Let's look at old houses!
March 11, 2020 4:05 PM   Subscribe

Let's look at pictures of beautiful old houses and daydream about buying them! Are you interested in a Queen Anne in Vermont? Or maybe a Nebraska fixer with fireplaces and lots of wallpaper that begs to be replaced with some historically accurate paint?

Here's a place in New York that used to be a barn. This Craftsman in Iowa has so much woodwork. Another Craftsman in Colorado was just renovated, so you don't have to do anything!

But maybe you want to imagine what you would do in detail? Try an 1880 Queen Anne in Georgia, "Moon House" in Illinois, or this little gem in Montana.

Are you sure you want to live in a HOUSE? You could also live in a church, school, antique store, library or lighthouse.

Let's gossip about houses!
posted by Snarl Furillo (41 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
I don’t have a budget for renovating or buying anything but I am loving looking at these pictures. In my fantasy world, I would be delighted to renovate the Carnegie library or the lighthouse or pretty much anything else. I watch fixer-upper as renovation porn but it’s exhausting because of the gender stereotyping. As well as the overwhelming whiteness of everyone involved with very few exceptions. Anyway, good job OP! I am loving these links.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:10 PM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


These are great links, and I'd love to scroll through, but as someone who loves unique houses but overpaid for an unremarkable house in Northern California recently, I am having a wide variety of emotions.
posted by mmc at 4:14 PM on March 11, 2020 [7 favorites]


And the 1971 McMansion Hell post is up...
posted by Windopaene at 4:19 PM on March 11, 2020


Note to 1895 self: Don't let Stanford White design your mansion. Just don't. The first thing that came to mind in seeing that first image was Cerberus. If there were two of them. Inside's got great bones, though.
posted by droplet at 4:24 PM on March 11, 2020


After years of saying I would never buy an old house, I now co-own (with my parents) a 7200 sq ft. mansion from 1850. (Um, this is upstate NY real estate. What we spent wouldn't buy a closet in most cities.). Long story. Anyway, I've visited the original owners. I have creepy staircases in my basement, a really cool main staircase (that terrible carpet is gone), some neat closets, and original floors and woodwork. Fortunately, this is no longer the kitchen.

Downsides: contractors run in terror from this house. It took four months to find an electrician to bring the wiring back up to code. I am trying not to think about the plumbing (some of which is obviously bizarre even to a non-plumber like me). All of the floors are cockeyed--very spectacularly so upstairs--so there's creative engineering going on with all my bookcases to make sure that I don't accidentally reenact the conclusion of Howards End (and some pretty extensive engineering to make sure that the books in my main library don't wind up in the basement). And let's just say that my mother and I now have a running joke about me assuring her that nothing has fallen down, in, or out recently, because various parts of the house have done just that...
posted by thomas j wise at 4:44 PM on March 11, 2020 [24 favorites]


Downsides: contractors run in terror from this house. It took four months to find an electrician to bring the wiring back up to code

Hah, yes. We live in a historic district and willing contractors are so rare that people pass around their names as if they're telling you about their drug dealer. "I can't give you his name but I'll give him your number and he'll text you if he can fit you in for an estimate" It took me a year to find someone to fix my chimney; hopefully he's coming in a few weeks if we're all still alive by then.
posted by octothorpe at 4:56 PM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]


oldhousesunder50k.com is one of the sites I check every morning, alongside Metafilter.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:17 PM on March 11, 2020 [9 favorites]


To be fair to Stanford White, though his is a late example, octagon houses were actually A Thing once upon a time!

I also recently learned that "Queen Anne" can refer to two different styles. The American Queen Anne with the round towers and exaggerated Victorian features, and the European Queen Anne style from the time of the actual living Queen Anne in the early 1700s, which is totally different.
posted by rhizome at 5:27 PM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


The Underpants Monster: "oldhousesunder50k.com is one of the sites I check every morning, alongside Metafilter."

