518 Fairview Circle
Linda Palka
The 1925 Period
Tudor at 518 Fairview Circle may have been the first house on
the street.
It is situated sideways on its lot—a very English way of placing a
house. The
main door doesn’t face the street and entering the house feels like
coming through
a garden. The garage and driveway at the back are accessed off
Oakwood Street.
Looking fresh and sparkling in its coat of white paint, this
delightful
cottage-style house shows itself off without parked cars cluttering
the view.
Linda Palka
bought the house in 1997. Young and motivated, Palka has transformed the
house inside and out. She started on the exterior with a new roof and gutters,
and she repainted the house herself. Next she hired a plumber to
replace toilets,
fixtures, the water heater, the garbage disposal, and basement
pipes. An electrician
upgraded the circuits, installed additional plugs, and wired
the garage.
In summer 1998 she set to work on a two-level backyard deck, complete with
arbor. In 1999 she painted and carpeted inside, replaced light fixtures,
and planted lots of flower bulbs.
Palka’s biggest
project took place in summer 2000. With the help of her dad, she
gutted the
kitchen, opening up a wall between it and the dining room. The result
is a spacious,
light-filled room. Doors were removed from the sunroom off the
living room,
creating another expansive and airy space. The house’s three bathrooms
have been renovated—Palka did the tiling herself.
Linda Palka’s
energy is matched by her creativity. Her home is comfortable and
warm, distinctly
her personal space. Shaker-style furniture, framed quilt pieces,
and her own
hand-woven baskets are all around. The flowers and plantings in the
yard are delightful.
Tourgoers are going to love seeing this wonderful old-new place.
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1307 Westmoorland Drive
Kevin and Andrea Webber
This delightful
Cape Cod house in the Normal Park neighborhood is the work of
two well-known
Ypsilanti architects: Ward Swarts, who designed the house in
1939, and Zack
Gerganoff, who designed an addition in 1967 that created a new
kitchen and
a garage. The blueprints will be on display during the tour for those
visitors intrigued
to see how it all began.
Bancroft Brien,
who commissioned the house, lived in it with his family for fifty-two years.
Long-time residents of Ypsilanti still remember the shoe store on
Michigan Avenue
that Mr. Brien owned and operated for many years.
Two subsequent
owners lived in the house for a total of only six years. Now, the
Webbers, just
the fourth owners in sixty-three years, are lovingly caring for
the house.
The windows,
woodwork, hardware, and several light fixtures are all original.
The red oak
floors are also original, except in the office where newly laid flooring
was selected
to match that in the rest of the house. Beautiful wormy chestnut,
now next to
impossible to find, panels the small, inviting library.
Much-loved
antiques, attractive accessories, and bright, cheerful art greet the
eye at every
turn.
Winter evenings
in this charming home must be quite wonderful, with two working
fireplaces
warming the living room and the kitchen.
Tourgoers will
enjoy the lovely front yard, landscaped just last year, and the
backyard with
its greenhouse, fireplace, and stone terrace. |
35 South Summit Street
Eric and Karen Maurer
This diva of
a house has had a long and eclectic life, beginning as a Gothic
Revival sometime
in the mid-nineteenth century and ending up as a Queen Anne.
“It’s a sampler,
quite wonderful, an architectural history lesson by itself,” said
Heritage Foundation
board member Jane Bird Schmiedeke in a 1986 Ann Arbor
News article.
From a modest
frame structure built perhaps as early as 1842, the house
evolved until
the 1890s, when it began to look like it does today.
By 1859 several
additions to the house had resulted in steeply pitched gables on
all four of
its sides. Walter Beach bought the house in 1865 to live in with his
wife and their
expanding family (they eventually had eight children). Beach soon
embellished
the house, adding a long veranda with a porte-cochere at the south
end, a prominent
tower in the northwest corner, and elaborate wooden gingerbread.
These alterations represented important nineteenth-century status symbols.
The popular Queen Anne style had peaked and was already in decline by 1893
when Beach sold his highly fashionable house.
The house has
had too many owners to list here. Between 1856 and 1910, for
example, the
land changed hands more than twenty times. A 1936 photo shows a
boarded up
house left to rot. It was eventually repaired and lived on as an apartment
house and recently as an EMU fraternity.
Today the gods
are smiling on this venerable beauty. Owners Eric and Karen
Maurer are
living in the house with their four children and restoring it as a single-
family home
(Eric’s dad lives with them in an apartment on the north side).
The house is
a work in progress and tourgoers will relish their chance to see
what the progress
the Maurers have done to restore their home to its nineteenth century glory.
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126 West Michigan Avenue
Joseph D. Lawrence
Located in the
heart of downtown Ypsilanti, 126 West Michigan Avenue has been
in Joseph Lawrence’s
family since 1854. According to historical records, this
three-story
High Victorian commercial building was constructed by Walter B.
Hewitt sometime
between 1836 and 1854 as part of what was called the W. B.
Hewitt Brick
Block, which included 126, 128, and 130 West Michigan Avenue.
Lawrence’s tenant,
Jennifer Albaum, proprietor of the newly opened women’s
fashion and
gift store Henrietta Fahrenheit, has restored the main floor of the
building. The
storefront had been unoccupied for a decade—before that it had
been home to
an optometrist’s office for twenty years, a wig shop, a restaurant,
and women’s
clothing stores. Albaum removed the examination rooms in the back
of the building
and the counters in the reception area in front. The original tin
ceiling was
reasonably intact above a couple of drop acoustic-tile ceilings. After
replacing some
missing tin tiles and scraping off the glue that bonded the tin to
the first layer
of acoustic tile, Albaum had the ceiling painted silver. Behind three
layers of drywall
and two layers of wood paneling Albaum found the original
plaster walls.
