Euclid Avenue: What We've Lost and What We Will Probably Lose

Cleveland's Euclid Avenue isn't the main thoroughfare that it once was. Most of the grand homes that once graced it are now long gone. However, in conjunction with the creation of the Health Line, much has been lost. More of the historic fabric will be gone, if we don't act soon, just like the historic Cobb & Bradley building, shown here.

This post is an attempt to identify what we've lost (or may lose) along Euclid Avenue. It focuses on historic buildings that have been lost in the past couple years, or, in the case of structures still standing, those that face immediate danger. Are all of these great architecture? Perhaps not - but they contribute to the streetscape and to the shape of our community.

Our journey will begin east from downtown Cleveland.

Photo by Keri Zipay

The terra-cotta-faced Cleveland Cadillac Building, at 1935 Euclid Avenue was built in 1914. Knox and Elliott were the architects. It was demolished by Cleveland State University to make way for expansion.

The Student Center at Cleveland State University, designed by Don Hisaka was also demolished, to make way for another structure serving the same purpose. Many said that the structure as it was was utterly unusable. Perhaps it was. How do you deal with a visually stunning structure when it doesn't do the job it's supposed to do?


Photo by Pavel Dyban

This group of four buildings were located on the south side of the street, immediately east of the train tracks and East 55th Street. They have all been demolished. When the photo was taken, it seems that an additional building, immediately to the east, had been recently demolished. The third building over appears, based on the lack of windows, to have been some sort of secure storage facility.


Photo by Otterphoto

The Cobb and Bradley building was on the north side of the street, between the trestle and East 57th Street. The late 19th century architectural detail is more of an earlier era than most of what was present on this part of Euclid Avenue. It was demolished in April of 2009.


Photo by Otterphoto

Immediately to the east lay this apartment building, which was demolished at the same time. It's interesting that most of the copper detail around the roof still remained when this photo was taken.

Another building was present on the north side of Euclid Avenue, between East 57th and East 59th Streets, but I have been unable to locate a photo of the structure.


Photo by Pavel Dyban

Of the three commerical / industrial buildings photographed here by Pavel Dyban in November, 2005, during his cross-country road trip, only one survives. The block looks like a single building, but is actually three. The rear part, as well as the building closer to us have both been demolished.


Photo by Pavel Dyban

The remaining structure looks somewhat naked. The façade of 6611 Euclid was removed when the road was widened, to accompany a turn lane (as was required) when the Health Line was built. Another building, also now lost to history, stood adjacent to the east.

Continuing east on the north side of the street is the Dunham Tavern, the oldest structure on its original foundation in the city.


Photo by Pavel Dyban

Immediately east of the Dunham Tavern, at the northeast corner of Euclid and East 69th Street was this two-story commercial structure, which has been demolished.



Immediately opposite, on the south side of Euclid Avenue, sat the two story brick building that housed The Two Dollar Rare Book Store. While the building itself was relatively undistinguished, the bookstore was phenomenal. I've never seen so many great books at such reasonable prices. Chris Uram, the owner, took in the books that other book dealers wouldn't touch, because they were often in such poor condition. He offered them at bargain prices. Hundreds of them made their way to my house. I do hope that he is able to relocate.



The Eton and Rugby Hall Apartments, at 7338 Euclid Avenue, were built 1925. George Allen Grieble was the architect. These buildings, with their beautiful terra cotta details have been vacant for at least 30 years. They will be demolished soon to make way for low-income senior housing.



The Cleveland Play House was remodeled in 1983 by Philip Johnson, the architect best known for his 1949 Glass House, a National Historic Landmark, in New Canaan, Connecticut. Johnson is a Clevelander, and this is the only building by him in this city.

The structure has been purchased by the Cleveland Clinic. While they have not yet revealed their plans for the structure, I strongly suspect, given their track record, that it will be demolished.



Euclid Avenue Congregational Church 9606 Euclid Avenue, was built in 1884-1887. The architects were Coburn and Barnum. It was demolished, following a fire caused by a lightning strike in the early hours of Tuesday, March 23.


Photo by Thom Sheridan

The original Hathaway Brown School building, on the north side of Euclid Avenue, at East 97th Street, was designed by architects Hubbell and Benes in 1905. It was demolished in January by the Cleveland Clinic.



