Houzz Call: Show Us the House You Grew Up In
by Becky Harris · 3 photos · 128 comments
Perhaps your parents were into midcentury modern style or were among the millions of baby boomers who made their dreams come true by purchasing a brick ranch. When I was a kid, split levels with shag carpeting were all the rage. So were sinks randomly placed in family rooms and called wet bars.
Atomic Ranch before
The only thing missing from this American-dream Cape Cod–style house is a white picket fence. The flag reminds me of my grandfather, Pop, who would put one out every fair-weather morning and then fold it up the appropriate way each night, like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.
by Soorikian Architecture
Dutch colonial is another classic style that has been popular in America for almost a century.
While these three are all houses and are typical American styles, I hope you'll share all kinds of homes and that you international readers will tell us about your childhood homes, too!
Your turn: Please upload a scan of your childhood home and tell us about it!
by Westover Landscape Design, Inc.
While these three are all houses and are typical American styles, I hope you'll share all kinds of homes and that you international readers will tell us about your childhood homes, too!
Your turn: Please upload a scan of your childhood home and tell us about it!
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Oh, yeah - I am back to one bathroom but I only had 2 kids, not 6.
Back in those days, no one except the people in mansions really had a lot of living space. Big families were raised in little houses. The huge spaces in houses these days are beautiful, there is no doubt, but when all is said and done, all that space is a luxury.
Are you the baby????? COOL.
I didn't grow up in a house, but in a condo in a big city. Just checked my childhood photoalbums, but I don't have any photos of the place. Nobody took random interior photos in the 1950s or 60s because it was expensive to have the films developped.
Anyway, my father was an architect and we had all kind of fancy -for today- 1950s furniture, which I'm sure sparked my love for (most) things midcentury modern. Lots of rosewood and tapered legs, cone-shaped lampshades, a coffee table with a kidney-shaped black glass top, ceramics and tapestry from Scandinavia, things like that. And we had a bathroom with a shiny terrazzo floor - cheap then, incredibly expensive today.
Norma
There is just something about a Porch!
The houses I grew up in were small and functional (2 BR. 1 bath) and no one in the 60s and 70s was taking pictures of those houses.
However, the house I loved and which has influenced me was my aunt's farm house, with a huge farm kitchen, 4 bedrooms upstairs, a mulberry tree in the backyard (and a pony!) and of course the barn and fields and dogs... It was a summer paradise for me and my sister, and we have both been shaped by that. Sadly, no pictures. Film was expensive.
All of the 3 homes that I have purchased in adulthood have been midcentury, now that I think of it. My current home has some favorite elements of that first childhood home: roman brick, glass block, small square tiles, and a stone flamingo garden statue for kicks. It sounds ghastly but I assure you, it has all updated materials and looks fabulous and feels like "home". Chris
It is one of the oldest homes in Memphis and one of the most historic homes in the country. It was designed by Robert Mills, who also drew up the plans for the Washington Monument, the White House, and US Treasury Building. It has hosted 4 American presidents, as well as Confederate president Jefferson Davis (a close friend of the Hunt-Phelan family and godfather to William Hunt Phelan). Rebel generals Nathan Bedford Forrest and Leonidas Polk both stayed there, and Union general Ulysses S. Grant headquartered in the house during the summer of 1862.
But the Hunt-Phelan home is as rich in materials as it is in history. The home's furniture includes several pieces of antique Hepplewhite, Chippendale, and Biedermeier from the 18th and 19th centuries and such rare items as a circa 1788 four-poster bed and an 1874 Steinway grand piano. There is also a collection of one-of-a-kind sterling silver. And the home's library collection, which includes more than 10,000 books, still retains many of its valuable, rare first editions, including volumes of Mark Twain and an original copy of a guide book to the Oregon Trail.
The home was built in 1828 in the popular Federalist style by George Hubbard Wyatt, who lived there until 1845. The property was then purchased by Wyatt's cousin, Elijah Driver, who before his death in 1851 expanded the home with the addition of a two-story Greek Revival portico.
