Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Our Chopped Up American Foursquare



Here's how our homestead looked originally. Wow, a classic American Foursquare with a lovely wrap around porch....sigh. Many of the neighboring Foursquares still have their original features, though many have additions to the rear kitchen. The documentation we have says the house was built in 1940. It was previously owned for 51 years by the family we purchased it from. And before that for 16 years by another family.

The current version of our home falls into the "Classic Expanded, Chopped up, Pasted over Foursquare" category. The former owners fully enclosed the wrap around porch to create an expanded living room, office/kitchen, and bathroom. The original living room became a bedroom. All of this was rented out as a small 1 br apartment. It appears that what is now an office was used as a kitchen. The only evidence of this that remains is the old kitchen vent fan on the exterior wall of the office. Like most foursquares in town, we have rear kitchen addition. The 2nd floor still retains its original layout. The attic has been finished off.



While the whole wrap around porch action is pretty appealing and charming, I'll settle for the expanded spaces and chopped up layout. Even though all expanded spaces need a combination of insulation under their crawl spaces and cellulose blown into the walls. It's on the projects list. Brrrrrrr, drafty old house!!

I've been researching American Foursquares on the internet, but have not been able to locate plans for our house. Perhaps a trip to the town library may yield more information as to which companies were shipping houses via train cars to town.

1 Comments:

At January 16, 2008 at 4:21 PM , Blogger Fred said...

House looks great. I left another comment on your floors post. Those floors are amazing. I'd love to see the finished product.

Fred
www.oneprojectcloser.com

 

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