The original Laurel School building had been connected to the Hathaway Brown structure, and was demolished at the same time.

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Were these buildings too far gone to be saved? For some, the answer is yes. Others could have been easily reused if the owners had chosen to. There's one, however, that I believe should be saved.

It's been defaced, as I indicated above, and what remains isn't terribly architecturally distinguished. That doesn't stop it from being important.



6611 Euclid, the tall industrial building standing here next to the Dunham Tavern, provides real context for the museum. It illustrates how the city grew up around this tavern, and the level of development threats faced by it. It hints at how close the tavern might have come to being demolished itself.

This historic structure, 6611 Euclid Avenue, was condemned on May 7. Do we want another vacant lot, or do we want something that contributes significantly to the Dunham Tavern Museum?

It's the last of the taller structures of its type along Euclid Avenue, between East 55th and East 105th Streets. Once it is gone, this context will be lost forever. The building is owned by the RTA - in other words, us. We need to make the right decision here.

Why a Historical Marker Isn't Enough;

Or, Why We Need to Retain Historic Houses as Part of Our Communities

In the past few months, I've raised a louder voice for preservation of buildings relating to historic individuals and events. As a result, I've seen many different suggestions as to things that we should be doing instead of preserving these buildings.

Some have suggested that photographic documentation is enough. Others have have suggested that a given building isn't worth saving because it wasn't where the individual created their most important works. Still others have suggested that the individual's achievements would be better commemorated by a statue. One even suggested, in a letter to the editor of the Plain Dealer, on Wednesday, that we should deconstruct the Langston Hughes house and re-use the lumber to build a community center.

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I'm a youth services librarian in the inner city. In my experience, when you talk about overarching historical themes, you get a lot of blank looks. But when you can talk about important individuals who lived in their neighborhoods, who walked the same streets as they walk every day, it's possible to make a real connection.

It's not enough to just show photographs of a house that once existed. There's an importance that actual artifacts have that simply isn't conveyed in photographic reproductions. We aren't content with a museum exhibit of photographs of Satchel Paige's baseball uniform or Langston Hughes' manuscript poetry - we demand the real thing.

Many important individuals have come out of Cleveland - individuals that the children I serve can look up to. We tell them that these historic figures are worthy of respect and admiration, that they are people the children can look up to, but then we demolish what little remains of these great people's physical connection to the city. What message does this send?

As I've said before, I don't believe that these houses should be made into museums. I just think that they should be preserved as part of the community. There are plenty of historic houses that remain private residences - take the John Heisman birthplace or the Jeremiah Gates residence, the oldest house in Cleveland.

It's our collective fault that some of these houses have been allowed to decay to this point. We failed to bring them to the public attention when they needed less work. There are plenty of homes throughout the area that individuals and companies are in the process of rehabilitating, either as their own residences, or with the intent of resale. It costs a lot of money to demolish a house - $10,000 plus - wouldn't a more appropriate expenditure of the public money be to put that expense into the rehabilitation of the structures? $10,000 would often be enough to make the difference between a house that can be rehabbed in a cost effective manner and one that cannot.

Why should the public pay for any part of the rehabbing of a private residence? Because, while not open to the public, these houses are part of our history. The cost of fixing up any one of them to museum standards, with proper accessiblity, mechanical, and fire suppression systems would likely cost a half million dollars. This hypothetical sum might instead be divided over 25 houses, to the tune of $20,000 each. It would stabilize 25 sites important to the history of our community, and would provide the public a greater value than one small museum.

It's not about public vs. private funds, however. It's about a respect for the history of our city. It's about showing our children that we care about their past. It's about showing that the figures we claim matter actually matter to us.

Historic photos of your house!

House on Kenmore Road - demolished

In the 1950s, the precedessors to the Cuyahoga County Auditor went through the county and photographed every single house, for tax valuation purposes. These photographs, about 1.5" x 2.25", were glued onto cards that described the size of the property, its amenities, and condition. At some point, these cards were transferred to the Cuyahoga County Archives, on Franlin Avenue, in Ohio City.

Not every card is present. Some are missing, and on some, the photographs have fallen off. Still, they are a valuable record of the built environment of this area.