A lot of $50K houses are really $200K house once you start working on them.
posted by octothorpe at 5:36 PM on March 11, 2020 [18 favorites]


Quick, someone buy this $49,000 house in Cedar Rapids. You could be my neighbor, and together we could rescue it from that unfortunate mint green paint job.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:36 PM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]


"A lot of $50K houses are really $200K house once you start working on them."


A lot of $50K houses are really $200K houses once you put $250k of work into them.

FTFY.
posted by mikeand1 at 5:56 PM on March 11, 2020 [25 favorites]


oh weird, one of these is a house in my home town that I've walked by a 100 times. what a strange feeling!
posted by wellifyouinsist at 6:03 PM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


Note to 1895 self: Don't let Stanford White design your mansion. Just don't. The first thing that came to mind in seeing that first image was Cerberus. If there were two of them. Inside's got great bones, though.

... was this where interior scenes of Mother were filmed?
posted by eviemath at 6:03 PM on March 11, 2020


Sigh I love looking at these too..but...we owned a house from the 1960s for a while- definitely nowhere near the age or coolness of these and it had a lot of quirkiness and charm and we loved it. We did a lot of diy, just simple everyday handyman kind of stuff and there were alwaaaaays.....surprises. We had to move and I guess we now own a modest mc-not-mansion that is new and boring and has less charm. But last spring, we refloored our three season room. Reader, it turned out to be a perfectly rectangular room!!! Which I know because we had no surprise angles!!! Every cut of tile was 90 degrees! And the subfloor did not need to be ripped out before we began. We didn’t find any rodent corpses beneath the visible layer!!!! It was soooo easy! So I’m torn.

Maybe I’m just not rich enough to afford the rectangular AND charming home....
posted by Tandem Affinity at 6:30 PM on March 11, 2020 [6 favorites]


I have fantasies of a place like that library, but the reality is that I could only afford it in places where I am not so interested in living. But still, I can imagine.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:33 PM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


This house is a marvel. It make me smile every time I drive by it. I know it's a weird thing to say about architecture, but I feel like the building excudes high-spiritedness. Joy. Verve.

The price is, uh, strong because it's a mile or so from Hudson, NY, a town that's become flush with weekender money. But I would bet my hat that the right buyer could get it for less.
posted by minervous at 6:58 PM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]


Magical Pound Ridge Compound

*places hand to mouth*

No comment.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:02 PM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


Address: 39 Old Snake Hill Road, Pound Ridge, NY

*snickers*

Beautiful piece of property, though.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:05 PM on March 11, 2020




Everybody in America needs a gay friend to show up and say ‘please don’t do this terrible thing you’re about to do to that kitchen or bathroom.”
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 7:19 PM on March 11, 2020 [6 favorites]


This house is a marvel. It make me smile every time I drive by it. ... I feel like the building excudes high-spiritedness. Joy. Verve.

It looks like it's proudly sporting a jaunty cap.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:28 PM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


Renovated, circa 1850 stone schoolhouse with a BELL, for all your Little House on the Prairie needs
posted by Iris Gambol at 7:28 PM on March 11, 2020 [3 favorites]


Yaaaaay, we are gossiping about houses!!!

We had to move and I guess we now own a modest mc-not-mansion that is new and boring and has less charm. But last spring, we refloored our three season room. Reader, it turned out to be a perfectly rectangular room!!! Which I know because we had no surprise angles!!! Every cut of tile was 90 degrees!

Honestly, a lot of the fun of these for me is daydreaming and not actually having to DEAL with them. The house I grew up in is c. 1880, and my dad added a doorway between two interior rooms a few years ago. It needed like...a 6-inch step. There's no visible difference in grade between the two interior rooms and the room that already connects them. It's like looking at an optical illusion.

