann Arbor, MI sometime after 1916.
My husband chose the fabric for the cushions. I like it!

A lot going on here.
The two figures in the cupboard are probably part of a set of 4 guardian figures from China. The two figures were presented to my great grandmother (she of the clock) by a sea captain (? so the family story goes) who was courting her. She kept the figures and found a different man to marry.
The ivory picks were given to my grandfather (the professor) by one of his students from India.
My dad had a lot of inlaid wooden boxes. At least one of them he brought back from France (WW2) for his mother. Which one, I don't know. Years ago, dad polished up two of the boxes for me.

An excessive number of home-made hatpins. What was I thinking?
Pile of hankies. My wedding set (originally my mother's - 1948 Orange Blossom), grandpa's pocket watch.

My paternal grandmother's jewellery box with my mother's collection of Southwestern pieces.
A lot of the southwestern pieces came from my mom's mother and sister who all lived in Albuquerque New Mexico in the mid 1930s and early 1940s. Mom was too young to get her own jewellery then.
My grandmothers did not really get along very well, so I get a bit of a kick from mixing up their possessions.

And I think that's enough of that!

 

[David Conwill]

Late to the Party, McMansion or not, your interior has a wonderful vintage flavor! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Late to the Party]

Late to the Party, McMansion or not, your interior has a wonderful vintage flavor! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you.

And, I forgot to include this. I put rather a lot of gardenias in the back yard (how many is "a lot"? - Try 12 - summer evenings will knock your socks off). Some are outside my 'vintage corner'. Lovely smell!

I brought some Mission/Craftsman furniture to the house, and my husband is perfectly happy to run with Oak Oak Oak everywhere idea.
Oh, I should run and take a pic of our lovely modern Craftsman style china cabinet. My guy does take care of me, since it is completely full with my stuff.

This is a set by Richardson Brothers, 5 generation fine furniture makers who are now out of business. Our local furniture pushers (who love us) say it is because the youngest generation didn't want to keep the business going and closed, rather than selling. Boo hoo!

My sister took most of my maternal grandmother's stuff, but we traded on the china sets. This is a very partial set (grandma's movers from Detroit to Colorado Springs in the 40s broke a lot of it). She bought it piece by piece from Crowley's department store in Detroit, probably starting when she was married in 1920.

 

[Big Man]

Late to the Party, you are fortunate to have so many "family things." It's the same way here. I have some things that go back four and five generations. They are all treasures.

 

[jamespowers]

It could be. In Detroit it also could be code for "desolate wasteland".

I still think it would be interesting to be an urban pioneer.

Urban Pioneer! :rofl:
I heard they bulldozed whole neighborhoods! Is that true?!

 

[Stearmen]

Why is it, that those great old Fire stations are always in a bad neighbourhood? I do, love the looks of them!

 

[Shangas]

LTTP, you're fortunate to own so many heirlooms. We have barely anything like that in our family. Just a few trinkets that my grandmother left me before she died in 2011.

I love that clock. My uncle purportedly received an antique mantle-clock from his wife's brother when they were married. My dad wanted to buy it/take it off him, because my uncle never liked it, and my aunt never used it. But dad never plucked up the courage to ask them, for some reason.

Anyway, by the time he finally balled up enough courage to ask them for the clock, they'd thrown the damn thing out! Chucked it in the bin and sent it off the junkyard! Dad was heartbroken!

A lesson to ask to hold onto family heirlooms whenever you can. You might not get another chance.

 

[jamespowers]

Why is it, that those great old Fire stations are always in a bad neighbourhood? I do, love the looks of them!

Because firemen know when to leave early enough. I like the stations as well. They are great architectural marvels but they are worth nowhere near what they want for them with that much damage done to them.

 

[Big Man]

Because firemen know when to leave early enough ...

Right about that.

 

[Stearmen]

Because firemen know when to leave early enough. I like the stations as well. They are great architectural marvels but they are worth nowhere near what they want for them with that much damage done to them.

:biggrin:

 

[GHT]

Urban Pioneer! :rofl:
I heard they bulldozed whole neighborhoods! Is that true?!

In the early 1990's, I worked for a while, in the UK's second city, known as Birmingham. The city is about twenty-five, thirty miles, or so, west of the city of Coventry. The centre of Birmingham was all sixties concrete and chrome, knowing that Coventry took the might of Hitler's blanket bombing policy, I suspected that Birmingham had more than it's fairshare or destruction too. But I was amazed to discover that Birmingham's wonderful old buildings, constructed around the time of the birth of the industrial revolution, were all demolished for the sake of 'modernisation.'
It seems that town planners succeeded where Hitler failed.
I'm loving that fire station, you never know your luck on run down, deprived areas. Forty years ago I knew someone who had converted a warehouse into a photographic studio come home. It was in one of London's most deprived areas, known as Wapping. Today, most of Wapping has become gentrified, the area where the studio is, known as St Katherine's Dock, is within a short walk of London's financial centre, and properties command a price of seven figures, it just goes to show, you never know your luck.
A couple of years ago, We went to a rather good wedding. It was the marriage of a colleague of my wife. The two of them were re-enactors. The wedding reception was a wartime affair, held in a marquee. in the grounds of Horsebridge Railway Station. Take a look at the setting, the owners have a former sleeper carriage at one end of the platform, they use it as additional bedrooms to their home. They have even bought, and restored, an old signal box. If you search around on the internet, you can probably find pictures of the station in it's delapidated state before the owners set to work on it.
If you click on the Gallery, then scroll down to the seventh photo, you will see the wedding, all of us in our forties refinery.