8706 Harkness Road, Cleveland, Ohio - standing

A few months back, I went to the County Archives to research my own house. While I was there, I started looking through the photographs of the Hough area, where I work. I put my camera on a tripod, used a piece of cardboard to line up the photographs so that I didn't have to keep looking through the viewfinder, and started photographing them. In the space of two and a half hours, I was able to photograph about 330 of them. This is the result.

The photographs were grainy to begin with. A six megapixel digital camera captures virtually all of the information present in the original photograph. A little bit of post-processing, and they're ready to share.

If you do make it down to the Archives, it's worth taking the time to look at your neighbor's houses, too. The property cards are in order of parcel number, so you should verify your neighbor's parcel numbers beforehand - they aren't necessarily numbered sequentially with yours.



As an example, take this, the house that Langston Hughes lived in during his sophomore and junior years of high school, from 1917 to 1919. It is located at 2266 East 86th Street, in the Fairfax neighborhood of Cleveland. It has recently been nominated as a Cleveland Landmark. The Fairfax Renaissance Development Corp. is in the process of rehabilitating it.



Now look at the photos of the houses of his neighbors, to the south and north, respectively. These photographs reveal parts of the Langston Hughes house not shown in the photo for 2266 East 86th Street.



Each photograph includes someone holding a sign that displays the parcel number of the house in question, as shown here, at 1621 Holyrood Road. This is quite helpful. It makes it possible to just digitize the photographs, without having to record the caption information. It's also quite helpful when photographs have become unglued from the property cards - it makes it possible to figure out which card they ought to be reattached to.

These images can be especially useful in the cases like this house, where exterior modifications have been significant. They are also quite useful in a neighborhood like Hough, where at least half the houses present in the mid-1950s have been demolished. These photographs can help paint a picture of the neighborhood as it was. You can use a set of photographs to document what a whole block used to look like.

The following are a few of my favorites:


1627 Holyrood Avenue - Built in 1900 for Harold Randolph - standing


9214 Edmunds Avenue - demolished. The house appears to have been built in the 1870s, at 1861 East 90th Street. It was moved to this site in 1909. An apartment building was built at the location on East 90th Street shortly after.


1618 Ansel Road - standing. The house was built in 1892 for George Richardson, a local real estate developer. It was sold soon after to Elah French, who lived in it with his wife Adelaide.


Parcel 107-21-061 - demolished. A nice, little Greek Revival farmhouse.

I would love to see more of these photographs digitized. There's no way any individual could possibly do this. However, if we were to each photograph some, we could eventually achieve this goal.

The Importance of "Knowing Local"

Here at Cleveland Area History, we believe that locavorism doesn’t stop with eating local and buying local. We believe that taking the time to study local history, to understand what makes us who we are (warts and all!), is just as important.

"Knowing Local" is about brokering that essential truce between the good news and the bad news. At Cleveland Area History, we aim to interpret the present through the lens of the past, preserve our cultural memory, always ask questions, and look critically at the local issues of the day.

And we encourage you to do the same: having a solid background in local history can make you feel better if you are miserable, and can also help you to better understand where we can go from here. To take a lesson from Ebenezer Scrooge, Knowing Local is about learning to “live in the past, present and future,” with the spirit of all three striving within our civic consciousness.

Because we all want to see Cleveland live to fight another day.

Reinventing local history: background

We at Cleveland Area History want to do our best to connect you to the many rich local history resources this community has to offer -- such as these fine examples:

Case Western Reserve University - Cleveland Books (130 titles) and the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History

Cleveland Landmarks Commission - Cleveland Architects Database, landmark listings

Cleveland Memory - Books, photographs, other documents

Cleveland Public Library - books, photographs, maps and the Cleveland Necrology File

Cuyahoga County Recorder - property transfer records 1812-present

Google Books - full text of many hard to find books and periodicals

Library of Congress - photographs, many at very high resolutions

Rails and Trails - historic maps, including a full set of turn of the century USGS topos for northeast Ohio and Google Earth overlays for historic maps.

Western Reserve Historical Society - various databases

But sometimes our greatest strength can also be our greatest weakness. There are so many resources out there, both online and in print -- how do we bring them all together in one place?

It’s a challenging prospect, but what we would like to see is a massive database that links all of our online local history resources in one place.

Imagine being able to do one search, and your online research needs would be taken care of ... all without the pain of slogging through page after page of Google hits.

