This blog doubles as the production blog for the documentary film "The House That FREEDOM Built" and a renovation blog on the process of fixing this historic 18th century property.
Showing posts with label 18B East Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 18B East Street. Show all posts
So, the driveway is complete. I last wrote about feeling frustrated with the fact that I bought this property in 2011, but the outside changes were minimal compared to what we completed on the inside. Driving up gave me a feeling of distress, or the feeling you get when you are around ruin and decay. Not a good feeling.
When I drive up to my studio I want to feel good, space has that power to transform you. So my husband promised me that for my birthday/Mother's day that he would help to paint the front building, which he did. We are still struggling to paint the wooden part in between the two buildings because it's such a narrow space and there is a steep incline. Next was tackling the tree stump which I hired someone to hack via a chainsaw. We attempted to rent one and do it ourselves but I learned that no one rents chainsaws on island! I suppose it's a liability issue as I hear they are quite dangerous.
Who knew how hard a quenip tree is, because it dulled two new blades. We cut it as low as we could and then threw some dirt and then some gravel on top and...voila!
A serious transformation to the exterior...por fin! And most
importantly it's finally safe for me to have events there without fear
that guests will trip on roots and stones.
We spent the summer in Cuba visiting my husband's family. After returning in late August and getting kids back into the back-to-school groove I have been able to reassess this project. It's been three years since I first acquired the property and it has been quite a journey. My life has made unexpected demands on me and that there have been long stints that I could not work on either the renovation or the documentary. But this is the first time where I really do see that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. I am really almost there.
In July I was able to put together some funds to get the shutters made. I made it a point to get the
historical hinges. They cost me almost as much as the labor and
materials for the shutters themselves. Luckily, the vendor is someone I
know and who believes in the project. They gave me a discount, but even
with the discount it was definitely a pricey item: $25-$30/ hinge. Notice there are four per window opening. That adds up fast!
I had some disappointments with the quality of the work on the shutters, and even considered getting them redone. But, I am going to live with it. Perhaps by looking at the picture you can see what the issue is:
........see it?........no?.....
They are uneven. The carpenter made one side bigger than the next so they can lap, or fold over. It is true some people do shutters this way, but for the most part they are supposed to look even when they are open. It's part of the aesthetics. I considered having it redone and then let it go. They serve their function. The person who installed them also had a little mishap when installing the ones in the bathroom.
He underestimated the width of the wall and the bolts came through and damaged the tile. Still waiting to have that fixed. These disappointments are part of construction: things happen, there is miscommunication, different expectations and mistakes. With experience and better communication you can keep these to a minimum.
What the shutters have afforded me is the ability to finally finish
the interior of the building. We removed all of the bars and can now
secure the building properly against weather and theft. That means I can
finish the painting, stain and seal the floors and ......actually begin to put things
in the building, like tables, and chairs and art supplies!
Renovation has begun again. Getting plumbing to the building became paramount. My daughters are often with me and I got tired of sending them to the bush when they needed to use the bathroom.
The bathroom was an addition to the house made in the early 1900's, I'm placing it between 1920-1930. It appears to have been done by cutting a hole out of the side of the building and adding a concrete block structure that is supported also by concrete blocks. Unlike the elegance in proportion of the original structure, this bathroom was done in a way that left it awkward. You have to step down 3 inches when you enter it. The ceiling is very low. The toilet is a little far from the wall. There is a window above the face basin. All this to say that we gutted the bathroom and made some minor adjustments in positioning of the toilet.
My original idea was to have a white bathroom, but when it came time to
buy the materials at HD nothing of what I had looked at before was
there. There seems to be a serious ordering problem in that store. So I
settled for travertine tiles, 18"X24". Stone is a beautiful material. I'm satisfied but not thrilled.
We installed completely new plumbing in the walls and in the ground. I don't know if I would have changed even the sewer line if I didn't have to, but since the "Copper Thieves" stole most of the cast iron pipes that were partially exposed due to erosion, we had to. It cost $1200 in labor and another $400 in materials.
