Pillars of the Grand Manor

The Wolverton House if classified as a Greek Revival Plantation House.  This is an architectual style that was prominant in the United States in the mid 1800's and the Plantation House style was popular in the Maritimes, New England States and very popular through Kentucky.  The Pillars are the most important detail of Greek Revival as well as the roof style.  Simply in design but always very very big and dramatic statement of design.  Hubby and I always shop for our house parts by asking the first question, "is it big and gawdy enough".

Spring is hovering around the corner now and it is time that we are getting ready to continue with the seconde stage of replacing our pillars.  At first we considered taking them out completely, however, the way the balcony is key locked into the columns it made it a difficult and expensive project that we decided to stay away from.

Although we are still shopping around for the right pillar, this is something that will be well under construction in the next month or so.  The outer pillars are actually bigger than the inner two but all four are solid trees which makes them very heavy and awkward to duplicate.  I have been eying up the old telephone poles in our neighbourhood and thinking how to relocate at least two of them to our front entrance.

Nevertheless, we are now looking at hollow fiberglass pillars, not by choice but because of availability.

The most difficult part of our assignment was removing the huge blocks of cement that encased the original column bases.  My guess is that someone with Italian blood made this decision....and not a very good one either.  However, back in the thirties or forties, it would have been the easiest solution.  Hubby had to bring home the jack hammer to remove them and as in every step of our journey, interesting history to be uncovered.

We have found two of the bases.  It is not easy to pinpoint an exact age however with the knowledge that we personally have, we believe that one might be original to the house in 1850 and the other probably from the turn of the century to as late as 1930.  Both bases have the exact profile however constructed differently.  The older one is made of 2" blocks glued together to form the hollow base and then turned to the correct shape;  while the second is made in a dish pattern with trim molding added onto different layers.  We were able to take the exact template from these profiles and will use them to reproduce the base.

We are still researching different companies to produce our pillars.  Interestingly enough we did locate a local company here in Canada.  At first I emailed and send pictures with request.  They emailed back and asked for more details.  I then received an email requesting payment for a quote from the engineering department.  "What, is this for real".  What company askes for payment just for a quote...and at what price.  I asked again for them to respond to one of our phone numbers so we could further discuss.  No response.  This company must not need our business.  But I waited two months and emailed again hoping for a return phone call.  This time I sent the template with all the dimensions of our pillar requirements.  The sketch showes clearly a left and right profile with a suggested dimension of 14".  I didnt think it would matter if it were 14", 18" or even 20".  They emailed back and asked that I send the second profile for the 16" pillar (2 are 14", and 2 are 16"). 

This is clearly a red flag to leave well enough alone and forget working with this company.  As hubby said the other day, if this is how they conduct business, what is their service like after the fact...and if an error occures, we are screwed.

We have now located another company in PA who responded immediately to our email send out on Sunday.  I feel good with this one.  The sales rep. left a phone number and invited us to call at our convenience.

After taking out the pillars and preparing for the new cement base pad, we discovered that the original Limestone patio stones still exist.  How sad that previous owns poured a cement layer over it to burry it forever.  It is estimated that it would have been a $20,000 patio in today's pricing.  How sad...as it would have been amazing to restore this....alas chipping cement off would just destroy it.

We hopefully will have our exterior completed by year end....and will continue this post.

Portrait of Asa Wolverton

For anyone who is as obsessed with the home as we are, will appreciate the journey we have been on to locate a picture of the original builder/owner of our home.  I have spent many hours in the museum archives and ancestory sites, library, etc, researching the family responsible for building this manor. 

It was at the library, almost two years after starting our restoration that I decided to check out the file for "Wolverton".  Dont know why it took me so long, but it did.  And low and behole, there was a photo copy, black and white, of this very portrait.  It was at that time that I knew it existed.  I was also lucky to find the book that was published by a decendant with 150 years of geneology records.  Unfortunately, Asa and Juliet (his wife) did not have children, so that it made it very difficult to find information.  But I did contact the author of the ancestory book, Harold Wolverton.  We started to correspond via the internet and I was able to meet other Wolverton's.

While reading this book, I also discovered that my family ancestors were inter-married to the Wolvertons back in the 1800's.  My direct roots go back to Kentucky where the Bryan, Boones (yes the Daniel Boone clan) and the Wolverton's settled.  Joseph Bryan married Nancy Wolverton around 1805.

It was in September of '08 that we had our home on tour for the County of Brant.  In less six hours we welcomed over four hundred people through our Parlour Poladium Window (like a french door only exterior).  Two of our guests were Wolverton decendants.  That was an exciting day for us!  I invited them to come back so we could talk.  Judy Palmer and her husband have a maple sugar farm somewhere in Ontario, I think.  Cristine lives in NWT and was living briefly in Toronto while going  to school.  (BTW, both ladies are our age).  Both Ladies are great, great grand neices of Asa and Juliet. Cristine and I connected immediately.  She is an amazing and interesting lady.  She had come to visit the Wolverton House many times and we still keep in touch.

Cristine was able to point me into the direction that lead me to the portrait.  Many years back, she and her mother saw it while vacationing in Europe.

So I went back to Harold who gave me the addresses of Mary Sheppard and her husband Stephen.  Mary resides in Edmonton as she is researching and writing a book about her famous father and her husband is living in Sheffield, England in the family home....where the portrait hangs.  Mary is the great grand daughter of Asa's brother Enos.

I sent letters to both addresses and got a response via phone and letter from Mary.  She too is a delightful lady, now in her mid eighties.  Within three months, and three letters, and....a bit of money...I now have a 600dpi of the Wolverton Portrait.

We are not sure how old it is, perhaps from the 1840's, however it is an actual camera photo that was oil painted. We are now in the process of having this "picture" duplicated and have it oil painted. 

With much discussion, hubby and I are sure that this is the very wall that the portrait original hung in the dining room.  The holes in the wall are from the blown in insulation, however the black line above those holes is where a picture rail was installed.  Hook and small chains were used to hang pictures back in the day. (not like today where we ram a fat nail in the wall, cracking plaster).  This is an alcove, 19" deep.  The black part of the lower wall is probably where the wainscott was glued to the wall (probably tar based) and the darker grey section just above the tar is where the chair rail was attached to the lath.  Now it is plaster over; looks like cement.  We believe there might have been a large side board or serving buffet sitting in this alcove with Asa's portrait handing over it.  It is our goal to do this again.