Picture This...

After 10 days off for spring break, I'm back in the groove at the Regional History Center. Steve Bigolin, a local historian in DeKalb County, recently donated a variety of Haish-related artifacts to the RHC, and I'm sure glad he did! I spent part of my afternoon inspecting the collection of pictures he gave us, which included both interior and exterior shots of the house. Let me tell you, I learned A LOT!

Okay, so. First of all, there was a picture in the group that was clearly the oldest shot of the mansion that exists (to the right, on the top). This shows not a porte-cochere and gazebo, but a sunroom-area with the same upper shape and window motif as the gazebo. It turns out that was actually the original design for the home, which Haish essentially designed himself. However, when the house was built, it was discovered that there was a flaw in the plans and when it rained water would leak into the home. Instead, they built the gazebo out of the remnant of that sunroom, and the shape of both the porte-cochere and the gazebo were taken from the roof. Upon looking even closer, I think I found another detail that was changed between the first and second pictures. The part of the leftmost porch on the bottom picture that juts out horizontally doesn't appear at all on the first picture, as far as I can see. I think that was also a later addition to the house, and that theory seems correct if you consider how unsymmetrical it makes that side of the house. There's really no balance.

 I also went looking for pictures of the back of the house, which is extraordinarily plain in the model. It seemed out-of-character for Mr. Haish to neglect ornamentation on even the section of his house which is off the street, and I was right. It seems that W. Joseph Zack didn't have access to pictures of this angle, since there are two doors and porches missing completely from his model, and there is climbing vegetation affixed to the wall of the model, perhaps to hide that he has no clue what was supposed to be back here... It makes sense that there would be few pictures of this are, given that it was most likely the service entrance, and the doors probably led to the kitchen, but it is interesting nonetheless to see that there are still carved columns and stonework on the back to accent the entrances.

In addition, there were several pictures which depicted the process of tearing down the Haish house in September of 1961. It was jarring for me to see the bits and pieces that I recognized in this state, and it makes me wonder how many people were watching the demolition... There were at least three different perspectives that I could see, but there were no people aside from the workers in any of the shots.

There were also some fabulous detail photographs of things that are on a very small scale in the actual model (and thus appear as little bumps, if at all--I'm not sure that Zack knew what they were if he was working from pictures). 

(left to right) Column detail of a rooster, column detail of Jacob Haish's face, wall detail that appeared next to the shorter side's porch.

Included in the pictures were a few newspaper articles from both the time the house was built and the time the house was demolished. The oldest article, from 1885 and titled "Palace Beautiful," describes the then-newly-completed home as an "original and attractive combination of Medieval, Gothic and Queen Ann style of architecture" which they praised as the newest trend. The latest article, from August 1961, helped elucidate the picture shown below. In advance of the Haish house's demolition, members of the community were allowed to tour the inside of the mansion for one last time. This is, apparently, the source of many interior pictures we still have. Now, this was not the only time the interior was seen. The house was owned by the Lutheran church next door, and they used it to teach Sunday school, but there were some truly delightful pictures of middle-aged Swedish women posing in fromt of fireplaces and by large mirrors, like the one below. 

In addition to all the fun I had with the pictures, I also began to glue together the final porch that's been missing on the house and made a final decision about the house's base. Hopefully I'll finish the porch on Friday, then I'll take a week off and resume the home stretch on this project when my supplies come in at the beginning of April.

Hours Today: 3:30

Total Hours: 65:30