Typing My Brain...: architecture

Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts

Thursday, July 28, 2016

An Interesting House in Bethlehem, PA or I'M BACK!

Hellooooooooo. I’ve been away from my blog for a while (about a year?), but I finally found a topic that has inspired me to post once more!

What’s this all about?

There’s a house on Linden St in Bethlehem, PA that I’ve always been curious about. Have a look:

Pretty unique, right? That giant stained glass window, the stone porch beams carved to look like trees, that crazy looking peaked roof on the back part of the building: it doesn’t look like any other house in the area. Since the outside is so ornate, I’ve always wondered what the interior looks like. Well we are in luck - the house is currently for sale, and several real estate companies have photos!

Links to real estate listings:

Note: If the photos are taken down from the real estate websites, just leave a comment and I’ll try to get in touch with you.

The realtor’s (Weichert) description of the home provides more information (emphasis mine):

“This stone gingerbread house with walls of old mosaics, carved stone porch columns and stained glass windows has tremendous historical and artistic value and is listed by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. It was built by Tilghman Fogel from 1899 to 1906 and every exterior wall is a work of art. The hand-crafted blocks have a menagerie of story telling and each are an artistic expression, with blown glass, Chinaware, and many artifacts built by hand in an artistic tale. This is a large estate style property with what was a stable attached in the rear, which is now a 4+ car garage and workshop, with a 3 bedroom apartment on the top. This is surrounded by almost 3 acres of prime, flat, partially wooded land. Originally designed all 29 rooms for active air flow and natural light for most of the day. Much of the 100 year old architecture has been preserved. This house must be valued as "artwork" and it will captivate your artistic imagination immediately.”

Who was Tilghman Fogel? Google Books to the rescue! Tilghman Fogel (1850-1935) was a member of a seemingly prominent agricultural family in Lower Nazareth Township, Northampton County, PA. If you’d like to learn about his family, check out pages 413-414 in this Google Book:

Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania

Fun fact: I also found another Tilghman Fogel (1842 - 1915), from Lehigh County, who was a well-known blind musician. The two men do not appear to be immediately related.

But what about the house?!

Now that we know a little about the family, let’s talk about the house. Why would a prominent farmer decide to build such an eccentric home? Google Books comes to the rescue again, with two articles containing details about the home itself:

Technical World Magazine, Volume 10

Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality, Volume 66

In summary, Tilghman Fogel built the home after he traveled around the United States, collecting souvenir rocks, broken glass, and other scraps along the way. He decided to incorporate his plethora of souvenirs into the facade of his new home, embedding his creativity into the house itself.

While looking for information on Tilgman Fogel and his “Souvenir House”, I came across a photo of some unknown young men on the home’s porch:

As such a unique home with an interesting history, I hope someone buys this home and really makes it shine.

Friday, July 31, 2015

Photo Phriday - 2015 07 31

The Ghost Building in downtown Denver! In my blog about Denver's Chilled Water Plant I mentioned that a historic building was disassembled to make room for the Chilled Water Plant in 1979, and that said historic building was reassembled 6 years later at 18th & Stout. This is that building.

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Welby Manor: An Old Building Just North of Denver

One evening, driving around the northern Denver metro area, I drove past a really cool old house. I always enjoy seeing interesting old buildings; remnants of days past. My excitement turned to sadness when I saw a notice posted on the door. It was dark and the house was set back pretty far from the road, so I couldn't read the notice. I assumed it was a demolition permit or something similar. I picked up my phone* and started searching for nearby addresses to see what was going on. Why would someone tear down such a cool building?! I know it's often cheaper and easier to scrape a lot and build some new, trendy, giant mixed-media thing, but... I prefer the character of old buildings. They tell a story of the people who lived in the community.

As it turns out, the family that owns the building and surrounding land have been in that area since the late 1800s. They aren't demolishing the building, they are renovating it and turning it into a focal point of the Welby community! They are even hoping to turn it into a local museum. Great news!

