Tag: Vollentine-Evergreen Historic District

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Latchkey Kid

Art: (left) Pamela McFarland; (right) Bryan Rollins

Like all homeroom teachers, managers, parents, and, yes, editors, I have a few axioms to which I return with regularity. One is that each issue of the Flyer needs to be a buffet. There should be something for everyone’s own particular tastes, and, ideally, we will tempt the news hounds with an arts column they might not usually seek out, feed the music lover some politics coverage.

So this week, I find myself not needing to comment on much of the larger stories making the rounds. It would be overkill, a buffet with three different kinds of Brussels sprouts. “At Large” columnist Bruce VanWyngarden covers the tragic shooting in Buffalo, and the way media echo chambers amplify the poisonous rhetoric of white supremacy. Jon W. Sparks looks at Ukraine in this issue’s excellent cover story, and film editor Chris McCoy does double duty by covering last weekend’s abortion rights protest. Toby Sells has the history and potential economic impact of the fabled third bridge over the Mississippi River on lockdown, and politics writer Jackson Baker unpacks the geographic intersections at the heart of the District Attorney race. And, in “The Last Word,” frequent Flyer freelancers Bryce W. Ashby and Michael J. LaRosa are absolutely on top of the situation with regard to immigration and education. To return to my buffet analogy, we have ourselves a healthy and comprehensive news diet this week.

So, with a deadline looming, I’m going to share an anecdote, something I had originally thought was Just for Me, an experience to be enjoyed but not recounted.

Last weekend, I took a walk. That’s not unusual. I take more walks than a retiree with new tennis shoes. This walk was something else, though. Almost a year after I moved back into my childhood neighborhood, I decided it was time to be hopelessly self-centered and walk past my childhood home while listening to the song I wrote about it. Was it needlessly sentimental? Without a doubt. Somewhat gauche, self-mythologizing to the point of egomania? You better believe it. But it’s not as if anyone would ever know about it, right? (Again, deadlines will make one do strange things — like confess to your entire print readership that you are a sad, sappy sucker.)

So, headphones on and music cranked, I walked past a particular house on Faxon. I thought about climbing a certain tree, watching for pill bugs in my dad’s flowers, about my sister’s old habit of eating my crayons. Do the new tenants still see orb-weaver spiders in the hedges, I asked myself. And I remembered my eighth birthday party, when I got a set of cheap toy walkie-talkies, and I wondered if kids still go wild for the things. In the age of smartphones, I imagine the shine has worn off.

The memories aren’t all centered on that house either. I walked past the Pham family’s house across the street and thought about Mailan and me chasing my fox terrier around the yard. Further down Faxon, I passed under the mulberry tree, the sidewalk stained in a Jackson Pollock spray of purple, where I used to pick berries with Aunt Sue, who wasn’t my actual aunt.

With fuzzed-out Fender guitars jogging my memory, I thought about baby albino raccoons walking in a line behind their mother, about being chased by a dog after school, about walking to Overton Park to catch tadpoles in Rainbow Lake. I remembered a one-legged cardinal splashing in a bird bath, season after season.

On the other end of the street, I passed the newly renovated house where Mr. Ben used to live. He was the man who first took my dad to donate blood, a tradition that my sister and I continue to this day. In a way, anyone who was ever helped by a pint of my O- is part of Ben’s legacy.

I got to experience something that was vanishing even then, though I was too young to realize how precious it was. I grew up knowing my neighbors, learning from them. I grew up, at least for about eight precious years, with a sense of community. I was within walking distance of public green space. I knew who in the neighborhood made the best cookies, who bought the fancy fireworks for July 4th.

There are places I could turn this column — the need for walkable neighborhoods; the way automobiles rewrote the built landscape; how “grind” culture and income inequality keep folks too tired and busy to enjoy that most wondrous of Southern pastimes, the leisurely porch conversation; that any demagogue who spreads fear and hate in a calculated attempt to fracture a community is the antithesis of all that’s good about humanity — but why bother?

If you can’t read between the lines, I don’t want to beat you over the head with those ideas. Besides, I’ve hit my word count, and once we get this paper off to press, I think I’ll have time for another long walk around the neighborhood.

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Hot Properties Real Estate

An Evergreen Anomaly

Evergreen’s major period of construction was the 1920s. By the 1930s, the neighborhood was built out, and very few lots were available until the bulldozers cleared the right-of-way for the Midtown leg of I-40, which was never to be.

Somehow, four lots were assembled when this house was built. The house and its immediate gardens occupy two lots; the additional lots behind it are a separate parcel. Now, all are for sale.