Plus, they are all enormous. I don't need 7 bedrooms. I don't want to run a B&B. I don't want to heat a 7 bedroom B&B! I just want to look at the surviving pocket doors and daydream about how OF COURSE you would close off the parlor in the winter, heating with wood wouldn't be SOOO bad...*

*it would be so bad.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 7:33 PM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


Renovated, circa 1850 stone schoolhouse with a BELL, for all your Little House on the Prairie needs

That tin ceiling!

See, this is why daydreaming is perfect. 10 months a year Lake George is too cold for life, and the other two there are way too many people; propane is expensive; I bet the insurance on the bell tower is absurd...

But in my daydream I would host yoga in the front part so people (me) could stare at the tin ceiling.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 7:45 PM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]


One of the nice things about owning a rowhome in Philly is that they're all super old and contractors are not afraid. Ours was built in 1876 or so. It is clear from the angle of our sagging bay window that the architect did not expect the house to last so long.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:05 PM on March 11, 2020 [4 favorites]


Downsides: contractors run in terror from this house. It took four months to find an electrician to bring the wiring back up to code.
My wife and I own a condo in a building that was built in 1910. None of the rooms are rectangular. Visitors always get lost when they visit eventhough it's only an apartment with eight rooms and one floor. Electricians that we brought in to estimate replacing the knob-and-tube wiring all wanted to take photos of our antique fusebox, and we were willing to indulge them if they were honest enough to note that said fusebox was covered in a cancer coffin of asbestos.

We're fortunate in that beyond the electrical, the apartment itself didn't need that much work. We like the rooms as they are. And the place's various quirks are charming instead of flaws that need ameliorating. After two summers of dealing with holes punched in our walls and plaster dust everywhere, we enjoyed having one summer where we could just live in our home.

It's in Boston, in a neighborhood that is replete with old houses and like everywhere else in the country, we have our share of homes that are turning over in the market and getting renovation permits put up in their windows, and everytime I see one, I hope the renovator's doing something to preserve the spirit of the building and not just doing another open floor plan lobotomy of the place.
posted by bl1nk at 8:49 PM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


Also, I should add that my wife and I make a habit of walking around our neighborhood at least one weekend out of every month, and we also now make a habit of cruising real estate sites just to see what old homes might have open houses that "just happen" to overlap with our strolling itinerary for that day. It's gotten to the point where some agents just know us as "one of those couples" and they don't even bother to sales pitch us when they see us walking in the door.
posted by bl1nk at 8:59 PM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]


1884 stone hotel in Kingston, NM. Want. Do not need. Still want.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:40 PM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]


Renovated, circa 1850 stone schoolhouse with a BELL, for all your Little House on the Prairie needs

When I was in high school, we lived for a while in a house that had originally been a nineteenth-century country schoolhouse. Even after renovations it was a bugger to heat in winter. The church my mother attended as a child and where I was baptized is now an apartment house.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:49 PM on March 11, 2020


When marriage equality came around, my mother confessed to me that she'd long dreamed that I'd find myself a nice man, and we'd get married, buy an old Victorian, and lovingly restore it to perfection.

I could not help but wonder why anyone would wish a lifetime of repainting trim on anyone.

There's a reason that the Victorian house became the model for haunted houses—they are literally designed to be built fast, with ornate trim made in then-novel factories, and with no concept whatsoever about how they would be maintained over time. After working for a number of years as a building contractor often on the job of repairing the ravages of time in those awful old places, my dream house is something cool and modern, preferably in breton brut, without a single trace of trim. The past is a dreary place, lost in a soft rain of lead paint.
posted by sonascope at 3:46 AM on March 12, 2020 [11 favorites]


My town is about a hundred fifty years old, so it is FULL of vintage / historic houses. Heritage Hill is one of the largest areas of amazing houses. And I am so in love with the vintage paint patterns.

