PhotoRover's Cherry Street Gallery
11 August 2008
Whenever I encounter any of her many structural quirks, I cannot stop myself from chuckling. In today's world of engineering precision, the old girl's design would not make it past the draftsman's table. And yet, here she has stood through drought and flood, earthquake, and the follies of her various occupants -- in defiance of gravity and all accepted rules of modern construction-- for more than a century.
None of the lapboard walls are built to square, and her "foundation" consists of a few boards set on bare earth. The floors are warped and gappy. They flex and bend under the weight of an average sized man.
Insulation? None. Unless you count the many layers of floor covering; from strewn straw to strips of cotton batting, through the black-red-tan geometric of the 1930's, brown-with-red flower room-size linoleum rug of the 1940's; bold blue floral of the '50's; a more conservative plain blue layer, and all topped by brilliant orange floral carpet from the 1970's.
I have an agreement with the house: I try not erase any of the layers, for each of the residents of Juxtaposie (as I have come to think of her) have left their imprint upon her soul and personality.
Even new, she was not new. Removal of 1970's paneling revealed the original back wall was made from rough-hewn planks, still bearing the teeth-marks of the sawmill at *Exchequer Canyon. Square nails had been hammered over for re-use of the lumber. Nails and lumber that date the wood, but not the house, to the 1880's.
Salvage is the tradition, in Cherry Creek. Since the birth of the town, residents have made resourceful use of available materials. The kitchen is constructed of railroad ties - that dates the wood to 1907, when the railroad pushed through Steptoe Valley. Beneath the floors, I have found objects that recall her previous incarnation as a joss house, in Cherry Creek's old Chinatown.
The earliest photograph I have found of the house is dated 1910.
*The sawmill at Exchequer no longer exists.
There is much more to the house on C Street and Cherry than just the fact that it has managed to stand up for about a century ...