I never imagined how exciting it would feel to see water flowing into a toilet. It was surreal. Water in a toilet, in this house, that was so abandoned and neglected for years. It made me think of how amazing that must have been for those who also saw indoor plumbing for the first time. The foundation for the outhouse/privy/latrine is still located to the back of the property. I'm not sure what I will do with it yet.
In the interviews I did with residents of the area, many commented that up to the 50's when most people still had outhouses, that men would come in the nights to empty them out. One of the interviewee's said the she was a girl at the time and it was a bit scary for her because they would come in a big noisy truck and be dressed in dark clothes, long boots and gloves, and masks. I think she said they were called the "Night Soil Men". I have to go back and look, but regardless, I like the name and see it fitting.
My next civilizing feat is to get electricity to the building. The process has begun, but is incomplete. More on that later. For now I'm enjoying running water.
The wooden part is the oldest part of the house. The concrete additions of a kitchen and bathroom were done later in the early 1900's. It is the wooden section that needs the most repair. Next week I meet with my carpenter who will be assisting me to figure out how much we can save and what absolutely must be replaced. This dilemma between renovation vs restoration has been a struggle and you have to ask a lot of questions, because in my experience, most carpenters will tell you to take the whole thing down and start again. They will tell you it will look better, last longer, that they don't like mixing new with old, that it will be more work, more expensive, and they will look at you like you are crazy when you ask them the same thing four times sometimes in the same way, sometimes in different ways, to see if you will get a different answer. The funny thing is that older materials were of higher quality, so you definitely want to try to save as much of it as possible. So it's funny when a carpenter tells you to throw 100% out when it's really 10, 25 or maybe even 50% that is damaged. And also funny enough (hah, hah, do you hear me laughing?) the older materials are also made at different measurements. So the older 4x4 beams are not really 4x4 beams but 3 and 1/2 also making it difficult to match old with new.
18B East St, Christiansted. The oldest part of the building, built in the late 1700's.
At this point however, it looks like most of the supporting vertical beams have been compromised. You can see this in the picture from all of the horizontal beams that have been placed in between to try to brace the building. Despite this effort, it's sinking in some areas, leaning in others and so we will have to take up the floors, jacked up the part that is sinking and check the other supporting floor boards. In this process I will be able to ascertain how much of the original floor I can keep, if any, it's in pretty bad shape. The ship lapped wood (horizontal in blue) is also rotting. However, I will go board by board and try to save as much of this as possible too.
This will be the most costly part of the renovation. Wood although 100 years ago was cheap, today it's quite expensive and in the St. Croix, many people have moved away from building wooden homes because of the upkeep, pests and fear of hurricanes. But more than that, I think that wood houses have also because become synonymous with poverty. They remind us of an era many would prefer to forget. Yet what I find interesting is that many of these houses were also usually built by the hands of its inhabitants. They are handcrafted, which in our modern world of manufacturing and prefab is becoming less and less common.
I also find it interesting the words we use to describe wooden houses and how they denote different ideas. Shack, cottage, cabin, chattel house, board house, row house, beach house are all typically made of wood, but they all mean very different things. I'm not sure which one of these words best describes this house. It's obviously not a beach house or a cabin. I'm working on it to no longer be refereed to as a shack :). It's not a board house which typically means it was made with plywood. And although slaves lived there at different times in it's history, it's not really a chattel house either as it was owned by freed slaves in an area designated for freed slaves to live. So...I suppose it's somewhere between a cottage and a row house. Looking forward to seeing how it feels and fits on this continuum when it's done.
My amazing and always helping mother, Claudia Belle, helping out in clearing up the yard. We are trying to make it a little safer for the kids to be around.
One of the cool things about doing this project and having a website/blog is that people reach out to you. It has become a way that like minds and people interested in this field have found me. Last week I met with a Danish professor, Helle Stenum, who was visiting St. Croix and teaches cultural and migration studies at Roskilde University.