A local photographer has been sharing her love, and has captured some of my favorite houses

Rainbow house

Sage and gold house

Blue house with detail

Sage and pink house
posted by rebent at 6:38 AM on March 12, 2020 [5 favorites]


I own a cabin less than 5 miles (as a crow flies) from the "Store" link above! I have been there many times, the present owners are super cool, he's a restorer and racer of vintage Vespa scooters and she's a hairdresser and has refurbished the attached antique barbershop to vintage perfection! The place is AMAZING!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 8:06 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


my dream house is something cool and modern, preferably in breton brut

Really? You think painting trim is difficult compared to repairing and color matching old concrete?
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:03 AM on March 12, 2020


I've got a 1907 American foursquare in Toledo's Old West End. If you don't know how to do things yourself these old houses are money pits, especially if you have to abide by Historic District regulations. I regret allowing myself to be talked into buying it, I'm the wrong person for this house.
posted by charred husk at 9:11 AM on March 12, 2020 [2 favorites]


Our Baltimore house just turned 100 yrs old. It's wild that I'm replacing and repairing mostly things that were replaced and "updated" in the 50s and 60s, but the original plaster and hardwood and guts of the house are in good shape.
posted by HumanComplex at 9:36 AM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


You think painting trim is difficult compared to repairing and color matching old concrete?

Almost infinitely so. I had to strip, clean, sand, and repaint an overhead spindle screen in the broad curve of a single arch in a house in Baltimore and it took a solid week for just that one task.

Meanwhile, in the same span of time on a following job, I did a subtle modernization of two fantastic period bathrooms in a brutalist Usonian-style bunglalow, stripped and refinished some outdoor trim, and recaulked all the clerestories and still had time for a little landscaping. The concrete, of course, was aging gorgeously fifty years on, with the subtle darkening that further highlighted the imprinted woodgrain from the formwork and nary a crack to be found. Plus, the massing of spaces and the omnipresence of sunlight and tree canopy in the nearly 360 degree clerestories in that place continues to take my breath away, unlike the dank Victorian formal rooms of the former structure.

Victorians and other dollhouse architectures are great if you're a contractor with clients with a fading gingerbread house and unlimited funds, but for the owner-renovator? Oy vey. It was precisely the experience of being a well-paid fusstussler in those old shingled wedding cakes that obliterated my former enthusiasm for such things.
posted by sonascope at 9:43 AM on March 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


On the other hand, if you're looking to get a jump on your queer polyamorous commune, a giant historical house that needs more love than money might just be what you need!
posted by explosion at 11:05 AM on March 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


I could not help but wonder why anyone would wish a lifetime of repainting trim on anyone.

Well to be fair to your mom, the 8-color Victorian thing is a recent invention (hippies), and authentically period color schemes are decidedly simpler.
posted by rhizome at 1:20 PM on March 12, 2020 [1 favorite]


Churches are an interesting conversion, particularly when they're well-built masonry instead of shambling frame. I did a bit of work on this particular converted church (including building framing and re-hanging the two angels in photos 8, 15, and 17 of 30), and it is a genuinely inspiring space, albeit less so without the previous owner's collection of seven-foot-tall mechanical music boxes. That said, heating or cooling it is more or less impossible on anything but a very, very generous income, which is why the living area off the sanctuary is set up with roller doors to abandon it to the seasons when there are no guests afoot.

Given my having inexplicably fallen into managing and maintaining some amazing adaptive reuse projects in Baltimore (American Visionary Art Museum, the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower, and School 33 Art Center), I should probably be less of a downer about such things, because I absolutely get why we love such places—they are very often magical spaces—but managing the budgets required and the project planning involved in keeping them from suddenly turning into rubble piles has taken the shine off the idea of actually owning such things.

Was a good line of work for a stretch, though.
posted by sonascope at 3:20 PM on March 12, 2020 [3 favorites]


The concrete, of course, was aging gorgeously fifty years on, with the subtle darkening that further highlighted the imprinted woodgrain from the formwork and nary a crack to be found.

50 years is pretty close to the average age of a house in the US, so you are comparing average to about 2-3X past average.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:42 AM on March 13, 2020


I can't believe we're arguing about preference here.
posted by rebent at 8:15 AM on March 13, 2020


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