Photo by David Diesing
May 23, 2008
by Jane Lindau
On Thursday, June 5, from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m., the New Castle Historical Society will host its annual house tour.
This fundraiser benefits the historical society’s mission, which is to discover, collect, preserve and communicate the history of the town of New Castle. This event also supports the historical society’s Greeley House museum and the educational programs the society provides to the community.
This year’s tour will feature six homes, one of which is the iconic glass house pictured above. This house is sited privately and furnished in archetypal modern style. In the mid-1960s, homeowner Augustus Mino and his wife Rita visited Phillip Johnson’s glass house in New Canaan, Connecticut. They liked it so much, they decided to build one of their own. Mino, a gifted artist, sculptor and graphic designer, employed architect Robert Fitzpatrick to help him design the “copy,” which was finished in 1967 at the cost of $65,000.
Frank Lloyd Wright house included on tour
A Frank Lloyd Wright house, still owned by its original owner, is also included on this year’s tour. In January 1947, Usonia Homes Cooperative purchased 97 acres of property near King Street in eastern Mount Pleasant as a site for a new residential community. The corporation was formed by a group of like-minded residents of New York City who shared an idealistic commitment to the consumer cooperative as a way to maximize economic efficiency and achieve social equity. Wright himself coined the term Usonia as a name for communities in which most residents would occupy their own homes on one-acre lots. The house on the tour is one of these Usonia homes.
Another highlight of the tour is the Stephen Carpenter House, which was built by a prominent Quaker family and shows up on a 1797 map of New Castle. This house is built on seven levels and is surrounded by formal gardens. The hearth in the basement is ancient and possibly pre-dates the Revolutionary War.
Sears Catalogue house and true Colonial house on view
Anyone who stopped by the Greeley House this spring to see their exhibition on Sears Catalogue houses will recognize the hilltop 1920s Sears Catalogue home on the tour, which was featured in the exhibit. This house is the “Honor” model, originally built in 1928 for a cost of $2,747. Its design was basically Colonial Revival, but with several idiosyncratic flourishes, such as wide eaves, “eyebrow” dormers and curved roof edges that recall thatch.
Clever architecture will be on display in an antique home set on a babbling brook and ingeniously expanded into a hillside by its architect owner. The earliest section may be the part now occupied by the dining room with its small “eyebrow” windows on the attic-like second floor. It may go back to colonial times, when the pioneer families who settled in New Castle crammed themselves into small, quickly erected, but nonetheless sturdy, shelters.
The final house on the tour is a classic shingle-style compound designed with warmth and flair for a young family. When this house was built in 1954 it was the twin sister to the Bradley-built Garrison Colonial next door and remained as such until the current homeowners purchased it in 1996. Since then, they have changed most of the house through three renovation projects.
Tickets for the house tour are $70 for members and $80 for non-members of the New Castle Historical Society. An optional lunch is available at Crabtree’s Kittle House for $25. Tickets are available at the Greeley House. Please call 238-4666 for additional information.
Copyright 2008 NewCastleNOW.org