Hidden Places and Prohibition Legends

People relish in stories about their homes, but ones laced with a bit of mystery and intrigue are especially tantalizing. Once, when working on a remodeling project in at 1920's neo-classical home, I noticed a somewhat (but not completely) hidden "cubbie" at the stair landing. It was smaller than a breadbox, had a hinged door and raw wood interior. I couldn't conjure up my own explanation for it, so I asked my client if she knew what it's purpose was. She shrugged her shoulders, wishing that she did. But, she did offer her own theory. It was the perfect size to hide a bottle or two of spirits. And, it was out of view from the public spaces in the house. To her, it was quite plausibly a prohibition era relic.

I found her reasoning as good as any. Later, during the bidding phase of the project, I was leading a group of subcontractors through the house and they also stumbled across the hidden door. Upon sharing the prohibition theory with then, they all shook their heads in an "of course" sort of way. Although unsubstantiated, it was a story that was easy, and frankly, fun to believe.

Prohibition is a common theme among the owners of 1920s era homes. I worked on another project from that era that had a tunnel carved into the rock that led from it’s basement to the lake. It functioned nicely as a boat house and dry dock of sorts should any boat maintenance need to occur in the off season. But within the tunnel, there was a curious cavern carved into one side. And a bit of lore was handed down with the house suggesting that the original owners would brew moonshine in the tunnel, and that the small cavern could easily be concealed should it be necessary.

Whether either of these stories are true, we do know that prohibition did not stop many from brewing and consuming alcohol. And thus, it is so tempting to believe them.

Link to photos and articles for the prohibition era in Wisconsin

BOOM. Baby.

By Andrew Braman-Wanek

Of course, many house stories aren't really about the house. They are about a significant event that happened and the house served as a backdrop to the story - a bit player of sorts.

April 14, 2004 -- In the early hours of the morning I awoke to an extraordinary noise. I could feel the pressure pass through the house, shaking even my bed. But, the force dissipated quickly and was followed by utter stillness. I had no idea what to make of it. For a moment I thought it could have been caused by a collapse at a condo construction project on our block. I peered out the bedroom window and could see nothing unusual. I listened for awhile as well, and heard nothing but silence.

I fell back asleep and awoke again at a more reasonable hour, still thinking about the unusual noise. But it was not until I walked downstairs and into our kitchen where I saw a TV news van in our terrace that I realized the noise was a bigger deal than what I could imagine. Approaching a cluster of pajama-clothed neighbors on the corner, I asked what was going on. "There's a house on fire. There was an explosion." An explosion indeed! There was only a foundation left to the house that had exploded, and one of the houses adjacent to it was ablaze. "A man died", I was told.

The cause of the explosion was never determined, although speculation ran rampant throughout the 'hood. In the end, the blast completely destroyed three homes and damaged countless others. In our house, only a few things shook loose from their place. We were the first on our block to remain unscathed.

For days after the explosion, our neighborhood was a tourist zone. The boom, as it turns out, was felt throughout the city and even suburbs. And people's morbid curiosity drew them to our quiet street. On evening, while dragging our garbage to the the curb, a car slowed up near me and then parked across the street. A woman approached me. I expected that she was another wreckage tourist stopping to ask questions about he event. Although she was in the neighborhood to see the damage, she was their because she had spent many childhood days in the neighborhood. Her grandparent lived in our house. In fact, she claimed that her grandmother was actually born in our kitchen!

We had a very interesting discussion and she shared memories of what the house used to be like. She had come to the neighborhood to check-out the condition of her grandparents home more than gawk at the wreckage. It was beautiful distraction from the drama and trauma of that week. And I never thought of my kitchen the same way again.

The Hickory House

By Lynn Retzlaff

My mom hated the house on Hickory Street that she owned when she raised me and my two brothers. She always talks about what a nightmare it was to try to keep clean and how there was no storage. It needed a lot of work that was beyond her abilities and it was depressing. Hmmmm..... was I living in the same house?

From my childish perspective you couldn't find a cooler house. That baby was OLD!!! The lady who lived in it before us was OLD! Best part? She was in a nursing home when the house was purchased by the folks & a lot of her belongings were left behind. That made for some great treasure hunting. We found some crazy stuff in the attic of the garage as well as the basement. A sample of treasure discovered would be an old phonograph record player with the big horn looking thing protruding from the top and the actual needle needles used to play the record, some sort of electrical contraption that we figured must have been from a time machine and a whole lot of antiques.

