In Bloomington, we visited a neighbourhood called Vinegar Hill. Not sure where the vinegar comes from; the defining feature is much smoother -- Indiana limestone. Those beautiful green hills that we drove in southern Indiana are built of limestone, which was quarried beginning in the 1850s, when an English stonecutter named John Matthews arrived in nearby Elletsville and set up a quarry. By 1907, there were 17 quarries and limestone mills in the city of Bloomington, and the stone which came from them was used in private and public buildings all over the expanding Midwest. Much of it went North to rebuild Chicago after the fire of 1871.
And a lot of it stayed home, as Bloomington's business class and expert stonecutters used it to carve out this little residential neighbourhood in the early twentieth century. They used a variety of architectural styles --Tudor Revival, French Provincial, Italianate, Arts and Crafts, Spanish Colonial-- but the whole package is united by the stone. What's that they say ... the medium is the message?
This very simple Foursquare (or "Prairie Box") house was one of my favourites. We both loved its clean-cut lines, and the lack of ornamentation really made it stand out from the other houses (including three others in this style made by the same builder, Crescenzo Donato).
Some of the Art Deco ornamentation on another of Crescenzo's Foursquare houses.
This Spanish Colonial was built by Harry Donato (brother of Crescenzo) in the 1920s, who lived in it until his death in 1947.
Another one with very smooth lines and stone faces.
Many of the houses featured "rusticated" limestone, which we think was the inspiration for those panels of rectangular stone veneer that took over house construction in the 1960s and 70s. This house shows the rusticated effect -- rough-hewn and irregular in a regularized way!
Rusticated goes wild in this 1935 house by Domenick and Concetta Mazzullo.
Domenick was a skilled stonecarver, and he decorated the house with gargoyles and other visual treats.
The walking tour guide of Vinegar Hill calls this house "the most intact personal folk art environment in the neighbourhood."
Close to the Univeristy, Vinegar Hill was full of faculty. This house is on the list not because of its limestone (it's made from brick) but because of its designer/denizen: Alfred Kinsey. The house was built in 1927 around a persimmon tree that stood until 1995.
Kinsey had the bricks custom-made, and over-burned. They were then laid unevenly, with an intentionally sloppy mortar job, so that the house would look old. This was in keeping with his naturalized garden. The garden, filled with day lilies and 250 varieties of iris, must have been a haven to little flying objects:
From there to a very different neighbourhood -- the East Bicknell apartments on the University campus.
Note the limestone stairwell to the left.
Here at E102 lived the young Dick and Sharon. (It probably looked a little tidier 44 years ago.)
And then along came Kelly:
Before leaving town we took a spin through the University, passing by this piano man outside the Auditorium.
We were on our way to see Thomas Hart Benton's Indiana Murals -- a series of paintings done in 1933 to mark Indiana's industrial and culural history. It's all here, from the arrival of fur traders (and displacement of Native Americans):
to the abolitionists and the Civil War:
to the uneasy coexistence of farming and industry:
What a day -- and that was only until noon!
1 comment:
This architectural tour was great. Have you ever ventured to Buffalo to see Frank Lloyd Wright's work at the Darwin L. Martin House or Graycliffe? Worth the trip.
Post a Comment