from the Town archives

yesterday evening we had the opportunity to review photos in the Town archives.  the holdings include many views of the Circle but no. 15 appears in very few of them due to pointing angle (it was just outside the margin of several images) or obstruction by vegetation or, in the earliest views, the Tabernacle. 

this image is from a postcard taken in the 1900s 1920s and is the only one prior to the 1950s in which the cottage can be seen.  this was before the dormers were added, the exterior covered with shingles and the upstairs front window replaced.  the porch's tin roof remained through the 1950s  

c. 1920s

back to the issue at hand:  some trim is visible on the double doors in the middle of the front and under the flanking windows.  but the details above the doors and windows cannot be made out. 

it is also interesting to note that next door, the steps to Allan Janus' cottage then spanned the full width of the porch.  this was also the case for no. 11, out of the image to the R. 

many thanks to Missy Yachup for taking time away from her family to make the archives available for this search. 

more cottage archaeology

as the deshingling campaign moves aloft the cottage continues to reveal fresh detail.  having managed to get home from work at an unusually reasonable hour I went up to see whether the siding on the front of the house runs the rest of the way up the front wall.  it does.  and behind the shingles was the inadvertently stenciled outline of more lost detail -- the upstairs front window once resembled those of many other Grove cottages, with some attractive trim above it. 

figuring out how to do The Right Thing with these details is going to take some time and will likely slow things down a bit.  yes, they have become... im-pediments. 

more from the archives

many thanks to Ann Briggs for passing the word to Phil Winter that the façade restoration project was in need of period images.  he came for a visit this evening, having dipped into his treasure trove of old Grove photos for this priceless gem, which he dates to around 1905. 

and a quick correction to yesterday's photo, which we estimated at
the 1900s but which he places in the 1920s.

Courtesy of Phil Winter

this is the first time we've seen an image of the North side of the house, and it's interesting to see that it was already on multiple levels sloping down from the Circle to Pine Avenue (this block of which is now considered as part of Grove Road).  there's a wealth of detail which will do a great deal to aid the cause.