 

[David Conwill]

There has been lots of demolition in Detroit, although the focus seems to be mostly on vintage commercial buildings (most famously, Hudsons, but more recently the Lafayette Building and the Hotel Charlevoix) rather than blighted housing. Recently, however, there was a major effort to remove the neighborhood around the Eastern Market - which was probably what you heard about.

The Paris of the Midwest has been slowly turning into a sea of gravel parking since the mid-1950s.

 

[Late to the Party]

There has been lots of demolition in Detroit, although the focus seems to be mostly on vintage commercial buildings (most famously, Hudsons

My mother was so upset by that. Mom was born and raised in Detroit. She was generally distressed by Detroit's decline, but Hudson's was the worst for her. She used to tell me stories of taking the streetcar downtown to go shopping there with her mother and older sister.

 

[David Conwill]

Hudson's is still a sore spot with Detroiters - especially since nothing was ever done with the site. An underground parking garage was built and a building could be erected atop it, but nothing ever was and almost 30 years on there is still no prospect, even though the neighborhood is in the midst of a resurgence.

"Vacant land is more attractive to developers" is a lie that is endlessly repeated by those who award demo contracts in the city of Detroit. The fact that the Book-Cadillac hotel, which closed six years before the last employees left the Hudson's building, is now fully rehabilitated and is a downtown destination just reinforces that.

 

[jamespowers]

Hudson's is still a sore spot with Detroiters - especially since nothing was ever done with the site. An underground parking garage was built and a building could be erected atop it, but nothing ever was and almost 30 years on there is still no prospect, even though the neighborhood is in the midst of a resurgence.

"Vacant land is more attractive to developers" is a lie that is endlessly repeated by those who award demo contracts in the city of Detroit. The fact that the Book-Cadillac hotel, which closed six years before the last employees left the Hudson's building, is now fully rehabilitated and is a downtown destination just reinforces that.

Wasn't it somewhere back there that just about a whole town was bulldozed for a Cadillac plant? I remember because just a few years after it opened they closed it and left the city holding the bag. Your empty land thing reminded me of it. Vacant land is vacant land and that is it. When you remove buildings you have devalued it by removing the "improvements." Anyone who says different is a nut. We all know you pay more for a house on land than we do for empty land---because the improvements are worth a lot more. Ok, I am done. I have hated Redevelopment out here for years and we finally killed it for the above reasons.

 

[jamespowers]

In the early 1990's, I worked for a while, in the UK's second city, known as Birmingham. The city is about twenty-five, thirty miles, or so, west of the city of Coventry. The centre of Birmingham was all sixties concrete and chrome, knowing that Coventry took the might of Hitler's blanket bombing policy, I suspected that Birmingham had more than it's fairshare or destruction too. But I was amazed to discover that Birmingham's wonderful old buildings, constructed around the time of the birth of the industrial revolution, were all demolished for the sake of 'modernisation.'
It seems that town planners succeeded where Hitler failed.
I'm loving that fire station, you never know your luck on run down, deprived areas. Forty years ago I knew someone who had converted a warehouse into a photographic studio come home. It was in one of London's most deprived areas, known as Wapping. Today, most of Wapping has become gentrified, the area where the studio is, known as St Katherine's Dock, is within a short walk of London's financial centre, and properties command a price of seven figures, it just goes to show, you never know your luck.
A couple of years ago, We went to a rather good wedding. It was the marriage of a colleague of my wife. The two of them were re-enactors. The wedding reception was a wartime affair, held in a marquee. in the grounds of Horsebridge Railway Station. Take a look at the setting, the owners have a former sleeper carriage at one end of the platform, they use it as additional bedrooms to their home. They have even bought, and restored, an old signal box. If you search around on the internet, you can probably find pictures of the station in it's delapidated state before the owners set to work on it.
If you click on the Gallery, then scroll down to the seventh photo, you will see the wedding, all of us in our forties refinery.

I am not so sure with Detroit my friend. It is worse than you may think:

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Looks like they couldn't even afford a U-Haul!!!

 

[jamespowers]

Looks like they couldn't even afford a U-Haul!!!

Where the heck is this? A police department just abandoned?! Evidence, files and all? Any prisoner's bodies left too?:eusa_doh: