Spotting Classic House Features In North Minneapolis...

Photo By John Hoff

To me, an old house is just an old house, though I certainly LIKE old houses and vastly prefer them to new houses, especially when accompanied by mature shade trees and, I don't know, maybe some complex layers of history in the house, too, which doesn't always need to be POSITIVE.

I'm convinced future generations will give historical tours of NoMi houses and will talk breathlessly about the colorful "Mortgage Fraud Era." Future NoMi home owners will want to keep up with the Joneses, lusting over houses coming on the market which bear the stigma-turned-patina of Universal Mortgage, T.J. Waconia, or even Larry "Maximum" Maxwell.

Anyway, while I was at the "Huggable North" event sponsored by Collier White and others (see previous post) historic house buff Connie Nompelis (No-buhl-iss, it's Greek) began pointing out some features of the home next door. While I saw just a cool old house, here is the stuff SHE saw:

# Palladian window with dentil molding

# Leaded glass in the "bump out."

# Orginal clapboard siding.

I must confess, I barely noticed this stuff. Why? Because houses like that are a pennies on the dollar in NoMi, and as common as mushrooms on the boulevard after a summer rain.

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