Thursday, May 20, 2010

The Parkside Tour

The 12th annual tour of Parkside area homes was slightly different than than the Linwood one, mostly in that we were restricted to the first floor in all but the rectory of the Church of the Good Shepard, and that was being remodeled.  A bit disappointing, but after 11 years I imagine they opted for more control over the masses.

Speaking of the masses of people, they contributed to the decision to skip over a few places.


Waited in one line on Crescent and that was enough.  And in that home I spent more time admiring the artwork than marveling over woodwork and original wallpapering.  Not that it wasn't worthy, because it was! It's just rare I see stuff that I like on every wall, so that's a plus :)


We were gone for over 3 hours and wandered everywhere, not always on purpose.  Beautiful homes! Some that were not on this year's tour merited a picture, but usually were on the shady side of the street. You'll get the idea anyway.  The top two were on the tour, by the way.




An added bonus was finally seeing some Frank Lloyd Weight up close.  The Barton House (not pictured), Conservatory, and Gardener's Cottage were semi-open. The back part of the cottage was actually done within the last 20 years and was so seamless that the architect won an award and the conservacy decided to keep it.


 Also the Frank Lloyd Wright house on Tillinghast was on the tour. The last two, cottage and Tillinghast, were especially, how to say...comfortable...that is, "liked best" I guess.


Graycliff and Falling Waters might become short road trips this summer...never thought I'd say that.  And the main house at the Darwin Martin house will reopen "soon" too.

As always, it's interesting to see the different things that people have decided to do with their space. Glad we went - time well spent!

1 comment:

Budd Bailey said...

Falling Waters is not a short road trip for anyone. It's more than four hours away in SW Pennsylvania, and not near anything.

It's a nice place, although there is a lot of asking for additional money by the staff on the tour. It feels more like a museum than a house.