The Life Of A House
My wife and I have been thinking about tearing down our house in Pacific Palisades and building a bigger one to accommodate our growing family.
Architects we’ve recently met speak about finding the soul of a building, about using the space to define a spirit. I experience this when I walk into someplace new and am mindful of feeling somehow different. It’s this feeling that either attracts me to certain places or repels me from others.
I had a certain positive feeling about the house I now live in when I first walked through it over a year ago. The hardwood floors, the fireplace; the large, spanning, lazy sycamore tree with the six foot trunk that IS the backyard. Peace.
As we’ve lived in the house this past year and experienced both incredibly happy and sad times, I’ve attached my own, new feelings to it. A little bit of my soul has somehow influenced the house’s soul.
Now whether or not you believe in re-incarnation (I, myself, am not yet convinced; though I find it hard to believe James Brown came about just from a sperm and egg), you’ve got to wonder what the space you currently live or work in was like before you got there. Who lived there? What did they do? What was their life like? Happy? Difficult? Serene? You find glimpses in the form of wallpaper behind layers of paint, and worn and pitted maple floors beneath shag carpeting; initials and dates etched in once-fresh concrete with a nail -- frozen in time.
So it was in my house. I knew the owner before us was an odd fellow who lived with his mother, his Greek wife, and a bunch of transient borders who took up residence in a back room and bathed, I assume, in the sizable jacuzzi. (Yes, I bleached and scrubbed that thing 20 times before I ventured in.) I also knew he liked old cars from the grease stains on the garage floor; and that his wife eventually flew the coop and returned to Greece. (Given his idea of fun, I can’t say I blame her.)
But what about before him? Who were the people who had the crazy vine-patterned, thick wallpaper in the kitchen? And why was the room behind the garage outfitted with what seemed like hundreds of 110 and 220 volt electrical plugs every few feet? Were they growing drugs or operating an international call center, as the real estate agent told us? And where did that huge Sycamore tree come from?
I knew our neighborhood had been settled as a Methodist enclave, but what about my own house? How had it lived?
My answers came to me rather serendipitously. One day soon after we moved in, I ventured up into the attic to do some wiring for the telephone and stereo (don’t ask) and came across some boxes. My first thought was how lazy the previous owner had been not to throw out his junk, but as I started to sort through the boxes, glimpses of the house’s other lives began to emerge through ledgers and cancelled checks, Christmas decorations and old airline tickets.
The owners before “Mr. Three’s Company” were apparently a very nice, traditional couple who bought or traded the house for $42,000 from a real estate agent who lived there before. They owned a few apartment buildings in Santa Monica, which they bought with the the husband’s earnings as an electrical engineer for Hughes Aircraft and the local movie studios (that explained the wiring in the back room) and his wife’s career as a real estate agent. He kept detailed, handwritten accountings of their finances for over 30 years and, as he aged, though his penmanship became increasingly scratchy, the message to me was still clear -- roses for wife, kid’s dentist bills, seaplane trip to Catalina. Eventually, his penmanship was replaced by the rounded flow of his wife’s hand, her entries detailing the rising medical payments as his health declined.
Then, a single, final line item entry : Funeral Expenses. She never remarried.
They had Christmas and Halloween decorations and lights, St. Patrick’s day and 4th of July flags -- all worn and used, now all shoved away in the attic. A life reduced to a few boxes.
I tried to contact the widow or her relatives to see if they wanted any of this stuff, but I could not find them. I kept a few pieces of paper (the old deed, the ledger, some vintage airline tickets) and eventually recycled the rest.
We’ve got our own holiday decorations now and buy more with each celebration. We paint and remodel and each day make the space more our own.
One thing lasts from before though -- the old Sycamore tree, hanging over the backyard, it’s branches a protective, calming presence. The electrician/owner had planted the tree sometime during his life there, and it had grown to the point that it now reaches into all our neighbors’ yards. In one season’s time, we’ve watched the leaves grow from green to orange to tan and then fall in the yard.
We’re not yet sure if we’ll need to tear the house down, but I know one thing: I’m gonna hang a swing from that tree next week -- my son’s almost old enough to appreciate it.
Architects we’ve recently met speak about finding the soul of a building, about using the space to define a spirit. I experience this when I walk into someplace new and am mindful of feeling somehow different. It’s this feeling that either attracts me to certain places or repels me from others.
