In praise of older homes
To couples like the Cohens and Langstroths, wavy glass and worn spots add character to a home, and they’d have it no other way
By Kerry Gold - The Globe and Mail
While the majority of the world craves the shiny and new, there will always be those misty-eyed nostalgic types who seek the old and worn.
They love the fact that their homes were built before the advent of the electrical tool and yet laborious woodwork fills the rooms. They cherish the wavy old glass windows and wouldn’t dream of replacing them with double-paned new glass. They admire the worn out spots on banisters and arm rests, the grain of the old-growth wood.
And they marvel at the craftsmanship and thought that went into functional designs such as ironing boards that pop out of walls, built-in cupboards, and laundry chutes.
Walk through the home of the heritage-lover, and you soon realize that one man’s scuffmark is another man’s patina.
“Someone else would have refinished this,” says Judith Cohen, slapping her hand down on a worn spot on her hallway banister. “And maybe we should have too, but I like it. It’s a hundred years of someone palming that spot.”
Adds husband Eric Cohen: “I like that it has the patina.”
Mr. and Mrs. Cohen own a high-end antique store on Vancouver’s Main Street, and their 5,500 sq. ft. West Side home reflects a lifetime’s worth of heritage obsession. The house itself is a Georgian style arts and crafts design, which means it’s boxy with a portico and grand entrance. Inside, the house is all arts and crafts warmth, with stained poplar trim throughout, William Morris wallpaper, oak floors, and a large foyer with a wide staircase that is illuminated by a giant leaded glass window that draws your gaze immediately upward. The grandeur of the house made it the perfect setting for the 1996 Reese Witherspoon-Mark Wahlberg movie Fear.
For heritage buffs, God truly is in the details.
The banister ends in a curlicue of wood called a veloute, which is typical of the Georgian style, according to Mr. Cohen. Underneath one of the stairs is a secret hiding place, big enough for a rifle or a small safe. The ceilings are original, and they are the texture of orange peel, and there is a Georgian style fireplace with columns in the master bedroom.
In the sunroom off the large living room there is an authentic green Tiffany chandelier. It was an early purchase, and they regularly search eBay for the missing crystals. Along the passageway from foyer to kitchen is part of Mr. Cohen’s collection of vintage advertising posters.
“When we were courting I said to Eric, ‘How would you feel if I didn’t like antiques?’” recalls Mrs. Cohen.
Mr. Cohen gives his wife a sidelong look that says it all.
“I started collecting when I was 18,” he explains, with a shrug. “I loved flea markets and going to antique stores.”
Little has changed on the second floor. The en-suite bathroom was redone, but the main bathroom is a direct time warp back to 1921.
All the fixtures, the mosaic floor and subway tiles, complete with dark grout, are original.
“Our kids would love this bathroom gutted and updated, but nobody would do it,” says Mrs. Cohen. “Nobody had the chutzpah to do it. It’s all original.”
When the Cohens moved in, the house had stood empty for years, and the rooms had been stripped of their hardware and lighting.
So the Cohens replaced every vintage doorknob with originals, and of course, being collectors, they merely tapped into their own vaults to find the lighting.
“You notice the ceiling is not dotted with pot lights?” says Mrs. Cohen.
You don’t need to be an expert to see that they possess what must be one of the best collections of arts and crafts lighting in the city.
Eric and Kathleen Langstroth would not allow pot lights, either. Their 1912 New Westminster home’s interior is dark with wood trim and illuminated with elaborate vintage stained glass. There is an enormous set of matching windows in the front rooms of the house, and they too have a big leaded glass window at the top of their stairs. Mr. Langstroth had the window built entirely out of vintage glass.
The Langstroths’ goal is that everything in their home be circa 1912.
When they moved into the house, it had been renovated in the style typical of the 1960s - stucco on the outside, aluminum windows throughout, drop ceiling. Curb appeal was zero. But after a dozen years, the Langstroths have spent their vacation money gutting the interior and exterior and adding wood trims - including a coffered ceiling and two wood pillars between living room and dining room. They’ve had custom-built kitchen cabinets made, installed period bathroom fixtures, and even built an exact replica of an arts and crafts garage.
Mr. Langstroth has recently become a blacksmith so that he can construct iron fence and gate replicas.
It is safe to say that Mr. Langstroth is the more obsessed of the pair.
He has convinced his wife to remove her grandparents’ 1950s dining room set to make way for the appropriate period piece.
He’s also convinced her to remove the floral hallway wallpaper she loves because he’s decided it’s not quite period enough. The house has been expensively wired to suit the mandatory mother-of-pearl push-button light switches.
He’ll be paying a small fortune to have an authentic chrome and glass shower door replicated. In the guest bathroom downstairs, he tracked down an original 1912 toilet complete with vintage wood toilet seat.
“We had to have it refinished before my family would use it,” says Mrs. Langstroth.
Mrs. Langstroth did get her way when she forbade her husband from installing a well-worn original sink in the upstairs bathroom. Judging from the look on Mr. Langstroth’s face, it remains a contentious issue.
“I said, ‘the only way you’re putting your sink in is if you clean it religiously,’” explains Mrs. Langstroth. “And he said he wouldn’t clean it religiously. So I said, ‘We’re putting in a reproduction.’ And he still whines about that.”
It isn’t the first time the Langstroths have obsessed over an old house. They used to own a Victorian house which took Mr. Langstroth about 12 years to outfit. When they moved, he sold off his Victorian collection and began all over again.
Mr. Langstroth, whose second passion is car racing, believes that it is his background in cars that has made him a fastidious collector.
“If you had a 1967 Camero, say, and if you had a 1968 part on it, first all it’s not right, and second you wouldn’t even place in the running. I don’t know if that started me, but it was about having everything just right.”
Such sacrifice of time and money has not been lost on Mrs. Langstroth.
“Kathleen was whining we never go any place any more, or travel, or do anything… We don’t do those things, so life is dull just living in our house here,” says Mr. Langstroth.
But he is mostly joking. Both Langstroths agree that they love the warmth and patina of their home.
“I like the feel,” explains Mr. Langstroth. “It’s what everybody imagines their grandmother’s house was. The sense of home.
“When I’m at home by myself I will pour myself a glass of scotch and sit in the living room and absorb it. I can never get enough of this place.”
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