Imagine a database that would link together all of the many contributions made not just by institutions, but by individuals as well. Local history blogs such as this one might be included, as well as many wonderful Flickr sets, such as this one, taken ca. 1929.

And then imagine what would happen if we pushed for online access to those collections that are currently only available offline! For example, the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) nomination forms, which provide a detailed background on the significance of the site (including historic documentation). There are 353 such properties in Cuyahoga County. Or what about the Ohio Historic Inventory forms, which are kept by Cleveland Landmarks Commission? These forms, a couple thousand of them, could provide a very useful data set. Or the property cards kept by the Cuyahoga County Archives? This list is endless.

What form might this project take? A wiki might be a good means to this end. Take a look at the Paul Revere House. We could show exactly where, on a map, the house is, provide contemporary and historic photographs, and provide text describing the house. Further, we could categorize the architecture by style, age, neighborhood, street, and city.

Now this would take some planning, but it’s completely within the realm of the possible. Would such a resource be of value to you? We want to hear your thoughts!

Cleveland: Home to the most attended baseball game

I was browsing through the American Memory collection at the Library of Congress when I came across this series of five panoramic photographs of baseball games in Cleveland. Three are from a 1915 championship game between the White Autos and the Omaha Luxus. Another shows a 1915 game between the White Autos and Johnstown, PA. Still another shows a 1914 game between Telling's Strollers and Hanna's Cleaners.

The October 10, 1915 game between the White Autos and the Omaha Luxus is especially notable due to the high attendance. Click through to the higher resolution version to fully appreciate the size of the crowd. For this amateur championship game, the attendance was claimed to be 115,000, which, if correct, would make it the most attended baseball game ever. The White Autos won, 11-6.





These other two images provide something of the size of the crowd. I can believe, based on these images, attendance of more than 100,000.



I had never heard of this stadium, so I started looking for clues as to its location. This photo, from the 1914 amateur championship game between Telling's Strollers and Hanna's Cleaners on September 20, 1914 provides more visual clues as to the shape of the ballpark and perhaps its location. The game against Johnstown, PA, however, doesn't show us much that we haven't seen already.

It seemed likely that Brookside Stadium was somewhere near the current Brookside Metropark, but where exactly was unclear. Perhaps the ballpark was in the area now used by the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. Finally, I found the answer, in the 1922 Plat Book of the City of Cleveland. In the upper right, it shows Brookside Stadium.

The stadium shown on the map didn't seem to correspond to what I could see in the photographs. I looked at Bing maps aerial photographs of the site, and much to my surprise, I saw that there was still a baseball diamond there! The topography of the space is relatively unchanged - it still has the nice "bowl" shape that makes it a perfect stadium. There are now trees growing on the hills, but other than that, the shape of the land remains much as it was in 1915.

The stadium is located just south of Denison Avenue, between Fulton Road and West 46th Street. The diagonal line of people in the outfield in the first and fourth photographs is Fulton Road, from the time before it had a high-level bridge over the valley.

The Omaha Luxus were an amateur team sponsored by Krug Brewery. Luxus was one of their beers.

I haven't been able to learn much about the White Autos. They were presumably an amateur team sponsored by White Motor Corp.

The Cleveland Blues, who became the Cleveland Naps in 1903, also used Brookside Park Stadium. Their name change came about as a result of the skill of second baseman Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, probably the greatest player of his time, who was with the team from 1902 to 1914.

I'm so happy to see that this piece of Cleveland history hasn't been lost. I knew we had one important site in baseball history in Cleveland, League Park. I didn't know we had two. Amazingly, both ballparks are places where a group of neighborhood kids can play a game of ball, on the same ground that so many great players walked.

Book reivew: Ohio Archaeology

Ohio Archaeology: An Illustrated Chronicle of Ohio's Ancient American Indian Cultures by Bradley T. Lepper (2005) is the best book yet written on the subject. Most of what has been written on Native Americans in Ohio is either geared toward an elementary audience or is so academic as to be unreadable by those without a background in the field. This book finds a middle ground.

Written at about a tenth or eleventh grade level, Ohio Archaeology is written like a textbook, with the exception that it is far more willing to deal with difficult questions than most textbooks. The individual chapters are written by scholars and experts.