The building’s
jewel is the newly restored floor. Beneath multiple layers of
linoleum and
tile lay a lovely maple floor outlined in tulipwood. Joe Lawrence
believes the
floor had been covered up for more than 100 years.
Jennifer Albaum
has enjoyed her experience restoring an old building in downtown
Ypsilanti.
“It’s really a matter of discovering the gems and polishing them off,”
she says.
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210 West Cross Street
Cross StreetVillage
Cross Street
Village, formerly Old Ypsilanti High School, was designed by
Ypsilanti architect
R. S. Gerganoff. The neoclassical building was constructed in
three stages.
The 1917 three-story southwest wing is a tapestry-brick classroom
building. The
southeast wing, added in 1929, includes a central entry with a
clock tower;
its classroom wing closely matches the style of the 1917 structure,
creating the
appearance of a single building. The simple Art Deco-style two-story
1950s northwest
wing, built to house industrial arts classrooms, features steel,
factory-style
windows.
After a new
high school opened in 1972, the school district used Old Ypsilanti
High School
for adult education classes. In 1995 the district closed the building,
which sat vacant
until a collaborative community process led to its purchase
several years
ago by American Community Builders for conversion to moderate income housing
for senior citizens.
Cross Street
Village’s 104 apartments, which include eighteen different floor
plans created
by Ypsilanti restoration architect Elisabeth Knibbe, are occupied
by many retired
Ypsilantians (a quarter of the residents attended high school in
the building).
As much as possible, original details of the building have been preserved,
including the wonderful Pewabic tiles in the beautifully furnished hallways.
Tourgoers will
see several apartments today, including Martha Walton’s on the
second floor
of the west wing. A long-time city resident, Walton collects antiques
and old postcards.
Another dyed-in-the-wool Ypsilantian, Lou Bunting, displays
her generations
of family photos (including some that predate the Civil War) on
the walls of
her corner third-floor apartment in the east wing.
The superb restoration/adaptation
of the Old Ypsilanti High School is a terrific
example of
how small communities can work together to preserve their public
landmark buildings.
The Ypsilanti Public Schools, City Council, Historic District
Commission,
and city administration worked along with local volunteers from
many organizations
to save this architecturally and historically important building
in the heart
of Michigan’s second-largest historic district.
|
402 East Cross Street
Mark and Julie Fisher
Built about
1859 as a single-family residence, the Italianate home at 402 East
Cross was converted
to a duplex in 1937 and purchased by the affluent McHenry
family to serve
as their summer home. They also owned a farm on Whitaker Road
that was purchased
by the government and is now the site of the Ypsilanti post
office. Mr.
McHenry and his eldest daughter, Marie Isabelle, had a thriving law
practice and
winter residence in Grosse Pointe. However, they are probably more
well known
for the McHenry family slayings committed by younger daughter Ruth
on September
30, 1937. After the tragedy Mr. McHenry returned to the Detroit
area, and the
duplex fell into disrepair while occupied by a series of tenants.
In 1994 Mark
and Julie Fisher purchased the duplex. They have lovingly restored
it to a single-family
home, doing much of the work themselves. Because of a high
level of abuse
and neglect, the Fishers had to do extensive renovations to the exterior
structural timbers, the interior walls, and the support beams. To join
the two halves of the home, they removed one staircase and returned two
others to their original locations. A single updated kitchen with a charming
nook and French doors replaced the two duplex kitchens. The beautiful arched
firebox in the front room is one of three fireplaces thoughtfully made
to appear original. To add continuity to the redesigned interior, Mark
and his father built several pieces of furniture along with the dining
room bookshelves.
The Fishers’
attention to detail, from the restoration of the gingerbread at the
roofline to
their personal collection of family photos to their daughter’s outdoor
playhouse,
has shown that with hard work and helpful neighbors a former eyesore
can be restored
to a lovely neighborhood gem.
|
302 Oak Street
Kim Clarke and Barry LaRue
This Italianate
house at 302 Oak Street was built around 1858 as a simple one and-a-half-story
farmhouse. Depot Town saloonkeeper George Cady and his wife, Emma, were
the first owners of record. By 1880 the house had been transformed to an
Italianate. The second-floor ceilings were raised to their current
height of eleven
feet; additions included a bay window on the first floor, eave
brackets, and
front and side porches.
The home’s first
indoor toilets came in 1889 with the introduction of Ypsilanti’s
municipal water
system. A large carriage barn was erected on the site of the
present garage,
which was built in 1939.
Jacob Shadley,
a worker at the Michigan Ladder Company, purchased the house
from the Cadys
in 1912. In 1935, salesman Wallace Loeffler bought the home
and converted
it to apartments. This was a common move by Ypsilanti homeowners facing
the economic and housing demands of the Depression and World War II.
Mr. Loeffler’s
daughter, Doris Trowbridge, sold the house in 1975 and four subsequent
owners added their signatures. Apartments were removed, hardwood
floors refinished,
plaster repaired, gardens planted, and the kitchen enlarged.
Barry LaRue
and Kim Clarke bought the house in 2000. They raised the roof over the
kitchen and family room to add a second-floor master bedroom suite. They
also constructed a two-story back porch by demolishing a neglected mudroom.
They have wallpapered several rooms and installed reclaimed historic light
fixtures. Artificial siding has been removed from the house’s exterior
to expose preserved original clapboard.
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