Living in history: The old house appeal
Homes should be our most trusted possession. Where we live should protect us. We would not drive a car with bad brakes. We would not wear split pants, even on a Zoom call. But many of us truly love, and love living in, very old homes.
Time compromises everything. Everyone has a parent, a friend, a pet — even themselves — and has seen age degrade a once fully functional body. Homes are no different. Like our bodies, every building is a collection of systems. Use and time wears on every system that is used to create a home.
“New Construction” is the most bankable market for home buyers. New homes, where all those systems (plumbing, heating, electrical, siding, roof, and on and on) are each at the start of their manufacturers’ “warranty period” — usually 20-30 years. Just like buying a new car, the repairs are rare and often covered by those warranties.
A little bit like each of us, when a home is older than 30 things begin to fail. When you buy a home, a home inspector meticulously lists the condition and age of each and every one of its systems. Any noted degradation affects the home’s value now and the condition of all those systems are calculated into the home’s cost.
You would think that any fully geriatric home’s value, however repaired, would be viciously compromised. But there turns out to be value in antiquity. Provenance has worth. Bill Hosley, who created the website “Creating Sense Of Place For CT,” fully believes in the value of history in buildings, and knows its consequences. “It’s almost like asking why would anyone want to have children. Some don’t. But the
value and necessity is beyond much debate. Stewardship is the heart of Historic Preservation and the basis of authenticity that is so fundamental to places worth caring about.”
Recently, a friend noted, “Owning an old home is like owning an old car, some people love it!” But when I brought my 1963 Volvo 122s with its bi-carbureted B-18 engine in to see the mechanic, he said, “Well, you know how to tune it, don’t you?” I learned. I found out that antiquity is not just a value — it is a life focus if you own an old car, or home. Just like old cars, there are two types of old homeowners: Those who, themselves, can fix the building’s
failures on a moment’s notice with confidence and determination and those who have enough money to pay others to do the dirty work, leveraged by the homeowner’s dedication. Those without money or the skill to fix them either live in ignorance or terror, because old homes always fail.
Football is said to be the only sport with a 100 percent chance of injury over time. Antique homes (officially more than 100 years old) also have a 100 percent chance of some failure in any given year, at any time. Even a “fully restored” home has a fundamentally old (and impossible to see) infrastructure. To be as fully transparent as a new home, an old home has to be “renovated” to the point where nothing you can see or touch has the antiquity that has the charm and value that makes it desirable in the first place. This reality is why almost all “Spec Homes” (new homes built to sell, like cars) borrow from the triggering stylistic motifs of “old” homes — faux old trim, materials, shape, even layout. Many want the “charm” of an old home without the hassle of actually being old.
As an architect I am often asked if a place is worth owning, and my response is always that you cannot build the site. How land lays out, its features, its orientation, its soil, the available infrastructure is not created, it just is. Similarly, the community, neighborhood, environs are what they are, they are not made by anyone.
You could say that the same holds true for old homes. They are their own site, and their history is itself an isolated community made of its own provenance — a place that harbors all those who lived there before you did. No one creates time, time creates itself — we call it history. Invented history in mimicked “style” is just an applique, a costume of simulation wallpapered upon a new building. You cannot fake history, you can only simulate it. The reality of age cannot be denied in our faces, bodies, cars or homes — no matter the quality of the plastic surgery or paint jobs. Time is as undeniable as gravity.
Architects and designers try very hard, often with great skill, money and dedication to defeat both time and history, to have it both ways, where new homes are built to look old and have the gravitas of antiquity while offering the zipless living afforded by new construction. But that only works if intentions mean more that realities