I had a certain positive feeling about the house I now live in when I first walked through it over a year ago. The hardwood floors, the fireplace; the large, spanning, lazy sycamore tree with the six foot trunk that IS the backyard. Peace.
As we’ve lived in the house this past year and experienced both incredibly happy and sad times, I’ve attached my own, new feelings to it. A little bit of my soul has somehow influenced the house’s soul.
Now whether or not you believe in re-incarnation (I, myself, am not yet convinced; though I find it hard to believe James Brown came about just from a sperm and egg), you’ve got to wonder what the space you currently live or work in was like before you got there. Who lived there? What did they do? What was their life like? Happy? Difficult? Serene? You find glimpses in the form of wallpaper behind layers of paint, and worn and pitted maple floors beneath shag carpeting; initials and dates etched in once-fresh concrete with a nail -- frozen in time.
So it was in my house. I knew the owner before us was an odd fellow who lived with his mother, his Greek wife, and a bunch of transient borders who took up residence in a back room and bathed, I assume, in the sizable jacuzzi. (Yes, I bleached and scrubbed that thing 20 times before I ventured in.) I also knew he liked old cars from the grease stains on the garage floor; and that his wife eventually flew the coop and returned to Greece. (Given his idea of fun, I can’t say I blame her.)
But what about before him? Who were the people who had the crazy vine-patterned, thick wallpaper in the kitchen? And why was the room behind the garage outfitted with what seemed like hundreds of 110 and 220 volt electrical plugs every few feet? Were they growing drugs or operating an international call center, as the real estate agent told us? And where did that huge Sycamore tree come from?
I knew our neighborhood had been settled as a Methodist enclave, but what about my own house? How had it lived?
My answers came to me rather serendipitously. One day soon after we moved in, I ventured up into the attic to do some wiring for the telephone and stereo (don’t ask) and came across some boxes. My first thought was how lazy the previous owner had been not to throw out his junk, but as I started to sort through the boxes, glimpses of the house’s other lives began to emerge through ledgers and cancelled checks, Christmas decorations and old airline tickets.
The owners before “Mr. Three’s Company” were apparently a very nice, traditional couple who bought or traded the house for $42,000 from a real estate agent who lived there before. They owned a few apartment buildings in Santa Monica, which they bought with the the husband’s earnings as an electrical engineer for Hughes Aircraft and the local movie studios (that explained the wiring in the back room) and his wife’s career as a real estate agent. He kept detailed, handwritten accountings of their finances for over 30 years and, as he aged, though his penmanship became increasingly scratchy, the message to me was still clear -- roses for wife, kid’s dentist bills, seaplane trip to Catalina. Eventually, his penmanship was replaced by the rounded flow of his wife’s hand, her entries detailing the rising medical payments as his health declined.
Then, a single, final line item entry : Funeral Expenses. She never remarried.
They had Christmas and Halloween decorations and lights, St. Patrick’s day and 4th of July flags -- all worn and used, now all shoved away in the attic. A life reduced to a few boxes.
I tried to contact the widow or her relatives to see if they wanted any of this stuff, but I could not find them. I kept a few pieces of paper (the old deed, the ledger, some vintage airline tickets) and eventually recycled the rest.
We’ve got our own holiday decorations now and buy more with each celebration. We paint and remodel and each day make the space more our own.
One thing lasts from before though -- the old Sycamore tree, hanging over the backyard, it’s branches a protective, calming presence. The electrician/owner had planted the tree sometime during his life there, and it had grown to the point that it now reaches into all our neighbors’ yards. In one season’s time, we’ve watched the leaves grow from green to orange to tan and then fall in the yard.
We’re not yet sure if we’ll need to tear the house down, but I know one thing: I’m gonna hang a swing from that tree next week -- my son’s almost old enough to appreciate it.
posted by Lou at 5:26 AM
3 Comments:
careful when the architects start talking about sensing the soul of your place. their next psychic feat will be levitating the benjamins out of your wallet.
some lovely thoughtful words on the soul of a place. as Kathryn's husband, we've had some talks along these lines. she was struck enough by the piece to show it to me after I returned from tour.
Glad you enjoyed it. It's strange how attached you become to a place. We now have a nice leak in the roof that makes me feel like the house is bleeding.
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