After Driver's death, the home went to his daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, and her husband, Col. William Richardson Hunt, who presided over the home's most colorful period during the Civil War and yellow fever epidemics of the 1870s. Hunt had the addition to the back porch built, pushing the home's square footage to 8,900, and also had an 11,050-square-foot servants' quarter built adjacent to the rear of the building. He didn't get to enjoy them long as the Civil War forced Hunt, a commissioned officer in the Confederacy, and his family to flee Memphis, with Sarah Elizabeth Hunt loading the house's precious possessions into a railroad boxcar to take with her.
The Union troops were remarkably kind to the home, using it first as headquarters for a succession of commanders, including Grant and Sherman, and later as a camp for wounded soldiers. Grant never allowed the soldiers to wear their boots in the house for fear of damaging the incredibly beautiful floors.
Following the war, Colonel Hunt petitioned successfully to have the home returned to him. The house then passed down to his daughter Julia Tate Hunt who married William Phelan, at which time, the home became known as the Hunt-Phelan Home. In 1975, Stephen Rice Phelan, great grandson of William Phelan took possession following the death of his brother, George Phelan, who had been living there since the 1950s. He was an avid horticulturist and geologist and even held the patent for developing a red, white, and blue rose, Phelan painstakingly cared for and cataloged the house's possessions and recorded its history in an unpublished book. Upon his death in 1993, the home passed to his cousin Sarah Elizabeth Phelan Day, who restored the home to it's original beauty, with the help of her son, William (Bill) B. Day, Jr. Sarah Phelan Day passed away in 2009 leaving the home to her son Bill making him the 9th generation to live in the home since it was built.
My mother was very found of green. To this day I stay away from green, as I saw so much of it while growing up. It is funny, we had a full vegetable garden on our property.
Now I see a lot of gardens, my how nice it is to go back to our roots.
My mom was and is always worried about the children falling. This is why I built a one level home.
I loved the warm dark wood and exposed beams. I love having a bit of dark warm wood to contrast the white in my house.
My favorite influence was my grandma's house. I love that my grandpa built the kitchen cabinets. Her rose patterned carpet and her gorgeous yard.
Pictures of A-frame similar to my childhood home and my grandmas yard.
Is that house in Temple located in Western Hills?
Since the purchase of the home 6 years ago we have:
< removed the asbestos
< replaced the heating and air
< remodeled the fireplace
< changed the interior doors
< added some recessed lighting
< painted each room, including the brown and gold paneling
< added a tile backsplash in the kitchen
< replaced the carpet
< taking in the carport and adding garage doors
< added a bathroom for my daughter by taking in a front porch.
< remodeled a bathroom by replacing the blue tile, toilet and outdated fixtures and replacing it with a large walk in shower and fixtures from Lowe's and Home Depot specials.
Our other bathroom still has the old 1950's green tile, but for now, I think I am finished with the strenuous task of bathroom remodeling, or at least until my husband goes out of town, lol. Anyway did I tell you square tile is back in style. Having said that, we will probably just leave the old bathroom the way it is. Speaking of my husband we added for him a large hunting closet after taking in a screened in porch. For that I am grateful because I hated the mold in the basement from our other house. I am now glad he has a place that he can put his hunting gear that is both climate controlled and convenient !
Never say never because I never thought I would want to live in the house I grew up in. But because of the houses convenient location and close proximity to "Blue Ribbon Schools" it has been a perfect fit for our family. The process has been exhausting, time consuming and financially draining but I can honestly say, "There is no place like home". We still don't have everything the way we want it but we have sure made a lot of progress. It has been quite an adventure, "re-inventing the ranch", but it has been a labor of love replacing the 60's, 70's 80's. 90's, and 2000 eclectic attitude with a scaled down French Country attitude. I still want to do more to give it a bit of a curve appeal but in due time it will happen. As my daddy always said, “When poverty knocks at the front door, LOVE jumps out the windows. We probably need to rest our pocket book on our first phase of the remodeling process. We are just grateful to live in a home that has stories to tell about love and loss........ but mostly love :)
I have lived in base housing, apartments, ranch houses, craftsmen houses but my favorite is my grandmothers home!
