As we have covered in past posts, Bliss Tract House No. 4 on Isabel Street was a poster child for all custom bungalows which had been abused by subsequent owners. It was built in 1906 by Guy Stanley Bliss with the backing of His father Ashley and close family friend, English banker Edmond O. Tucker. True to the craftsman aesthetic, Bliss was a builder and designer. No trained architect was involved in the design of this. It was stick-built, for the site of good solid material. The siding and all exterior material was stained en masse before installation, and the house was unpainted. It would have been an almost black mass on the northeast corner of Jeffries and the dirt path that is now Isabel Street. It’s face bears the marks of the neighborhood’s story. The original community flees, seeking work or less urban trappings and single family homes are transformed into duplexes inhabited by less wealthy families, and increasingly owned by exurban remote landlords to whom maintenance is an annoying necessity. These remote owners are inclined to believe it is possible to make the houses immune to maintenance problems.
- Porches get enclosed to reduce maintenance costs and increase space.
- Heavy, solid wood, five-panel doors are replaced by hollow core doors for ease of maintenance
- built-ins are ripped out in pursuit of ill-considered layout changes
- The original wood windows that are rated to last indefinitely are replaced by “zero maintenance” products that have a 15-year life-cycle, the character of the house a casualty. Fenestration is altered in the process.
- Original old-growth redwood siding stuccoed over
- Floors are covered with either cheap tile or laminate flooring
This is a preservation and restoration project, but it is also a reconstruction project. That means architectural features are lost, and will have to be rebuilt outright rather than just restored to good condition. Cues are taken from many sources.
- A close and thorough examination the building itself – Once the stucco was off we could see the outline of where the casing was fastened to the siding. This along with the position of the studding of the rough opening confirmed that the windows were not double hung for the simple reason that if the casing were lined up with where the original ones fell on the siding, a weight box would not be covered by the casing. In this way we could also derive the precise dimensions of the original windows. it was also easy to tell the original dimensions of the windows by examining the original framing.
- The builder’s other houses – We noticed the builder does not shy away from swing-in casement windows on South-facing façades. In the case of this house, the builder’s other homes were right next door, and we were even able to get original doors and windows from the dumpster when they remodeled.
- Other houses from the same time – We found another building with the same lite pattern on the windows. It even had banks of two and three casement windows with the same transitional pattern. This ended up being a red herring, in this case.
- Old real estate and fire maps – As the link above explains, even very compelling architectural cues from the era are not sufficient means of divining lost architectural features. None of the methods above are really sufficient on their own. It was not until we saw Baist’s Real Estate Atlas of the area that we saw a depiction of the house with a full width balcony, which was corroborated only by removing the stucco and seeing the neatly cut holes in the siding whence the 4×12 girders once protruded. Sanborn fire insurance maps show where doors used to be, and indicate building footprint.
- Old newspapers which contain rental ads for the property and other information – We confirmed the kitchen was on the first floor and located at the front of the house because we found an article where a resident fainted due to gas fumes and a passerby saw them in the window. We also found an early rental ad listing the property as an “elegant, airy house with large windows”. This was useful because the upstairs window was uncommonly large for its day. The early rental ads will also tell you how many rooms the house originally had.
We got lucky with this house because it’s surrounded by homes by the same builder. Even though all of these houses received as-bad-or-worse treatment than Bliss tract No. 4, there were enough intact interior and exterior details that we could easily put it back together.
