Guinea Road, revisited

My mention yesterday on a new, $12 million listing at 21 Guinea Road drew an interesting critique from reader “Behind the Library”. It’s a tad critical, but, while I agree with his dislike of the modifications that have made it “look like every one of those hideous faux farm white boxes with black windows that they build now”, I can also sympathize with the remuddlers; there’s not much else you can do with a mock-English Manor design or its cousin the faux-Tudor (except, as the reader suggests, razing them and starting anew).

The house I grew up in on Gilliam Lane was built in 1948 by a wealthy woman, a Mrs. Little, who, accompanied by her architect, toured New England looking for inspiration from antique house designs. She found one she liked in New Hampshire, I believe, had her architect take its measurements, and so armed ,“duplicated” it, sort of, in Riverside. She doubled its size and, conceding to lot limitations, sited it on an east/west axis; the Fountains took over ownership in 1954. We were a family of readers, and the combination of the home’s old, narrow colonial design, small windows, and its orientation, meant that there were no rooms in which one could read without turning on a lamp, even in daylight. Growing up under such horrendous conditions and deprivation, I vowed to never own a house that dark myself, and for the most part, I’ve succeeded.

But how to lighten the interior of these houses while avoiding the faux-farmhouse look eludes me. My personal “solution” would be to just give such a house a hard pass, and find something else. In any event, here’s Behind the Library’s review:

Well, I finally tried to open a disqus account to comment, but it chose to give me an email address that ain’t mine and it insists it should send a verification email there.

So I’ll just share here instead. When I was at EJHS, in the early ‘70s, I used to do yardwork at that house, for something close to $1.00 an hour, as I recall. I used to ride my bike up there from OG to weed gardens & rake leaves out of the gravel driveway. I got the job because the owner’s girlfriend (I will leave them both nameless, though they’d be in their nineties if still alive) lived on my street & I cut her lawn ($2.50). The guy drove some non-descript American luxury car until I persuaded him to get a Mercedes 450SL. He bought a bright red one and I was probably his first passenger.

That guy had taste and the interior looked like a house of that vintage should look. Real wood, quality craftsmanship, excellent and beautiful Asian carpets. What has been done to the interior by subsequent owners is nothing short of criminal. There’s nothing classic or unique about it. It looks like every one of those hideous faux farm white boxes with black windows that they build now. This house might as well have been torn down - the destruction is no less, and the insult the same. What a shame.