As children we played outside from sun up to sun down. There were no fences in anyone's yards. There was a creek that ran through our neighborhood and a hill so steep at the end of the street that we were forbidden to ride our bicycles on it.
The first house my husband and I bought was in Houston TX - a 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch. It took me a couple of years to realize that the two houses resembled each other on the outside.
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It was built around 1915, and as you can see, it's a stucco four-square with a hipped roof and shed dormers. It had a full-width front porch, but we never used that front door, just the side door (which only had a stoop). It was enormous - I suspect over 3000SF, though the listing says otherwise. After foreclosure it was listed at 5BR; I think they doubted anyone would even look if they admitted to 7BR (which it had). It had a VERY scary basement with an original (now unused) cistern. It had a laundry chute AND a dumbwaiter. The laundry chute went from the maid's bedroom in the attic to the maid's bedroom on the second floor (these were connected by a tin can-style intercom) to the butler's pantry on the first floor to the basement. The butlery had all original wood shaker-style cabinets, which were awesome. Several rooms had been a waiting room, office, and operating room for the paterfamilias of the original residents - he was a dentist. A small closet off the back of these rooms had equipment to dispense ether! It had a back porch with a potting area (original cabinetry). The dining room had beautiful stained-wood wainscoting with elaborate trim, and a leaded glass window above the nook for the buffet table. Dining room and living room opened into the wide hallway via beautiful stained double French doors. The main hallway had an inlaid-wood floor, and the main staircase was carpeted in (very worn) red velvet. Every room but the kitchen, butlery, dentist's rooms, bathrooms, and four of the bedrooms had elaborate (apparently original) wallpaper. The living room was enormous, and had a working fireplace, but the house had radiators throughout. There were two cedar-lined closets (the coat closet and the master closet). We never used that main staircase, because there was a set of servants' stairs from an alcove off the kitchen to where the bedrooms were. (In fact, we spent most of our time in the servant portions of the house!). The servants' staircase also had a secret compartment, invisible under the runner. The kitchen and powder room had original white hex tile. There was a Jack-and-Jill 3/4 bath in an Art Deco style - black and white tile, marble threshold on the shower. Two of the bedrooms had two entire walls of casement windows from the ceiling halfway down to the floor (I had one of those rooms, and in the summer with the walnut tree in full leaves outside, it was like living in a treehouse).
We grew up so poor we couldn't afford to heat the house. My mother used the gas oven in the kitchen to keep that room warm, and in the winter (in western NY) that's where we spent all our time. When we finally got a color TV some times in the mid-'90s, that's where it went. Our bedrooms weren't heated, so we amassed all the old blankets we could find and buried ourselves under them every night. My mother was a proponent of hanging the laundry outside, but used the dryer in the winter - until it broke. We couldn't afford a new one, so after that, the laundry hung outside year-round. She's lucky she never got frostbite (we had to hang laundry sometimes, but in the winter, she did). I still remember pairs of jeans that froze stiff as a board before they could dry. She had lots of plans for decorating the house, but they ground to a halt when my dad left (after which both of my parents were permanently broke. That divorce only profited the lawyers). After that, she made absolutely necessary repairs, and picked up antique furniture and dishware when somebody was selling it for pennies at a garage sale. She managed to get more heavy dressers up the stairs with the "help" of three small children than I would have thought possible.
I
I meant to finish with - I will never be able to afford a house like that in any place I am likely to live. Of course that house (and my mother's taste) have had an enormous influence on my preferences in architecture and design. It really ruined me for house-shopping (though I am grateful for our modest-sized very-vernacular Victorian). But I will never have to be hungry or cold in the winter again. I am blessed.
All the homes we lived in were traditional or victorian in style so that explains my love of antiques and traditional decorating. That's all we had in N.O. back then so it stands to reason that's the style I'd love.
There were 2 features I liked: one allowed for a full size bed that was shared by the living room and the adjacent guestroom/library giving each room a half a bed - with back cushions creating seating in th ose 2 rooms. When guests came, the bed would be rolled completely into the guestroom. If one crawled under the bed, one could go from one room to the other without using the door!
