Historic home rebounds after fire eight years ago
Angela Feathers and her family consider themselves not just the owners, but the stewards of the historic house with the bulbous front porch at 1716 N. Parkway.
“This isn’t our home forever; we always felt like we were caretakers of the house,” said Feathers, who along with her husband, Aaron, and four children has lived in the two-story house since 2006.
“So we’d always fuss at the children: ‘Don’t do that. This has been around 100 years and will be around 100 more. Let’s take good care of it.’”
Little wonder, then, that Feathers recalls the fire with such clarity.
“It was the day before Halloween 2010. All the children were playing outside. It was a beautiful day. I had candles going, much like today. One of the candles’ wicks — we don’t know — we think was too long and blew up.”
Flames rapidly engulfed the Paul Frankl cork table under the candle. Throwing water on the spreading fire didn’t help. They saved what they could before the smoke and heat forced them outside.
In the aftermath, the family’s sense of responsibility kicked in again. With the help of home insurance and earnest contractors and craftsmen, the couple spent more than $800,000 replicating as much as they could the fine architectural details and early 20th century design flourishes.
The family is ready to move now that the oldest child is graduating high school, and they don’t need as large a house anymore.
They’ve just put the home on the market for $575,000. The house, built in 1906, has five bedrooms, two bathrooms and 3,671 square feet.
“We have absolutely loved this house,” Feathers said.
She has read that 1716 N. Parkway was the first house built on North Parkway by a person who worked for the company that developed the neighborhood.
Some of the home’s original interior pieces were saved from the fire, like some of the mantels, tile, front door and staircases. Decades of paint layers were removed from the original radiators.
The craftsmen who worked on the house for 10 months in 2011 replicated the original cabinets, floors, interior columns and even the pocket doors that slide out of the walls.
The reconstruction could not copy everything. For example, the original floors had a different decorative inlay pattern for each room. The new floors also have an inlay design, but it’s the same Greek key pattern for each room.
Feathers pointed up to the base of the library’s ceiling fan, which is adorned with a pattern of feathers. “Anywhere we could put a feather they let us do it,” she said, “to kind of put our stamp on the house.”
The fire’s silver lining is that now all the home’s electrical and plumbing systems are modern and up to code.
“Everything was fresh and clean and new,” Feathers said of the re-construction.
“Part of living in a historical house, it’s beautiful and grand but sometimes you have those little spots that just don’t come clean or they are little grimy in areas,” she said. “We didn’t have that problem anymore. It’s all fresh and clean. That was really nice.”