Annum

How Little We Knew...

One year ago, we set upon an adventure whose first leg is just ending, purchasing the property known as Larner-Jones House. Or, as our girls call it, the Red House.

Things were different then, in 2012. We were idealistic wayfarers setting out on our first major renovation odyssey, thinking we would avoid the pitfalls everyone speaks of if we just made quick decisions and got out of the way. Now, having suffered the realities of fixing an old house, we feel like old salts returning to port after getting caught in our third squall of the voyage. In short, it ain't easy.

Nonetheless, the results have been worth it. We are very close to having something unique, and the satisfaction of saving a property that needed rehabilitation. The period-authentic touches, like our windows, siding and floors, newel posts, doors, lights and other hardware really stand out and make for a great blend of historic materials and modern structure and systems. There is no other property just like ours.

Larner-Jones House c. 1904

One hundred and forty years ago, or thereabouts, our original Italianate farmhouse was constructed while the property was in the name of Wells Forbes, a prominent landowner of the time.

Things were different then, in 1873. Falls Church was a small farming community, with a few local entrepreneurs dominating the local economy and real estate. Citizens like Crossman, Forbes, Ives and others had shaped the expansion of Falls Church from wild land at the intersection of worn Algonquian trails to a northern Virginia outpost in less than 40 years. The War Between the States was less than 10 years gone, and Caroline Larner wouldn't purchase the property for another 17 years.

In 1873, Congress authorized postage stamps and issued the first post cards, and Ulysses S. Grant rode his Civil War success to his second term as President. In Baltimore, the first Preakness was run. In New York, Susan B. Anthony went on trial for "knowingly, wrongfully, and unlawfully" voting for a member of Congress "without having a lawful right to vote,....the said Susan B. Anthony being then and there a person of the female sex." She had voted Republican, straight down the ticket, and never paid the $100 fine handed down with her conviction.

Woodies

Out in the old West, Jesse James & the James-Younger gang pulled off their first train robbery in Iowa, stealing $3000 from the Rock Island Express. In San Francisco, the first cable car service began. Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers and Yale set the rules for college football. And in Columbus, Ohio, they finally figured out that those intellectuals up north had been up to something interesting for the prior 56 years, so 23 men and 2 women entered Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College as its first students.

In the business world, Adolph Coors and Jacob Schueler started a brewery in Golden, Colorado that became Coors Brewing Company. In Wisconsin, John Michael Kohler purchased the Sheboygan Union Iron and Steel Foundry, and transformed a business that made farm implements, castings, and ornamental iron pieces into a plumbing fixtures giant. And in Chelsea, MA, Samuel Woodward and Alvin Lothrop opened a dry goods store, eventually relocating to the District of Columbia and creating the venerable Woodward & Lothrop Department Store chain.

But back in the sleepy village of Falls Church, the first bricks were laid, timbers nailed together and candles lit in a house that would survive the elements and progress for the next 140 years, and become a place we are happy to call home.