The downstairs was an open plan. Dividing the kitchen from the dining room was a birch case suspended above the counter on 2 pipes with corrugated glass, sliding doors on both sides. My mother could display things on the top of the case.
Furnished with a mix of colonial antiques my mother bought cheap at auction and refinished and midcentury Danish modern L-section sofa with a marble square coffee table at the corner, tawny leather butterfly chairs and the tapered legged coffee tables others have mentioned.
The view across the valley west to the Adirondacks allowed us to sit at the dining room table and watch storms roll across the valley.
Here you see my mom and her mother, Shirley, pictured in Shirley's Palm Springs home, and my father at an event in San Francisco.
Becky - would love to see more articles on these homes!
PS - I love seeing all of the old pictures. This is super cool!
And I HAVE to know...what were people eating back then....everybody's parents are thin and fit!
I know in my back when pic, my mom, grandma and great grandma are fit. They all thought they were fat but they sure weren't at all flabby. It had more to do with what they did than what they ate, though of course, most food was prepared from scratch. One of my favorite snacks was sliced Old English cheese, real cheese, not cheese food like it is today.
No TV, no computers to keep them stagnant. They had either one car or no car per family. They walked half a mile to take a bus when they wanted to go somewhere, or to buy groceries, half a mile in one direction, produce, half a mile in the other direction, drug store the same. My dad did all the work on the inside and outside of the house, my mom did a lot of sewing and all the house cleaning. Laundry was done in a wringer washer, and rinsed in the washtub, all clothes were hung outside all year round. I started helping when I was five, ironing was my starter chore.
Like a pp mentioned, people didnt have all the facilities to lounge around, everything was hand made and lives werent stagnant. And even if it was rationed food, Im sure it was healthy, didnt have harmful GMOs and additives. Just straight food. Organic wasnt even a category then I guess! Im fm India, and we didnt have luxuries until 30y ago. Blenders came first in 1970s, then fridges, then phones and then tvs. Consequently, my mom WAS thin until some 20y ago. Im 34 and on the way to fat!
I took the photos of our home because I did not want to forget it as it was when I lived there lovingly with Mom, Dad and my dearest sister, Jamie.
This was a WONDERFUL place to play esp on rainy days. It was almost the width of the house and a beautiful old Dutch two part door opened off of it--this was the original door. The upstairs of this had what is known as an "Indian Room"--a hidden "passage" between the outside wall of the back of the house and the main room. This room too has a fireplace. The house was built with large old growth beams and you could not hear anything from anywhere! It had a lovely scooped Dutch roof and some adorable little windows that jutted out --dunno what they are called!
The "Big Side" had a connecting area between the two sides that went to the attic--and was used as seasonal clothing storage. The downstairs had only 4 rooms--it looks much bigger than it is--and again a wonderful porch. There had been glass paneled doors between the "Parlor" and the entry way that I was always hoping would "turn up"! There were only the side pieces left. A much more formal fireplace was in the parlor and lovely floor to ceiling windows. The dining room had a huge tall and long china cabinet built in--something I MISS!!!! The kitchen had lovely Victorian wood cabinets and carved detailing and a huge old gas stove--what I wouldn't give for that stove!!! Sadly my mother had this all ripped out and "modernized". Karma is a ---well you know---and the very FIRST time someone cooked in there they made tomato sauce which went all over the brand new unsealed textured--hey it WAS the 60's!!!!---wall and stained them forever. She aslo covered ALL of the wood floors with first gen vinyl tiles--I will NEVER forget the SMELL!!!!
The second floor on that side had "my bedroom" and three others one of which had been a nursery and had its own small sink which I thought was such a good idea! Sometime before we got hold of it some one had added a bathroom and some closets--these were surprisingly roomy as the bath was fitted inbetween the two bedrooms and they still had room to place back to back deep closets! The bathroom had an odd feature---there was a dor into it from my room! We had that blocked with a hamper and storage cabinet but I always wondered WHY they did that--after all it shared a wall and the main doors were something like 3 feet apart! Wonderful old claw foot that stayed HOT once you persuaded the water to get that far.
the basement ran the full length of both sides and was hand built of Bergn County Sandstone--thing Brownstone. All whitewashed! There was a Coal Room adjacent to the (more modern) oil burner and we always were finding bits of coal in the basement and the yard. The laundry--ah that laundry! Huge soapstone sinks you could ba
If you find out how to post photo please let me know. I asked before but no one responded. thanks.
