Name/Title
Grumblethorpe "Before and After" PictorialEntry/Object ID
2013.2.75Description
Book, with white plastic spine [partially failed], on 8 x 10" stock. Includes 26 pages [paginated in the archives for cataloging] of "before and after" shots of Grumblethorpe, at 5269 Germantown Avenue. Woodell rehabilitated the structure there, and used it as a studio. This book documents that restoration. Notes by Goodell [apparently quite recent] were adhered to some of the pages. These notes have been transcribed here, and the original ones discarded as they were damaging the pages. The photos used in this book were apparently taken by Charles Claxton.
Inside front cover, notes: "My-brother-in-law, Charles Claxton, took some pictures of the place in 1932 when we had just begun work. (This is the way the front looked then except that all shutters were closed). After I had been sent to Navy Boot Camp in 1942, he came back and took more pictures of the place, and was kind enough to make up this book and send it to me."
p.1- exterior/ stoop of Grumblethorpe.
p.2- This is the front hall facing the front door (west) during the time we were first scraping the loose layers of whitewash from the walls.
p.3- This is the same front hall looking in the opposite direction (east) in the summer of 1942.
p.4- These two photos [pp.4 and 5] are properly juxtaposed: the same subject taken from pretty much the same angle- and separated only by time and work.
p.6- This "before" shot does not really pair properly with the one opposite. It is of upstairs room #2 (our back bedroom) looking into the southwest corner."
p.7- This is downstairs room #1 (the same as those on the two preceding pages, but looking into the south-east corner instead of the south-west.
p.8- This is the "before" shot of what was to become our dining room (#2 on the plan).
p.9- Room #2, "after."
p.10- "Before" Room #2; fireplace head-on and a slice of the original open shelving.
p.11- "After" Room #2: shot of dining room shelving head-on and a slice of the original fireplace.
p.12- These two shots [pp.12-13] are properly paired: this one faces the north-east corner of room #3, the east end of which was a rough, unplastered board-on-board partition at the time we started work on the house.
p.13- This photograph is taken from almost the same position as the prior one. The partition has been removed to form our living room (#3, #4).
p.14- This shot is of my studio facing west across germantown avenue. There are no "before" pictures of this [(#3, #4) on the plan] but there was a rough board-on-board partition that divided the area into two rooms where the sustaining close-beam ran.
p.15- The ceiling of #4 room was originally a mirror image of #3, before I cut it out and put a skylight in the slanting attic roof above. This shot looks up at the loft and the built-in bed- and the almost completed balustrade.
p.16- This shot of the studio facing east shows where the beams were removed to open the studio up to the benefit of the skylight at attic roof level.
p.17- There was (of course) no raised-hearth fireplace originally. Room #3 west of the partition had a small fireplace in it with the flue rising in the place I used to build the little alcove to the left. Then I built the raised -hearth between the living room and furnace flues and old flue, then steered the new flue back into #3 fireplace's flue. Room #4 never had a fireplace. Brrrr!
p.18- This is upstairs room, #1 our front bedroom. It made a very nice room (except for Germantown Avenue noise), and except for cleaning up, replacing broken glass & painting, we did not alter it at all.
p.19- This is room #2 which featured a "built-in" bed that could be slid out into the room to facilitate making up. None of it was (of course) original in the 1744 sense.
p.21 You know from our phone conversation about the need to replace the rotted out basement stairs. Luckily, a still sturdy horse chestnut trunk still stood about 30 feet behind the house, that had been fire-killed about 3 years before we arrived.
p.22- These two shots [pp.22-23] are paired just about perfectly for "before and after" impressions. The catalpa that snakes its way in from the right margin and the ailanthus that fringes the top (though trimmed a bit) are in both.
p.23- The patio paving was done with a combination of stones from two different sources. The rougher ones full of mica came from different depths of our local digging, when we were making the pool and the outdoor steps to the basement. The smoother, flatter ones came from an old quarry in Chestnut Hill.
p.24- The shot to the left was evidently taken at the time we were building the (outside)stairs to the basement. As I told you during our phone conversation, although it is obvious there had originally been a door there (note the arch and vertical stonework at the sides), the aperture had all been filled up with stone masonry and earth to doorstep level.
p.25- Both pictures show the ailanthus growing out of the back doorstep and the left-hand page shows both the wierd [sic] catalpa spiraling about, and the dark trunk of the huge elm (behind the ladder) that was probably displacing the corner of the house with its roots.
p.26- It was a beautiful spot and unrealistically quiet for a place that close to Germantown Avenue and its trollees [sic].