Helle Stenum, Danish professor of Culture and Identity
She was interested in talking about my project and the links between Denmark and the Virgin Islands. I took her to see the house. I was commenting on the renovation and the craftsmanship in the buildings, specifically the beading that is found in the rafters and the siding. Many of this work was done by hand. Today machines can do this work, but it can be still expensive to reproduce. I chose not to replicate a lot of these details because of the time and expense, but am happy that the older part of the house still has some.
Vernacular details of Christiansted house. Hand-planed beading in exterior wall.
She looked around and said, "They loved their houses". I paused. "Yes, they did," I responded. It was such profound moment for me. A simple realization. They. Loved. Their. Houses. The details, the craftsmanship, the time, the care: they loved them. To put those kinds of details in a simple 100-200 square foot house, shows a level of pride that is awe inspiring. Let us remember that.
Vernacular details of 18B East Street. Hand-planed beading in rafter.
Below is the written testimony I provided at the legislative hearing. I must say that after listening to many of the other testimonies that morning I ad-libbed A LOT. Mostly because I realized that the bill was not in a state that it could be moved through, but needed both minor tweaking and major amendments. The hearing on St. Croix is slated for August, 23, 2012. I plan on being there. Hope you will too and if you can't please submit a written testimony to Colette Monroe (colettemonroe@yahoo.com) Chief of Staff of Senator Louis
Patrick Hill, sponsor of the bill.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that part of my testimony made the
local radio and tv news the following day, in addition to being
paraphrased here in the Virgin Islands Daily News. Here is some of the coverage from TV2. I'm in the background in this coverage. :)
I also need to add that my ticket to go to St. Thomas was paid for by
the VI Territorial Realtors Association. They had written a grant to the
National Realtors Association and gotten funding to do this advocacy
work as a way to impact and change their community. Although I had
planned on going over myself, when they heard I wanted to come, they
offered to pay for my ticket. I am very grateful.
I would like to
offer the perspective of someone who is actually in the process of what we all
want: renovating historic buildings. I hope my testimony gives you more insight
as to why this bill is so important to pass, despite some of its shortcomings.
The status quo is not an option, our buildings are crumbling, being scavenged,
stripped or burnt or and the histories that come with them, forgotten.
My husband and I
are currently renovating two properties in Christiansted.The first property, 36 King St, is
located in Sunday Market Square, otherwise known as Times Square. It has two
two-story buildings that consist of four residential units and one commercial
space. The residential space was last used as a nightclub and the residential
spaces were converted into a brothel. We are about 50% completed with the
renovation. We did most of the work ourselves or with friends, including our
dearest ones: Visa, Mastercard and American Express.It has not been easy. I looked for grants and could
not find any that we qualified for, including the famed “Scrape, Paint and
Rejuvenate Program” run through the St. Croix Foundation. The income limits are
too low and the grant eligibility required that the space be occupied. We are
exhausted, but happy that we have wonderful families living in two of the
apartments and have began renting the third one as a vacation rental. We are
currently looking for more financing to complete the project.
The other
property is really special as it speaks to the core of what is really at stake
in this discussion: our cultural patrimony. 18B East Street is located in the
Free Gut area of Christiansted.It
comprises of two small vernacular houses, one was burnt by crack addicts and
the other structure is partially wooden with a unique brick arches in the
foundation.Currently the area is
full of dilapidated and abandoned buildings, abandoned not just physically but
psychologically. They represent a part of our collective social amnesia of a
part of our history that we have chosen to forget. But why? Why did we forget
Elizabeth Abraham, who was the first registered owner of 18 East Street. She
was an African born woman, who was brought here to be a slave, she survived the
Middle Passage, survived slavery and was able to escape that system and become
one of the few privileged class of blacks in that time, the Freed Blacks. It is
amazing that she was able to purchase property and in my little decrepit
building, that many people told me I should just push down, resides dozens of
stories like Elizabeth’s. These buildings and these stories are so important.
