5/31/07

HOOSIER REHABBING - TGS

Hoosier Rehabbing

If you look at the first post on this blog you will see the front porch of my childhood home here in TGS. Here it is again, how it looked as of two years ago.

( The bricklaying bond on the face of the porch is called Stretcher.)
The address numbers were framed behind the beveled glass above the mail box and original to the house. The front porch used to have a wood swing where I reclined and read The Post as a teenager. It was also a great hiding place while playing hide and seek. A perfect view of the whole block, the portal to the Outside. Incredible face brick!

A shrine to my childhood. 3964 McDonald Avenue. Home!

Recently a rash of hoosier contractors have bought homes in the neighborhood including my old house. I noticed the tell tale rehabbing dumpster out front one day so I introduced myself to the dipshit idiot who is rehabbing my old house and asked for a tour.

I braced myself as we walked in. The walls remain and the addition my Dad added is there. The basement was stripped of everything my parents built down there in the 60's (outdated, I was told by the 'rehabber'). I gasped. The framed walls, the built-in closets and desks were all gone. It was a bare basement.

He had pulled out the grape vines (my dad made wine), removed the three fruit trees (we canned) and yanked out my mom's iris in the back yard.

The worst was the stupidly placed new address plaque and, what I call, hoosier wrapping (this is a new fad in rehabbing, covering rotting wood with metal instead of scraping and repainting or even replacing wood).

New address plaque:

I commented that the metal seams hadn't been caulked which of course will lead to a larger problem for the new home owner.

And what's up with this inane black ornament above the porch?

1/21/07

BRICK TOSSED BY THE PACIFIC OCEAN

This little piece of a brick with mortar was sent to me by my dear friend Pat Fish who owns Tattoo Santa Barbara.

While running her dogs on the beach recently, she spotted this piece of a brick that had been pounded smooth by the surf. I LOVE IT!




Months later, Pat Fish came to visit me.

GRANITE CITY

GRANITE CITY
Art Deco Bank building is now a pawn shop



1/8/07

BLACK BRICK, BABY

Tim thinks this Modernist building in Granite City was designed by Harris Armstrong. The building was once a bank and is now the HQ for Granite City Steel. Part of the old bank interior has a bank of marble teller windows with a steel rail a la Mondrian. There's three little windows with chunks of Dalle glass.

The bank entrance has a modest steel slab sculpture in the front corner and enameled steel boomerang art on the interior wall (photos will follow if I get in later this week).

While we were looking in various windows a security guard pulled up and shooed us. The only information I culled from him was that all the steel used in the building had been produced at the Granite City Mill.


Here's Tim on the side of the building below enameled blue steel panels.



Full view of the building from the back:



Elevator tower with geometric design on the brick face:



Black brick with yellow flecks:



ABANDONED MAIN STREET GRANITE CITY











11/7/06

DO NOT SPIT ON SIDEWALK

Turn of the century brick requesting no spitting due to the spread of tuberculosis