My childhood home is in rural northwest Indiana. It doesn't show well but the property is situated on a hill with another hill behind the house - great sledding, as you can imagine. We had a 2 acre yard to mow, and 8 acres of wooded pastureland to run around, dodging cow pies before our grandparents, who lived down the road, retired their farm. A couple decades of overgrowth later, the cow path from our property to my grandma's barn was still visible and walkable. Before the other 8 acres were parceled off in the 1970s, that path was the preferred route to run to our our grandma's house.
All of the surrounding land was in the hands of small farmers, typically planted in row crops or used for pasture. In earlier years, farmers planted trees for windbreaks and property delineation. Where the natural woods or windbreaks met the open land was prime for blackberry picking, and well worth the swarms of mosquitoes. Before the building boom in the late 1960s and 1970s when so many families were leaving the urban areas around Gary, Indiana, and building on frontage lots much farther out in the county, we had the run of many, many square miles on foot or on bikes.
Our house, built in the early 1950s, was quite nondescript with the kitchen, dining room and living room across the front, and three bedrooms across the back. Landscaping on our huge corner lot was minimal at best, and more often than not, the trees were of the "volunteer" variety. The basement was unfinished space but we played there many days. There was a canning area with storage cupboards, a very large freezer, and a laundry with clotheslines running the length of the house. Clothes were hung to dry in the basement in winter since we didn't have an automatic washer or dryer until the mid-1970s. Our mother did the laundry for our large family with a wringer washer and rinse tubs for the first 20 years, including a dozen of those years with one or more kids in cloth diapers.
The house and 2 remaining acres were sold back in 2009 to first time homeowners. Our mom's only wish was that the buyer be someone with children. While that was certainly out of her control, it did come to pass. When I've had the occasion to drive by, it was nice to see that the modest property is well cared for, and the "new kids" have also discovered the best spot for a maximum sled ride.
I don't know where my picture is. Also, my name is Sally Smith--I work for Mona Lisa Stone and Tile.
I do think that first house I can remember has influenced the way I think and feel about home today. My bedroom in that house was a sun porch that had been enclosed, with two full walls of windows and french doors leading into the main part of the house. I still LOVE lots of windows and french doors :) I gravitate toward older, more substantial materials too, and all our doors and windows for the new house were purchased from a salvage business. Most of the doors are cedar, and all but one we will be refurbishing to the original wood finish. Sadly the one door isn't in good enough condition to do that, but it will get a fresh coat of paint.
That first house had large arched doorways between the main living spaces (living room, dining room and kitchen) and we plan to have an arched doorway leading to the bedroom and bath in the new place. The main living area, however, will be completely open.
Another similarity between that first house and our future home is high ceilings. I loved the spacious feeling those high ceilings gave, and look forward to duplicating that feeling with a ceiling height of 2.7 meters.
So although in appearance my new home will look nothing like my first one, it will have a lot of the same elements.
The 1880 yellow colonial with the blue door is in Baltimore, MD.
I've been having lots of fun seeing other childhood homes in Highland Park, Illinois, also posted here! It was a great city to grow up in!
Fifteen years later I finally visited my father's home town of Portsmouth, OH. At the genealogy library, I found a photo of his favorite uncle's home. It was a classic four square with a large front porch. It astonished me. It was like looking at a slightly different version of my childhood home. Mom was still around so I asked her about this coincidence. It was totally planned. My Dad had purchased a non-descript farmhouse at the end of WWII and reimagined it as a replica of this home. His uncle was an executive at a flourishing shoe manufacturer and Dad was a now a successful manufacturer of concrete products. For Dad this was a symbol that he had overcome the poverty of his childhood and was on a par with the other branch of his family tree.
It’s interesting that while he was inspired by the front façade I was drawn to the more humble family space.