The work is profusely illustrated with a variety of media. Maps illustrate the geology of Ohio in each time period. Illustrations from 19th century publications show what the various features looked like before they had eroded so much or were destroyed entirely. Aerial photographs with drawings superimposed help to show what remains of these earthworks, and how to see them against the landscape. The artifacts themselves are also well documented, as are the processes through which they were located.

Ohio Archaeology addresses the subject matter in chronological order. It incorporates some sites in surrounding states, especially for the earlier history, in order to explain the conclusions reached. It does everything that I might want in such a book.

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There's one other book that might rival this one for shelf space, if I had to choose: Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis. Ancient Monuments, or, more commonly, Squier and Davis, was, in 1848, the first publication of the Smithsonian Institution. It documented many of the earthworks that have since been lost. When you see a historic illustration of a mound in Ohio, chances are good that it is from this book.

The title is a bit misleading. By "Mississippi Valley", the authors meant, by extension, the Ohio River valley, where many of the Ohio sites are located. This doesn't stop them from also addressing several sites in nothern Ohio, documented by Charles Whittlesey.

The Smithsonian Institution published an excellent reprint of Squier and Davis in 1998, on the 150th anniversary of the original. It is better than most reprints, and a title that I highly recommend.

If not for Squier and Davis, we would not have documentation of many of the major earthworks in the Ohio valley. Few met the same level of quality and accuracy. If not for this title, we wouldn't even have the record of what we have lost.

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If I had to choose between Ohio Archaeology and Ancient Monuments, it'd be difficult. As a lover of history, I'd choose Ancient Monuments, with its lovely plates illustrating dozens of sites. As a librarian, I'm inclined toward Ohio Archaeology, so that I might actually understand what I am seeing.

Inside the Langston Hughes house

On Tuesday afternoon, Jay Gardner, Community Development Director at Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation, was kind enough to show me through a certain historic house, located at 2266 East 86th Street, in the Fairfax neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. Writer, poet, and playwright Langston Hughes lived alone in an attic apartment here from 1917-1919, during his junior and senior years at Central High School.

Hughes' stepfather and mother had left for Chicago, in search of work, leaving him behind. During his residence here, he met Russell and Rowena Jelliffe, founders of Karamu House, a settlement house where Hughes taught art to children, and where some of his plays would later premiere. It is during his residence at this house that he began to really pursue writing - he joined the staff of the high school literary magazine, where some of his first writings were published.



The attic, which consists of two rooms, retains very little, if any, of the physical fabric present when Hughes called it his home. The trim and doors seen in this, the front room, are relatively recent, as are the electric baseboard radiators. When the house was built, this space was probably unheated - the rest of the house is heated by forced air. The joints near the peak of the ceiling have a slight jagged nature, consistent with amateur drywall work. The joints between the knee wall and the roof are relatively sharp, more consistent with work in drywall than plaster, further suggesting that the attic was (re)finished recently. The window in this room is a vinyl replacement.



The rear room in the attic is finished in a similar manner. A closet can be seen to the left. The joints strongly suggest use of drywall, as in the front room. The lack of symmetry suggests an attempt to use every bit of available space.



This view of the rear room, facing the front of the house, shows the closet, to the right. It is a recent addition, which, in addition to providing storage, encloses the chimney. The trim and closet doors are definitely recent. Due to the asymmetrical nature of the space, I expect that the small wall to the left was added later - opening it up would make the space feel a bit more open and comfortable - this was probably the builder's intent with the assymetrical shape of the room.

I suspect this room included a bathroom at some time in the past. The plumbing can be seen exiting the roof on the opposite side of the ridge from the two bathrooms. If there were only those two bathrooms, the vent ought to go straight up, which would have it exiting the roof a few feet on the other side of the ridge. The only logical reason for the location of the vent is to service a third floor bathroom.

It is not known if the bathroom was installed when the house was built or later. The floor of it would almost certainly have been wood, not tile. If it was added in the 1910s or 1920s, it would likely have included a claw-foot tub, a toilet, and a wall mounted sink.

If the third floor bathroom was not present when Hughes rented there, he would have bathed in the bathroom on the second floor. It was probably fitted with a claw-foot bathtub. The original window was much larger than the current one. It would have provided the bather a view of the back yard.