They are our cultural heritage and we must honor them by remembering their
legacy of self-determination and by treating these buildings like the treasures
that they are.
I was so inspired
by the stories of the previous owners of my building that it motivated me to do
a documentary about them, the larger Free Gut community and the process of bringing
this building back to life. I hope that you might also be inspired to act and
move this bill forward. We need to hold our community accountable. We need this
impetus for change to move from a culture of decay and abandonment to one of
development and dignity.
Further points
that this bill speaks to that are key:
We need money in the form of grants or low- interest
loans to renovate buildings.
We need education, both the owners and the general
public, but especially contractors and construction workers. It is a
constant battle with contractors who want to use modern materials and
techniques that would destroy the character of the building simply because
they do not know any better. I suggest a class at CTECH for carpenters and
contractors on the historic guidelines and how to build the shutter,
windows, etc.. to keep in line with them.
We do need the penalties to ensure that everyone is
held accountable. It is not fair that some are investing their hard earned
money to rehabilitate or maintain their properties and their neighbors are
allowed to let garbage accumulate, grass overgrow or let vagrants or
addicts take over their neglected property.
We need incentives. The tax incentives are excellent,
however they should reflect the reality of maintaining historic
structures. This is expensive! Especially if they are partially wood,
which most of them are. Wooden structures are more expensive because of
the upkeep and the insurance and the tax incentives should better reflect
these costs. Perhaps even subsidies could be introduced.
Finally, we need action. We need
you, our legislators to support this bill and create this catalyst for change.
We need you to remember Elizabeth Gabriel, and the other men and women like her
that first occupied these spaces, that worked hard to purchase and build these
first homes. As the title of my documentary emphasizes, these are the houses
that freedom built. Please act now to honor and celebrate them.
House that Dr. Olaf "Bronco" Hendricks grew up in on Queen Cross Street, Christiansted.
Dr. Olaf "Bronco" Hendricks reminiscing in front of his childhood home in "Free Gut"
This is an exciting part of the documentary process for me: the interviews. I love talking to people and hearing their stories. Recently I interviewed the well known psychiatrist, musician and talk-show host, Dr. Olaf "Bronco" Hendricks. I've known Dr. Hendricks for many years, he was friends with my father. I also grew up with his son Kai. However, the interview we did a couple of weeks ago gave me new insight not only into his person, but into a fascinating community that he describes in the 1940's and 50's while growing up in Christiansted town. During that time, "Free Gut" was known as "Upstreet" because these streets are literally located uphill or "upstreet" from the main sections of town. During our interview he describes a nurturing, close-knit community and a childhood filled with romps in the street, swims in the reservoir, storytelling and stilt-walkers. A community so close and so special that later in life many of them realized that although many of the families have moved from the old neighborhood, their bonds have remained. They formed the group today known as the "Hillsiders" who meet annually.
La Vaughn Belle interviewing Dr. Olaf "Bronco" Hendricks
One thing that struck me in the interview was when Bronco revealed that growing up they had no knowledge of the history of "Free Gut". "Slavery was not something we discussed", he said. Instead he learned about "Free Gut" on his own while he was in college. We had a very interesting discussion about the possible causes of this collective amnesia as well as what could be done to reclaim this community. I look forward to being able to share all that and more when the documentary comes out!
On May 18, 2012 we had our first interview with the historian George Tyson. He has been helping me research the previous owners of our building. I find it interesting that many of them were women. However, it's really challenging wrapping my head around 18th century Danish West Indian life: the owning of another person; how to purchase yourself out of slavery?; and how to then survive on your own? Especially as a woman. What are your assets? Who do you align yourself with? And most importantly: What did this house mean to a formerly enslaved woman? Was it another means of income? Was it a refuge? An asset? We have owning property so associated with the concept of the "American Dream", a home as wealth builder, a form of security. What did it mean to them?
La Vaughn Belle & George Tyson reviewing the history of previous owners at 18B East St.
