NY Times eyes Brainard House

Photos by Leah Nash for The New York Times 

Last week the New York Times' Great Homes and Destinations series looked at a Southeast Portland house that's currently on the market.

Known as the Brainard Brainerd House and located at 54th and Morrison, the Queen Anne style, Victorian era house it was built in 1888 as a second home for the Brainard brothers, who were local merchants and nursery owners. At the time it was built, the home was considered far away from city center. Now it constitutes living close in. The house, selling in the $900,000 range, has six bedrooms and its many handsome materials include fir floors throughout as well as redwood pocket doors in the living room and floral-patterned brass hardware.

   

"It looks like it was a lot of work to maintain," said Leah Nash, the Portland photographer who shot the house for the Times. "But It’s an amazing house with a lot of history. Some of the interiors are really old: the wallpaper, fixtures.  The family who had it put a lot of care into it. There’s all this old antique stained glass. It still has a real period feel to it. And the attic alone is probably bigger than some people’s apartments."

The Brainard House is featured in the book Classic Houses of Portland: 1850-1950 by William Hawkins, who notes that except for a missing tower roof, the architectural integrity of the original house is mostly intact. Hawkins goes on to describe the house's diagonally placed rectangular bay extended to become a three-story tower, and two polygonal bays, one with a hipped roof on the entrance façade and the other with a gable extended over the bay.

   

"Verandas are situated at both the primary and side entrances, designed with turned posts, balusters and spindle work," the author continues. "A long flight of stairs, with a railing matching that of the veranda, provides access to the city facing entrance doors."

"The house achieves its architectural unity by the careful tying together of its paneling systems. Paneling is used at the entablature, the horizontal belt course, and the banding under the windows, the latter in line with the porch rail. Windows were not isolated but part of an overall geometric pattern."

Comments

[tedder]

according to NRHP, it's actually the Brainard house, not Brainerd house.

[Brian Libby]

Thanks - my silly mistake.

[tedder]

No problem. Fantastic entry- I've written about the houses and buildings including the Kamm house and Poulsen house, but not this one.

[Ms. Sherman]

I love historic wallpaper, but I'm afraid of mold, Portland's climate is a bit wet. Is that really old paper or just an new paper that looks old paper in that hallway? I only trust paper to be "old" in the closets of homes of this age.

more on historic wall paper:
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/tpsd/wallpaper/sec1.htm

All my friend's fell in love with this place once it was in the Times. I'm afraid all I see it as a white elephant with too much cleaning. It took me 30 minutes just to wipe down the windows in my flat this morning.

[toronto home renovations]

Above given photos shows the total difference of houses before renovation and after renovation.And, the impact due to bad houses and without painted houses will be effective to all peoples of colony and society also.