2011年11月16日星期三

Doors open for Langhorne, Newtown house tours

A historic house sometimes shelters a family that, by virtue of long occupancy, becomes part of the history.

Other times,Welcome to the premier industrial Wholesale Glass Mixed Mosaics For Countertops resource residents are more recent, but not for lack of trying.

In coming weeks, house tours in Langhorne and Newtown offer the chance to see at least two in the latter category — old homes with new owners who spent years on their journey to antique surroundings.

Four homes on the 52nd annual Four Lanes End Garden Club Holiday House Tour and Tea scheduled for Thursday will be decorated by seasoned gardeners who use only what Mother Nature offers to devise elaborate holiday decorations.

Then,Wholesale Crystal For Floor tube cutting and forming on Dec. 3, the Newtown Historic Association opens the doors to six private homes from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, including one with a connection to painter Edward Hicks and a former African prince, who were involved in one of the nation’s biggest historical narratives.

In Langhorne, the garden club is raising money for scholarships it gives to students in horticulturally related fields. Newtown’s tour benefits the historic association’s preservation programs.

Both events include access to non-residential historic buildings, food, entertainment, and in Langhorne, ornament workshops and a holiday boutique.

Yvette Katz, owner of an 1857 home on West Maple Avenue that is the oldest on this year’s Four Lanes End tour, grew up in mid-20th-century Levittown remembering an inspirational childhood visit to Virginia.

“Ever since I was a kid, when my parents took me to Arlington National Cemetery, and we visited Robert E. Lee’s house, I was always fascinated with history, what things were like back in different times. There’s a soul to a house like that,” she says.

Katz says she raised her children in Wrightstown in “a regular old normal house,” and afterward began scoping out the homes in Langhorne, a town she always liked for its historic atmosphere, as well as its train connection to Philadelphia.

When she found the house on West Maple about four years ago, “I decided to take the leap,” she says. “I’ve been kinda working on it ever since.”

Katz modernized her home, but kept the historic feel, partly by using Mercer tiles from the Moravian Pottery & Tile Works in Doylestown in the kitchen and on an old fireplace once used for cooking.you how to Wholesale Linen For Countertops From China Manufacturers and enjoy a better health

In the process, she found the old iron swing arm that held pots over the fire.

She puts a pot on the hook, not for cooking but in tribute to the home’s century and a half of use.

“You always know that there’s things that must have happened there,” Katz says. “It’s just interesting to me, just kind of imagining what it was like when (the house) was built,The company overview for Wholesale Micro For Wall Victory Factory and what the town was like.”

The Four Lanes End tour also includes the Lodini home on Country Lane, which its owner decorated with an expert knowledge of textiles; and the Schmidt home on Winchester Avenue, where the owner built a mahogany secretary desk based on a distinguished antique.

Four Lanes End Garden Club president Sonia Martini is opening her home on Green Valley Road for the tour, part of which shows her garden, home to Easter Island statuary, a five-senses garden and a Brahma Bantam chicken.

The Langhorne tour also includes the historic Richardson House, the Williamson Library, plus tea and cookies and the holiday boutique at Middletown Country Club, which also will feature works by artist Barbara Rosenzweig.

Just as Katz came across the old stove hardware in her historic house, so ChaCha Williams discovered an old leather belt tucked in the rafters of her home on Court Street in Newtown.

Williams was living in Washington Crossing several years ago when she launched a search for a house in Bucks County for her sister, who was considering moving east from Oregon.

In the process, she met the Pugh family, members of whom had occupied an 18th-century house on Court Street for most of a century.

The home resonated with history, having been occupied early on by a man named County Cornwall, whom the historical association describes as “descended from a royal line in Africa.we are here to help you to Wholesale Ceramic wall tiles For Bathrooms experience the wonders of modern”

That didn’t save him from slavery, but it brought him into the household of Edward Hicks, Quaker painter of “The Peaceable Kingdom.” Hicks freed Cornwall, who bought property in Newtown in 1789 and became a leading citizen of the town.

After Williams saw the property, “a few weeks passed, and it kept tickling in the back of my mind — somebody should buy that house,” recalls Williams, whose sister didn’t. “It is such a great house, and such a great history, with the slaves and the Quakers and the freedom.”

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