I'm giving "mansion" tours today!

oHIo

[quote] it's annual Victorian house festival.

How unfortunate that you did not consult with a spell check before posting.

HOLY TOLDEO!

Coming Soon

I love house tours and had my house in one in the 90's but I'm surprised they are still doing them. I would think this would be a great tour for a thief and would never open my house back up again today even though my home is very small.

I remember vividly doing one of these tours during the two years I lived in Knoxville, TN 91999-2001) in their old historic district, where most of the housees were owned by old queens.

The most memorable was a house of two men who had an enormous mural reproducing Michelangelo's The Creation of Man over their dining room table, except whoever had painted it had accidentally made the eyes of both God and Adam so enormously7 large they looked like Japanese anime figures. It wasn't meant to be funny, but it was hilarious. The two men had also put out on the living room table, for reasons never explained, their designer sweater collection and in the middle of that their tie collection, with the latter laid out in one of those wood frames with pigeonholes in it that you see in department stores. Except here, the ties were displayed in each pigeonhole so that the designer labels were faced out--as if you were supposed to admire the labels! "Ooooh, Fendi!"

The other thing I remember vividly from it was walking through another Victorian house where to get to one of the rooms to another you had to walk through a small bathroom. The owner had placeed a red velvet rope between two brass posts so that the rope was over the toilet seat--as if they thought otherwise you might be tempted to take a dump during the tour (while other people were passing through!).

This tour was genuinely one of the reasons I moved out of Knoxville and back to the West Coast. I decided I did not want to live in a city where the gay men were so incredibly tacky.

It looks too moist and the chimney triggers my OCD.

I gave tours of the Willys House. John North Willys fouded Willys/Jeep and it's a very grand house, but all I wanted to tell people was that the Willys' other home was an apartment at 820 Fifth Avenue, where... [quote]An apartment designed for Mr. and Mrs. John North Willys at 820 Fifth catered to the couple’s art collection: “The salon is large enough to contain without crowding a Rembrandt, a Frans Hals, a Velásquez and other old masters.” As for the library, “The bookcases are set into its paneled walls, leaving sufficient room for three masterpieces.”

820 Fifth, former home of Jayne Wrightsman and Babe Paley.

I kept my NYC apartment trivia to myself. No one stole anything, but one woman was almost too drunk to walk.

Jealous

These are beautiful Holmes. It’s a shame to Lido is such a mess

Did someone mention Toledo and Holmes, Katie Holmes, Toledo's hometown hero?

Still Coming Soon. While I'm waiting...

[quote] It's one of the biggest festivals in town, in the largest collection of Victorian homes in the country.

Oh, I do not doubt this is one of the biggest festivals in Toledo, but it is certainly not the largest collection of Victorian homes in the country. Brooklyn Heights laughs at you. San Francisco rolls its eyes. Boston gives you the back of its hand. Even little Troy, NY, doubts you.

Have fun OP!

r13 I get what you're saying, but those are cities, not neighborhoods aside from Brooklyn which was a city... None of those cities' neighborhoods are this large. It's one contiguous collection of Victorian homes. Other cities have a group of Victorians here, a few Victorian streets there, but they're all broken up.

Oh OP, please tell your pals to fix this at the link:

Jacobs - Sluhan/Mohr Home: In a neighborhood of predominately frame Victorian homes

That's not correct, R15. You're wrong in just about all of it.

I stand corrected.

[quote] This neighborhood is one of the best kept secrets in the country with Twenty-five city blocks making up one of the largest collections of late Victorian houses left standing in the United States. Frank Lloyd Wright studied this area in his planning of his Oak Park Project in Illinois.

[quote]The Old West End is a historic neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio and is considered to be "the largest neighborhood of late Victorian, Edwardian, and Arts & Crafts homes east of the Mississippi."

OUT OF MY HOUSE!

We used to have house tours in my neighborhood on a Sunday morning in the spring. One year, there was a knock at my door. I was upstairs, naked and in the middle of a great fuck, so I ignored the knock. A couple minutes later, another knock. Angry as hell, I put on some pants and went downstairs. By the time I opened the door, whoever was there was gone. What I discovered was that a house our sign had been put in my front yard, instead of the yard next door. I quickly ran out, put the sign in their yard and went about my business. Since then, I have always checked every carefully whenever the historical house tour takes place.