So, in a neighborhood of four squares and bungalows, this house stands out. The floor plan is based on the center-hall layout of Colonial American houses, with the main stair in the entry. This permanent stair connects only to an attic, but the attic is floored and easily could be finished if more space were desired.

The breakfast, dining room, living room, and den are all arrayed around an open kitchen at one end of the house.

The kitchen has been gutted and light, pickled cabinets installed, with some of the upper cabinet doors accented by stained and leaded glass. The kitchen ceiling is finished in bead-board and also has a pale pickled wash to highlight it. The work island, in contrast, is dark-stained wood. Appliances have been updated, including double ovens, one of which is convection.

At the other end of the house, there are three bedrooms and two baths.

The master suite is at the furthest remove and has a surprisingly large cedar-lined closet with lots of shelves and built-in storage, in addition to hanging rods at various heights.

The other bath is conveniently close to the entry hall and functions as the powder room, too. The room is pristinely white, with a long, double vanity that has a very fine crackle-paint finish on the cabinet.

The yard is a delight from every angle. Tall crape myrtles and panicle hydrangeas are abloom at the moment out front on the street. Large flowering indica azaleas are the primary foundation planting and provide a magnificent floral display in the spring.

The rear yard is far shadier, being under the canopy of several large oaks. A gazebo covers the far end of a spacious deck that is easily reached from the kitchen and breakfast rooms. This gazebo looks down on a naturalistic pond inhabited by gold and orange koi. More azaleas enclose the pond.

This is a well-maintained, low-maintenance house in the center of Evergreen. The landscaping is well laid-out and beautifully grown in.

The house might be years younger than its neighbors, but now, with the completion of the rebuilding of the I-40 corridor, it is no longer the new kid on the block.

369 Hawthorne St.

2,100 square feet

3 bedrooms, 2 baths

$409,900

Realtor: Crye-Leike, 276-8800

Agent: Bill Malone, 359-4000

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Hot Properties Real Estate

Medieval Modern

This Tudor Revival house is on a grand block in the Vollentine-Evergreen Historic District. Also known as VECA, this neighborhood and Hein Park were both built to reflect the Collegiate Gothic style of Rhodes College. Both neighborhoods are showcases of the Tudor Revival and are full of these little English-style cottages clustered around what amounts to a medieval enclave.

The Tudor Revival was noted for its high-peaked, multiple gables, with the look of half-timbering in stucco atop a lower level of brick and stone. Often, as seen here, there’s fieldstone stacked around the chimney and cut limestone surrounding the principal entry and repeated inside at the fireplace mantel. Windows are often diamond-paned, as in this house, to resemble medieval leaded casements, and chimneys can end in multiple stacks to suggest multiple fireboxes inside, even though there’s really only one. The flattened Tudor arch often appears in doors, fireplace openings, and interior arches between rooms.

All of these hallmarks and more are on display in this detail-rich house. The front-facing main chimney is a marvel of masonry construction. There is handsome flat stonework around the main entry, which is now almost invisible because it has been painted to match the dark brown wood trim. A pale, limestone paint color would accentuate this entry surround by contrasting it to the dark polychrome brick walls.

There is a surprising side porch, more commonly found in large, landmark Tudor Revival houses. It is pleasantly embellished with a bracketed canopy extended over steps to the drive — a clever, simple detail that provides much the same benefit as a porte cochère.

The interior has generous rooms and nice materials, but it has also been appealingly updated. The original narrow-board oak floors and unpainted doors and trim are in great shape. The original radiators have been augmented with dual air systems for the main floor and attic living areas.

As is the fabulous confection of a chimney on the exterior, the kitchen is the showpiece of the interior. Lots of cabinets you would expect, even some with leaded diamond-paned glass. Double ovens and a gas downdraft cooktop are most attractive and functional. The dark-green, Arts and Crafts ceramic-tile counters fit well with the house. But the drama comes when you look up and realize the original ceiling has been removed to vault the room all the way to the roof’s peak with light filling the space from two glazed, cross gables. To further the enjoyment, an exposed stair leads up through this space to a family room in the attic.

Three bedrooms and two baths complete the interior. The master bedroom on the rear has a private bath and a new triple-casement window that looks out over a nicely landscaped backyard. A two-level deck features a shady, vine-covered arbor near the kitchen and an adjoining sunny area with built-in seating. A double garage with an electric gate and a high wooden fence ensure privacy for outdoor activities, whether they be jousting or slightly more modern pursuits.

924 Kensington Place

Approximately 2,700 square feet

3 bedrooms, 2 baths; $249,000

FSBO: Tim Martin, 252-2206