Photo By 612 AuthenticHere's an image taken by "612 Authentic" of Anderson Mitchell's house, left of course, which he...
...restored in accordance with the applicable historical...well, whatever it was. He did it. Followed the rules and kept it historical. Note how the porches and decks really soften the "fortress" feeling of the blockhouse.
When I drive my little son back to the southern Twin Cities suburb where he lives, I pass rows and rows of newly-constructed houses along County Road 42 (sounds so much more rural than it actually is) and the homes I see are like dwellings for clones...alike except for their colors distributed in a predictably differentiated pattern. And all the colors are boring, too. Nowhere is there a lavender house. Maybe some daring individuality is added by use of a fence, gasp.
Is some feeling of "safety" so dear that it must be purchased at the cost of individuality and--oh, did I mention--TREES? How do people live in yards without mature trees, with nothing more than little "dream trees" that might, given 30 more years, somehow grow into something with shade? I expect the bleak, wretched denizens of NORTH DAKOTA to live like that, but in MINNESOTA?! How are people with MONEY reduced to such a barren existence in a state well-known for woods and lakes?
Give me my North Minneapolis, with its eclectic and historical buildings, its hundred-year-old houses full of renovation potential, its complex layers of interesting issues and challenges and, oh my word, its TREES. Others can have their stale, boring oh-so-safe suburb.
4 comments:
Don't get too comfortable with tree lined North Minneapolis. We are about to get hit with the Emerald Ash borer.
Well, despite what I said about little-bitty "dream trees," there is a Hawthorne Tree Nursery and people should get to planting! Particularly if losses of ash trees are in the pipeline.
By the looks of the house next door, it looks like one of those trees is about to smash into it. No great loss. Camera angle?
Johnny, good to see you've discovered the "block houses" over at my end of the hood. IIRC, these were an early use of concrete blocks in construction back around the 1880s. There's a bunch of these buildings that survive from 26th to 29th between the freeway and the park. The most awesome of them is the apartment building on 26th, which was completely rehabbed a couple decdes ago.
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