Photo by Muffy Aldrich
The Modern Guide to The Thing Before Preppy

Thursday, November 10, 2022

Not a Bad Afternoon in This Old Shipbuilding Town...

Photos by Salt Water New England

An 1821 Schoolhouse Being Lovingly Restored...


A Look Inside...


Old Chestnut Floors



And Then a Sighting of Yale's Organist Zipping About...







Winston

7 comments:

  1. Thoughtful restoration of an old building is always so admirable. Hearty applause to those folks! The future will hold much gratitude for your work.

    Obviously I don't even know Winston, but I want to cuddle his sweet, trusty face.

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  2. If we don't preserve the old, the new will knock down and rebuild with an abhoringly distasteful McMansion filling the lot with 75% of the rooms in the home without furniture with the glorified owner announcing to their Wall Street friends and Andover classmates that they live in a 6,000sq/ft home. I am a former Wall Streeter now turned finance professor who witnessed this on a "weekly" basis. Restoration is the pretext for the traditional person at heart. I'd rather spend $250k in restorations than rebuild for the name of austerity!

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  3. Alexandria, Virginia, mentioned in the Preppy Handbook, had a factory in town, right on the waterfront, a highly desirable location nearly everywhere. Torpedoes for the Navy were manufactured there until the end of WWII. Ironically, construction began on the building on November 12, 1918. The city bought the building in 1969 and by 1974 it had been converted into an art center. Artists have individual spaces for workshops, studios and galleries. I believe the city still uses space for storage for things like Christmas streetlights.

    That part of town is rather crowded and in fact, some buildings were demolished to make room for a town square, new rowhouses and condominium apartments, as well as improving access to some noteworthy and historical buildings. That unfortunately meant that the previous residents were pushed further out of town because of rising property values. Even the place where I lived (up near the power plant) was converted to condominiums. Most of the gentrification and renovation took place in the 70s but it's ongoing. Rowhouse residents along a couple of streets have managed to avoid having their brick and cobblestone streets repaved because it keeps down the traffic.

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    Replies
    1. I should have mentioned that another art center, which includes both visual and performing artists, as well as classes, was created from a local prison that went out of business. It's in the suburbs and although there are housing developments nearby, it's a fairly open area. It's called the "Workhouse Arts Center," named for the first establishment on the site. All buildings like this, at least if they're in good shape, always have a list of people wanting to use the buildings for something or other.

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  4. Thanks, Muffy, for putting in the photo you took so many years ago of my sweet boy.

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  5. Such wonderful photos! Thank you once again, for all you do for us all!

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  6. That car! Its wonderful to see the old being restored rather than it going under the wrecking ball to make room for oh, I don't know, a parking lot? Overpriced flats? Another strip mall? Hello Winston, you lovely boy!

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