The basement was uber creepy!! We're talking Raiders of the Lost Arc's worth of spiders. The center of the basement was taken up by a huge, round, steel bellied stove that used to run on shoveled coal. I'm pretty sure it was converted to gas as we never had to heave a single shovel, but you could still open that baby up and see the flames. (side note: if you dug outside the basement window more than a few inches, you could dig up coal pieces). There was a canning room underneath the front porch with rickety old shelving and a dirt floor.

There was an enclosed chute that went up to the first floor air return that we couldn't get into. We used to lose things in the living room (matchbox cars, Little People, the occasional gerbil) never to be retrieved again as you could not get into that baby from basement level. We would lay on our bellies with flashlights and long distance examine all the dirt, toys and treasure that were so out of reach. If we felt extra daring, we would attempt to remove the wooden grate that kept us safe from first floor level. Then we would lower nooses and the likes but were never able to retrieve much.

Another enclosed room in the basement was the sistern. There was a big chunk of concrete missing at the top in one section and at one point we attempted to pick away at the rest, but as my brothers and I thought about what could be behind the concrete wall (dead bodies, rotting rats, nothing) we gave up. We spent a lot of sweat hours getting nowhere!

The garage had a carriage like door. If you slid it to the left, you entered to a space for the car (which never had the chance to park there due to all the crap in the garage!). To the left was a workspace type of space, then a wall and more space. There was a built in ladder on one wall that if you climbed straight up, you could get to the attic which was multi-leveled. Lots of cool treasure up there! A neighbor girl and I rescued a dying baby bird and spent days trying to save it in that attic. Gross! Thinking back, I'm not sure if it was ever actually alive. We cried when we had to give up.

First floor: The living room was decorated in the beginning with a huge piece of material that looked like a bandana but was tacked from each corner of the room and the center. My bros and I would throw stuff up and see if we could get it caught up in the bandana. The front porch is where us kids would hold rummage sales to sell our toys to our friends for a quick buck (so we could buy candy at the dime store). The dining room is where we practiced our ferocious manners and I started a small but manageable fire. The kitchen is where I remember sitting in a beer case throne and fighting over who had to wash pots and pans.

In the upstairs were bedrooms & a bath. My bros shared a room w/ bunk beds and I had a room to myself. I was always scared at night, so I would unfasten my register cover, my older bros would unfasten theirs, and I would crawl through the wall. I'd then place the registers back and crawl into bed with bro. He would hide me in the crack between his bed and the wall (lower bunk) when mom would come to check. In my room, I had strategically placed my three foot dancing bear (remember Captain Kangaroo?) under the covers to look like I was sound asleep.

The bathroom was usually pretty disgusting with super old plumbing. We even had silverfish and actual mushrooms growing up the side of the tub from the rotting floor. My mother and I (I was probably ten at the time) finally re-plumbed the shower and fixed the floor. My bros were never ones for handy work. Must have gotten the runaway dad's genes.

Our back yard was always full of neighbor kids. We had a swing set, and old mattresses to jump on. We had a super climber apple tree in the side yard -- good apples too, if you like the kind that suck your cheeks clear across your tongue. We even had an attempted garden for a short stint. I used to scrounge around the yard and make up weird combos of stuff to eat... currants w/onions, sliced apples, dandelion and of course miracle whip to pull it all together.

We would play kick the can, tag, hide-n-go-seek... you name it, we played it. At night we would play ghosts in the graveyard and then lay and count the stars. One afternoon a group of us did a rain dance and it hailed all over our non-believing hot summer butts!

That's a crazy glimpse of the Hickory House. Can you tell we spent most of our time unsupervised?

The Cereal Remodeler

By Andrew Braman-Wanek

When our daughter turned one, we knew that it was time for new digs. We adored our tiny cape cod, but could no longer find space for "kid stuff", let alone providing a bonafide bedroom for our young daughter. But, the housing market was in frenzy, and our desired neighborhood it's epitome. Sometimes houses were listed on the market for only a few hours before they were snapped up. We knew a couple that left work immediately upon receiving a call from their realtor about a new listing. They wanted it and knew that not only did they have to bid immediately, they would have to bid high - more than asking. They got their house, but stories like these were demoralizing us. We had neither the time nor the energy to put into such a house hunt. So, we asked our realtor to show us a house that no one else wanted.

