WORDS Brent Rosen PHOTOS Jon Kohn
The welcome mat in front of Rich and Christy Anderson’s house says everything you need to know about the Landmark Foundation’s upcoming cottage tour: “Sometimes I feel like I’m the Only One Trying to Gentrify this Neighborhood.” This is not a tour of mansions for the unattainably wealthy. Instead, every house on the tour was bought by someone willing to see opportunity in a neighborhood where others only saw blight. The homeowners in these areas weren’t worried about whether they knew, or even had anything in common with, their neighbors, and were willing to take a chance in order to create something beautiful. Fortunately for everyone in Montgomery, on September 29, you will be able to share in that beauty.
Scott Finn and Charlie Caldwell live in the beautiful hacienda-style home on the corner of Girard and Felder. While the outside looks like something from the old west, the inside is European influenced Southern beauty. Scott teaches architecture at Auburn, and you can tell from the details in his home. Look for the armoire/head board in the rear bedroom, the candle chandelier on a pulley in the dining room, and the re-purposed set from the Shakespeare Festival Scott and Charlie use as a screen to block their fireplace during the summer to make their living room feel cooler. This is just one example of how Scott and Charlie live seasonally, changing the layout of their house from Winter to Summer.
Dr. Susie Paul found beauty in a concrete, mid-century modern home in Historic South Hull. Susie has lived there for the last five years, continually collecting period appropriate pieces at flea markets and antique stores to complete a thoroughly unique home. Originally, the home was built by a concrete maker as a part of a series of display homes, but now Susie’s house is one of the last ones left. Susie severs as President of the Historic South Hull neighborhood, and she loves the fact that White, Black, Latino, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Rich and Poor all call Historic South Hull home. While we walked through her home, looking out through the enormous windows that run the length of the house’s southern face, Susie explained that a neighborhood like Historic South Hull forces you to understand people that are different from you, and makes you learn how to get along with others you might never otherwise meet. Historic South Hull is an example of diversity that works, and everyone that lives there is better because of the experiences shared with neighbors.
On Plum Street in the Highland Park neighborhood, Emily Burge has rebuilt a 1910’s home from the ground up. Originally created by a builder that owned the entire block, Emily’s house was originally built identically to the house next door. Over time, each house has taken on a character of its own, as different owners expanded and contracted until the houses no longer no longer share much of a resemblance. The most impressive thing about Emily’s house isn’t the homes age, but that Emily has renovated everything in the house on her own. She has redone floors, built and stained bookshelves, and even wallpapered the ceiling of her house in order to restore period detail that had wilted over the decades. Emily praises her neighbors and the sense of community she feels when neighborhood children on their walk to school stop and visit with her as she sits on her porch.
In Capitol Heights, Rich and Christy Anderson rehabilitated a home from the 1910’s with near perfect attention to detail. The wood paneling, exposed beams, antique floors and high ceilings are pure old South, while the Ikea kitchen, modern bathrooms and well-appointed study bring their home into the present. The Andersons have an amazing heart of pine table in their kitchen they repurposed from a wall they tore down during the house’s renovation. That is the beauty of old homes -- if it was built in the 1920s, everything in it was built to last. The walls, the windows, the doors, the floors: everything in that house is a good today as it was 100 years ago.
That quality of construction is what separates the neighborhoods being redeveloped from the neighborhoods currently in development. Montgomery’s original neighborhoods have been around for over 100 years, and with owners willing to put in a little time and effort, those neighborhoods could still be around in another 100 years. While gentrification may have negative connotations in other places around the country, in Montgomery, it’s not so much gentrification as preservation. We have an amazing stock of historic properties in this town, and right now many of them are falling apart. Take the tour of homes, talk to the homeowners, and see that living in a historic neighborhood isn’t dangerous or crazy, but an investment in Montgomery’s past that will preserve our unique historical heritage for the future.
The Landmarks Foundation Cottage Tour takes place on September 29, 2013. Visit their website for more details.