This railing makes the third floor space a bit safer. It appears to be later, showing the same style of trim as the rest of the third floor. The window in the background is a vinyl-clad replacement. The trim on this window, like the others on the third floor, appears recent, probably installed at the time the windows were replaced.



The second floor consists of three bedrooms and a bathroom, joined by a long hallway. To the left, at the end of the hall, are the stairs going up to the third floor. Behind the camera to the right is the third bedroom. To the left is the bathroom and the stairs to the first floor. The remains of a gas lamp can be seen on the wall, near the top of the doorframe in the foreground.



The damage to the plaster in this, the front bedroom, coupled with the damage on the corresponding wall in the middle bedroom, suggests that someone was trying to find something in the wall. It isn't near where one would expect to find plumbing, so it's unlikely that we'll ever know just what they were looking for. The baseboards and moulding around the door frame are original - it's unclear whether the trim near the top of the room is. Note the ornate furnace register grate on the wall.



The center bedroom is in most respects similar to the front bedroom. A small closet sits in one corner.



The rear bedroom is adjacent to the bathroom - the damage in the wall came from vandals removing the plumbing. The jog in the wall in the center photo is due to the presence of the chimney.



From a point halfway up the stairs, one can see the bathroom. It was completely remodeled at some point in the recent past.



The kitchen is in a small addition at the rear of the house. As with many foreclosures, it has suffered some vandalism. The projection from the wall to the left is an old chimney. The window is a replacement - the original was considerably taller, but was shortened to fit in the sink. The original stove probably extended from the left edge of the chimney to the left wall.

I haven't been able to come up with an exact date for the construction of the kitchen. It was added on before 1936, as it is included on the floorplan on the property card dated October 23 of that year. Further, the property card does not mention a date for the house being remodeled, which suggests that it was not recent. In his first autobiography, The Big Sea, the only mention Hughes gives of his place of residence is this passage, on page 33:

I couldn't afford to eat in a restaurant, and the only thing I knew how to cook myself in the kitchen of the house where I roomed was rice, which I boiled to a paste. Rice and hot dogs, rice and hot dogs, every night for dinner. Then I read myself to sleep.

The dining room retains the original mouldings and trim. The wainscotting appears to have been added later.



From the dining room we can see the living room and stairs to the second floor. To the left, a doorway provides access to a half bathroom and the basement stairs.



The living room is trimmed in a manner similar to the dining room. The moulding seems to include a picture rail.



This beautiful railing graces the staircase, making up the north edge of the living room.



The den, at the front of the house, has a fireplace. The tile on the floor appears to be in good condition.

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My attempts to learn more took me to the Cuyahoga County Archives, where I investigated the property cards, a set of documents created in two series, in the 1930s and 1950s, to document all the houses in the county, for tax valuation purposes. They detail the various amenities of each house, which allow us to see how they may have been changed over time.

Both property cards, dated October, 1936, and July, 1959, state that the attic was unfinished. There was a floor present, but that was it - the space was used for storage. There are a few ways to interpret this. One could take this information at face value. Or one could say, since this information was partially owner-reported, that the owner was trying to get the lowest possible tax-valuation. Another possibility is that the attic was partially finished, but the finish quality was such that, for the purposes of valuation, it was not counted as finished. The property cards also both state that there was only one bathroom, which is not what the physical evidence would suggest.



This photograph, taken in July, 1959, reveals a bit more, if perhaps not much of Langston Hughes' experience in the house. The house is the one in the center. It retained the slate roof and original half-round gutters at the time, and the porch had not been obscured by the massive aluminum awning. There isn't enough detail, alas, to tell anything about the attic windows. The siding has been covered by composite shingles.

Perhaps the most notable visual difference is the loss of the trim between the second or third floor. When the vinyl siding is removed, this will again be visible, providing the house with slightly better visual presence. One can see something of the character of the bay window on the side of the house, too.



These two photographs of the houses on either side, now demolished, reveal a little bit more about this house, but not much.

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I have to wonder how much this experience shaped Langston Hughes. Would he have spent so much time reading, writing, and learning, if he had been in slightly more comfortable surroundings? Would he have made so many important friendships? Would he have grown into the man he became otherwise?

This was Hughes house during a critical period in his life, when he started to really become a writer. I look forward to following the renovation of the house and to seeing what turns up.