I went back a few weeks later and took some photos:

You can read more about Welby Manor here. I'm glad that this building is being preserved, and I can't wait to see how the renovation progresses!

*I wasn't driving; I was a passenger. Drive safe!

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Lumpy Brick Facades

Denver seems to love an architectural "style"* that I had never noticed prior to moving here. Lumpy-looking brick facades! Particularly on 1960s and 1970s apartment buildings. Ready for some examples?

Examples
1270 Marion St, built 1965

252 Pennsylvania St, built 1971

1265 Downing St, built 1970

1783 Hudson St, built in 1928 (Bonus: a single-family home!)

Clinkers
So what is the deal with all of these lumpy-looking buildings? After much searching, and thanks to ReadReidRead's blog post, I now know. They're called clinker bricks, also known as "eccentric brickwork". Deformed bricks used to be discarded, but then in the early 1900s someone had the brilliant idea to use them in actual building facades. I'm all for using waste and byproducts, but let's just say the execution on this style isn't my favorite. Used sparingly, clinker bricks can draw your eyes to different parts of a building. But when a majority of the facade is made with clinker bricks? It kind of looks like an inebriated person built your home.

It appears as though this trend didn't make its way to Denver until the 1960s, and fell out of favor by the end of the 1970s. While there are a few homes built with clinker bricks from earlier (see the single-family example above), the apartment buildings made with clinkers are all from the 1960s and 1970s.

Thanks to automated manufacturing, there are fewer clinkers being made today by accident. Unfortunately, it appears as though some companies actually make clinker bricks on purpose.

Sources and More Examples

*I put style in quotes, because I am not sold on their execution of such.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Buildings That Aren't What They Seem

Brooklyn Subway Vent

Back in 2011 I read BLDGBLOG's article about a house in Brooklyn that is a disguised subway vent. It was a residential brownstone that was converted into a subway vent and emergency exit in the early 1900s.

As luck would have it, I was scheduled to be on the east coast a few months later and built a visit into my itinerary. We found the house, and it was as odd as I'd imagined. Hidden in plain view. How much of the neighborhood is really aware of what lurks behind those doors?

As I walked up to the front door a lady walking down the street said to me, "they make it look so real, don't they". She knows!

Denver Chilled Water Center

I wasn't planning to blog about the Brooklyn brownstone/vent because BLDGBLOG and others have already done so, and I have no additional information to provide. But then I read about a building in downtown Denver. Disguised as an office building, it is really a facility that serves cold water to nearby buildings.

An excerpt from District Energy - Denver’s Historic System: Still Full Steam Ahead:

"A dedicated Chilled Water Center was built in the heart of downtown Denver, ‘disguised’ to look like an eight-story office building. The first cooling customer was served in August 1998. The Chilled Water Center incorporates two ice tanks with storage capacity of 75,000 ton-hrs of cooling. Ice is made at night and melted during the day to provide cold-water service to the buildings, while reducing the electrical requirements on the downtown grid during the peak daytime hours."

In addition to the Chilled Water Center, Xcel Energy also owns/operates Denver's steam system, which is the "oldest continuously operated commercial district-heating system in the world" and has approximately 130 customers. For comparison, ConEd's steam system in New York City serves approximately 2000 customers. Denver's Chilled Water Center serves approximately 40 customers.

Unlike the brownstone/vent in Brooklyn, the Chilled Water Center was built for its current purpose. Prior to the Chilled Water Center, the Ghost Building occupied the space at 15th & Glenarm. In 1979, it was dismantled so the Chilled Water Center could be built, and re-built in 1985 at 18th & Stout.

Sources

Brooklyn Brownstone Subway Vent: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/brooklyn-vent.html

ConEd's Steam System: http://gothamist.com/2005/11/28/superhot_steam.php

Xcel's Chilled Water Center in Denver: