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| 6801 29th Street North, Arlington, Virginia |
Looking at this picture, I can visualize just about every room as it was back then. The front door opened directly into the living room. The large window on the left is the living room. I'm pretty sure that the living room and dining room were painted a pale green. There may have originally been hardwood floors, but I only remember wall to wall carpeting. Women of the 1950s were delighted to cover up hardwood floors with wall to wall carpeting. Hardwood floors were a pain to keep up because they had to be waxed on a regular basis. There were venetian blinds and drapes to the windows.
The living room and dining room were connected in an "L" shape. We ate all of our family meals in the dining room. There was usually a tablecloth on the table that was big enough to seat 8 people. I think the seating arrangement was girls on one side, boys on the other, Mother on the end closest to the kitchen and my Dad at the opposite end.
If you walked straight ahead from the front door, you crossed the living room and could either go directly into the kitchen or turn left and go down a short hall to the bedrooms and bathroom. The smallest bedroom was the first room on the left. I seem to remember that it was painted a light lavender. As kids started to move out or to the basement, the lavender bedroom became my Mother's sewing room. The short bedroom hall opened up in a larger area. The master bedroom was straight ahead, another bedroom was next to the master bedroom on the right. The only bathroom on the main floor was also off that hall.
Even though I occupied the bedroom on the right of the master, I don't remember what color it was....perhaps a pale pink? But I certainly remember the bathroom. It had the basics - sink, toilet and tub. And really wasn't very big. The bathroom was tiled in a salmon color tile with maroon accents. The tile went halfway up the wall. The tile on the floor was small tiles in salmon and maroon. Very typical of a 1950s bathroom.
The picture above was taken in the early spring of 1983. My father in law and husband had meetings in Washington DC. My mother in law and I went along. I hadn't been back in Northern Virginia since 1969. We had a rented car and I drove my mother in law all around Arlington and Falls Church to show her where I grew up.
Except for the landscaping, the house looks much like it did back in the fifties. Some of the houses in the neighborhood had gable ends that were painted different colors. Ours was always white along with the front door. However, I think that the window trim was black.
I'm glad that I have this picture because the red brick house is no longer there. Through a curiosity search on Google maps, I discovered that there was a big, brick two story home at the address of 6801 29th Street North. The new house looks a little out of place because it is surrounded by the original, smaller ramblers.
It's kind of sad to learn that your childhood home is no more. But I still have all the memories. And, I still have a fondness for red brick houses.
The house did originally have hardwood floors, and I remember well Mom being on her hands and knees waxing and polishing those floors. She was really thrilled when carpeting covered it all up. The bedroom next to the master was pink. Do you remember that we kept dirty clothes on the floor of the closet between that bedroom and the bathroom, and that the house had no air conditioning? We used a portable de-humidifier to draw a gallon or two of water out of the basement air ever muggy, hot summer day.
ReplyDeleteThen there was the basement. The stairs were around the corner from stove, opposite the back door. Part way down the stairs was the opening to the laundry chute -- a favorite place to play. At the bottom of the stairs, ahead and to the right, was the main "rumpus room." The TV my parents bought when I was six (1958) was by the far right wall. Dad built a fold-down table into the wall. There was a bedroom -- the "boys' bedroom" at that end of the basement. It had a built in desk and gray jacquard-print wallpaper. There was a ping-pong table in the area between that bedroom and the stairs, along with David's tiki head. The laundry room, including a concrete sink,was on the other side of the stairs. Besides to opening to the chute, there were built-in cabinets for laundry products, including something called "bluing." There was no dryer. Clothes were hung outside to dry or in the basement. Dad built a second bathroom next to the laundry room. I remember the plastic tile he used started falling off. Next to the bathroom was another bedroom, usually occupied by the oldest girl still at home. I think it had white wallpaper with tiny blue flowers. It had a built-in "intercom" by virtue of the heating duct being directly connected to a duct in the dining room. The rest of the basement was for the furnace, tools and storage. There was a large freezer there where, besides food, there were frozen clothes. You might explain that sometime, Connie. At the height of the Cold War and near daily air raid drills, Dad built a food storage closet into the furnace room. I used to go in the and snap the sprouts off of potatoes stored there.
ReplyDeleteAl, a very accurate description of the basement. In posts back in March, "Red Brick" and "Wash, Dry, Fold, Repeat", I talk about the quirky basement and address the issue of frozen clothes in the freezer.
ReplyDelete