She had, in fact, a house that fit the bill. Having been on the market for a year and a half, we had to wonder just how bad it would be. We then found out that the original asking price was about 100K beyond what even the excited market would buy. One neighbor, we later found out, called it the "crack house" -- not because there were ever illegal drugs on the premises, but because she thought the guy selling it "must have been on crack" to ask that much for the house. The seller had done some significant remodeling of his own. Some of it was unfinished, and some of it was just not done well. We concurred that the seller must have been on crack. Nonetheless, price aside, the house had merits. Our realtor explained to us that the house was “market worn”. Other realtors were unconvinced of its value and the seller’s seriousness, and thus, were tired of showing it.

We decided to place an offer at a much much lower price and hoped that the seller, after waiting so long to sell, would finally submit to reality (and our offer). After some negotiation, we got the house that no one else wanted. We never met the seller in person, but already had begun to form a persona for him.

There was much work to do to reach the "adorable" factor that we left in our Cape Cod, but project-by-project, the house began to transform. Each project is perhaps a story of its own. Every time we got into a project, we would have to undo something that the previous owner had done. His last name was Nicholson, and we began to use his name as a curse word when we'd run into another one of his remuddling jobs. "NICHOLSON!!!" I would holler at the top of my lungs. "What now?" my wife would sigh.

The original part of the house dated to the late 1800's was a farmhouse before the neighborhood was developed. No doubt the house has much richer stories than that of the cereal remodelor that occupied it last. But we found ourselves to be most intrigued with Nicholson, who he was and choices he made. None of the neighbors seemed to know Nicholson well, but knew enough to offer a few nuggets of what he and his life was like. We continued to build his persona, defining him as over ambitious about his ability, over extended about his time (for which his family may have suffered most), and over optimistic about the value others would put on his work. Although we used his name in despair, we also felt connected with him, and in a way, felt like we were helping him complete his ambition.

We don’t know whether Nicholson thought of the house as a long-term home for himself and his family, or if it was nothing more than a ‘flip’. But he did see potential in the ugly duckling, as did we. But, when the opportunity to build a new house presented itself to us, we decided to sell the crack house. Our remodeling tactics varied from Nicholson’s, and more importantly, our asking price was realistic. As a result, we had dueling offers and sold the house in five days.

I would like Nicholson to know that although his projects were never completed, and his house wasn’t valued at what he hoped it would be, it allow a young family and opportunity to buy into a great neighborhood, create wonderful memories, and learn a few things about ‘what not to do’ when remodeling.

PROLOUGE

By Andrew Braman-Wanek

As an architect, I find that people love learning that their home’s architecture has a name; Queen Anne, Craftsman, Mid-Century modern, etc. But it’s more than just the vernacular style that is significant to them, naming the style provides an opportunity for people to identify their home with a design idea, a period in time, and thus, a story. But with or without knowing what to call their house, it seems that people naturally cling to stories about their homes. And if there not a story neatly packaged with our home’s history, people, including myself, look for clues to form our own.

When we bought our first house, we were only the second owner of our 1920’s Cape Cod. It was an estate sale, so we didn’t have a chance to meet the long time owners - the Hoover’s. All we knew about them was their names. But as we lived in this house that the Hoover’s occupied for so long, we found ourselves creating a story about them. We took cues from the mail that we’d get still in their name, stories from neighbors, and sprinkled it with our own conclusion from how they had kept their house. And with this, we made our story. True, it was historical fiction at best. But the story was no less important to us. We loved our little Cape Cod, hungered for all there was to know about it, and filled in the blanks with our own conjecture when needed.

New houses have stories too. It might be a story about the builder, the arduous process of designing and building it, or an unforgettable story about moving day. But, whether they are our experiences or from our home’s previous life, stories about our homes add our emotional experience of them.

The way I see it, house stories most often (but not necessarily) fall into the following categories:

MEMORIES and NASTOLGIA: Perhaps recalling something special about a childhood home, Grandma's house, or first time ownership.

MYSTERY: An attempt to answer a question that a house presents, such as why there is a certain design element exists.

FOLKLORE: A story passed down from others, perhaps neighbors or a previous inhabitant.
RESEARCHED: …or pseudo researched. I know of a few homeowners that have taken it upon themselves to contact people who grew up in their homes. I also had a client with early 20th century articles written about their home in the local paper.

MORTAR AND MUD: These stories often reveal themselves during updating and remodeling. For instance, uncovering evidence of a previous fireplace, or even a hidden object in the walls.

I’d be very glad to add your house story to this blog. Please email it to me and try to keep the story under 1000 words.