The longest collection of Victorian homes is along Summit Avenue in Saint Paul:

[quote] Summit Avenue is a street in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, known for being the longest avenue of Victorian homes in the country, having a number of historic houses, churches, synagogues, and schools.

I used to love Rehab Addict, with Nicole Curtis. She worked on several great houses around Minneapolis.

"My neighborhood is having it's annual Victorian house festival. "

Ah, the Victorian era, before anyone taught OP the proper use of apostrophes, and OP wasn't paying attention in class.

Our house was one of the holiday house tours, even the Christmas my daughter died.

The annual Tours de Noel are not to be missed either.

Cabbage Town in Toronto has the largest collection of Victorian homes in North America.

I found Rosebud!! It is hanging over the fireplace in the basement man cave of the the above house listed for sale on Glenwood Ave in Toledo!! Mystery solved! (Picture 31)

The price on that house is less than a one-bedroom tear-down shanty in an ugly D.C. suburb. Is Toledo that bad?

[quote] Is Toledo that bad?

Ummm... It has a lovely art museum. But other than that, it's pretty bad. I've been there several times, but only to visit an old friend. I certainly did not go to enjoy the glories of Toledo, if any.

How do you feel about algae blooms?

r28, can you imagine what it would go for in Cleveland Park?

In Northern Ohio, adjacent to Lake Erie, the house linked in R27 would cost as much to heat as it would cost to buy.

It can cost upwards of $1000/per month in the dead of winter to keep one of these houses at 70 degrees. But the houses are cheap and taxes are low.

Speaking of mysteries, Mildred Benson wrote many of the Nancy Drew books one street over from me. She was married to the editor of the Toledo Blade. [quote]She wrote some of the earliest Nancy Drew mysteries and created the detective's adventurous personality. Benson wrote under the Stratemeyer Syndicate pen name, Carolyn Keene, from 1929 to 1947 and contributed to 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew mysteries, which were bestsellers.

My neighbor's house is still "Coming Soon", so here's another that sold a few weeks ago.

r32 That's just gorgeous, Ruth.

These mansions are beautiful but I'm always thinking the cost of heating and cooling these places would bankrupt you. Plus when these houses were built you usually has a staff of 2-3 people to help you cook and clean these places.

I have a crush on "Ruth" ever since seeing that YouTube video he linked in another thread. :-)

R6 that's hilarious. Thank you. Reminded me of a Xmas party I went to in NC. Didn't realize it was an eldergay couple's mansion as I was a guest of a guest. Tacky as heck but in an endearing way.

In the summer we shuttled between a contemporary glass ranch in Eastham on the Cape and a shingle style Victorian in Watch Hill. The latter smelled like the sea and mildew and the 2nd and 3rd floors creaked and sagged. I think it had a ghost and I know it had 2 suicides. It had a wrap around porch, half of it screened in for sleeping, and cavernous ancient kitchen equipment such as a giant chest freezer filled with decades of forgotten summer treats. My lesbian aunt forbid emptying it out so we just stacked that summer's new stuff on the highest layer, and sometimes pulled out mystery treats from the past. I watched The Omen alone in that house and was TRAUMATISED. There was a forest of huge old lilacs behind the barn/garage (caving in) where I jerked off with any willing summer buddies. We were not allowed in the barn because it was going to collapse at any minute. (Of course it never did.)

R2 perhaps you don't know the difference between misspelling a word, and just using it incorrectly.

[quote] I think it had a ghost and I know it had 2 suicides.

I have friend who has some psychic abilities he won't enter a house if he is at the from door and senses the house is haunted. He will make up an excuse for the hosts and leave immediately.

I saw a ghost here in the back stairway coming down from the third floor a long time ago. There's a light on a motion detector that always comes on when you come around the corner and it didn't come on. It got really cold and the ghost conveniently looked like Professor Snape. I still don't really believe in ghosts. When I see one wandering around HomeGoods I'll be a real believer.

Victorian is the worst period for me - so over-decorated abs tacky

I've never seen this thread before suddenly have it pop up on my watch list. It is the sort of thread that would have interested me. Why am I now here?

For R42.