House History, Part II
Previously, I discovered the first owners of this house were the Mercks of Jacksonville's Merck Drug Co. I found out a little more about them from online research this weekend. Frank was 26 and wife Marion was 25 when they bought the house for about $7000, some months after they married in 1927. Marion was from South Carolina and was 18 when she married a produce salesman named John, living near the future Merck drugstore in the Springfield neighborhood. Frank was born in north Georgia in 1901, and died in 1983 in Ocala (about 1 1/2 hours southwest from here). Marion died in Ocala in 1988, days short of her 87th birthday. Frank's store partner, Edna Hullinger, was born in 1878 in Georgia and lived in an apt. next to their Main St. store. A theater couple, in scenery and box office, lived in the adjacent apartment. It does not seem Mr. Merck was of the Merck & Co. family; sorry, Mom.
Big Red Fish
About this time 7 years ago, my friend Ali and I were between semesters of grad school, and with nothing interesting to do that night in a small Mississippi town, we went shopping at Walmart at 11 PM. I found a 6' long plush alaska salmon for $3. It was so weird ( sane people might say tacky?) I needed it. I wandered to the fabric section as I'm prone to doing, and found some flat brown netting which I thought would be ok curtains for my brown 80s apartment. I wanted 4 yards and the woman at the cutting table said "Now, some folks from a church just bought a whole lotta this for a play." That gave me the idea to put the fish in the netting and hang it from my living room ceiling. More like art installation than interior decorating. Now I agonize over authentic 20's paint color and curtains, and butterfly hinges vs mortised, and where to put electric outlets. And it isn't nearly as freeing or amusing as a giant toy fish stuck to the wall.
Spelunking..ugh
I took no less than 44 photos during a recent trip under the house. No, I don't use drugs under my house. These photos here are the glamorous, beautiful cream of the crop. They are small in case you are eating.
This rusty thing I found under the bathroom. It's about 8" long and could be mistaken for a faucet except that, it's rusty and the "spigot" hole goes all the way through. Both ends look round but are actually a hex shape. Perhaps it's a bracket of some sort, maybe for the toilet?
Here, it looks like the bathroom gas heater (radiator?) was installed underneath the sink. Does this mean the house had a wall-mounted sink, not a pedestal? Our inspector did say the white PVC should be replaced with the less-likely to freeze CPVC. Luckily this year it was 29 degrees at the lowest, for about 3 hours. And it was a warm 29.
This photo shows rotted wood torn away revealing a 2-3' length of original mesh and mortar tile floor. Glad to see it's so very supported from below. I don't know how much will be salvagable. I would totally try to find green reproduction tile, or if not, buy a kiln and learn to make it, and then sit there and piece the tiny tiles together. I will not give up my obsessive quest. Perhaps American Restoration Tile would know something.
But here are some newly found hex and black tiles from below the floor, once buried in rubble and now back together with their mosaic tile friends. I bet the green would be prettier if it was sealed. It must be a border to the hex. The tops of the black baseboard tiles had whisps of white paint, possibly making a match to the scored false-tile plaster board pieces in the rubble, also painted white, meaning there was no water-repeling wall tile when the bathroom was built. I think the white subway tile was installed in the kitchen.
And some mischief with a sleeping cat. If we could train her unconscious to hold a pencil, maybe she'll learn to write!
This rusty thing I found under the bathroom. It's about 8" long and could be mistaken for a faucet except that, it's rusty and the "spigot" hole goes all the way through. Both ends look round but are actually a hex shape. Perhaps it's a bracket of some sort, maybe for the toilet?
Here, it looks like the bathroom gas heater (radiator?) was installed underneath the sink. Does this mean the house had a wall-mounted sink, not a pedestal? Our inspector did say the white PVC should be replaced with the less-likely to freeze CPVC. Luckily this year it was 29 degrees at the lowest, for about 3 hours. And it was a warm 29.
This photo shows rotted wood torn away revealing a 2-3' length of original mesh and mortar tile floor. Glad to see it's so very supported from below. I don't know how much will be salvagable. I would totally try to find green reproduction tile, or if not, buy a kiln and learn to make it, and then sit there and piece the tiny tiles together. I will not give up my obsessive quest. Perhaps American Restoration Tile would know something.
But here are some newly found hex and black tiles from below the floor, once buried in rubble and now back together with their mosaic tile friends. I bet the green would be prettier if it was sealed. It must be a border to the hex. The tops of the black baseboard tiles had whisps of white paint, possibly making a match to the scored false-tile plaster board pieces in the rubble, also painted white, meaning there was no water-repeling wall tile when the bathroom was built. I think the white subway tile was installed in the kitchen.
And some mischief with a sleeping cat. If we could train her unconscious to hold a pencil, maybe she'll learn to write!
Cornell U Human Ecology Photographs
From up where we used to live, Cornell's library has made available online photographs of their home and institutional economics classes, homemaking apartments (5 weeks of learning how to properly clean and cook and even practice with a real loaner baby!) interior design, nutrition and agricultural fairs. Most photos date from 1910-1945. On their HEARTH website there are 1003 volumes of books and journals, mainly from 1850 to 1925, consisting of the stuff women's days were made like dressmaking, gardening, decorating and chosing colors for your home, and childcare.
From the HEARTH front page:
From the HEARTH front page:
"Home Economists in early 20th century America had a major role in the Progressive Era, the development of the welfare state, the triumph of modern hygiene and scientific medicine, the application of scientific research in a number of industries, and the popularization of important research on child development, family health, and family economics. What other group of American women did so much, all over the country, and got so little credit? ... We must do everything we can to preserve and organize records and materials from this important female ghetto."
- Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Stephen H. Weiss
Presidential Fellow and Professor, Cornell University College of Human Ecology
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