Preservation Merit Awards
This Wednesday 14th  5.30-7pm

14 Lawnridge Avenue ? 1922
Preservation Initiative Award for Sensitive Renovation.  Helderberg Neighborhood, not yet listed

When a home’s long-time owner passes away, most neighbors hold their breath on who will buy it, will they be a good neighbor, will they chop the house up into itty-bitty apartments and rent it. They often get a good coating of vinyl siding covering any character in an effort to “increase curb appeal.”

Ed Sikora’s bungalow at 14 Lawnridge can count its blessings that it escaped this fate when Sam and Dan Curry purchased the home in 2019. The couple fell in love with the cozy 955 square foot home, and decided to share it with others. Working full time at his “day job,” Dan worked on this project in the off hours to launch his home renovation business. While the house was in good shape, it was a bit too in touch with the 1980s. Dan and Sam renovated the house, updating the kitchen and baths, bringing it back closer to its original style. They used salvaged lights and a clawfoot tub.  Instead of covering everything with drywall, Dan repaired the plaster and carefully preserved the vintage wallpaper. As no house is truly ever done, there is some window trim that is calling out for repairs and a bit of reglazing to do, but that’s the beauty of old houses, you can do it bit by bit as it’s all meant to be repaired instead of replaced. The house is now operated as an AirBnB, not itty-bitty apartments. The project took a little over two years and $40,000.

Also of note, it came with a time capsule in the kitchen from 1989 which was shared with the previous owner’s grandchildren. Every project should have a time capsule if it possibly can.

Project Participants: Samantha Curry; Dan Curry, Curry Carpentry & Design.
All the Winners we will be Celebrating this coming Wednesday...
8 Thurlow Terrace, the Argus
10 Hall Place
525 Clinton Avenue
94 South Pine Avenue
14 Lawnridge Avenue
23 Dove Street, Rosanna's
49 Dove Street, La Centralita
294 Central Ave, Lo Nuestro
62 South Swan Street, Cathedral of All Saints
Beth Mosall
Emily Majer
Faraz Khan and Mehak Jamil
Michael Lynch

Tickets Here

BUILT Honorary Commitee Deadline is Today

BUILT 2022:  Nov 3rd-6th

Today is the deadline to join the BUILT 2022 Honorary Committee.

You can visit our website below if you would like to join and show your early support of this exciting event.

Your name(s) will be listed in the invitation & signage, and you will be invited to the opening night of the art show.

BUILT is also currently open for submission - find out more here.

Join Here

Tool Lending Library Window Class

Tomorrow 12-1.30pm
@89 Lexington Ave 12206

Two spaces have just opened up for tomorrow's free winterizing windows workshop!

They will be first-come, first-served. Email below if you would like to come.

The Tool Library will be open tomorrow 9 am-12 pm, and Wednesdays 3-6 pm. See the inventory here

I want to come

What's New in the Warehouse?

Stamped “Chas. Graham Chemical Pottery Works Brooklyn, N.Y.” this set of three stoneware sinks—complete with wooden top and cast-iron brackets and supports—is a rare survivor.

Many of these sinks had been employed in industry and home laundries because stoneware is both durable and naturally resistant to acids and other caustics and were eventually broken up and removed when newer materials were developed. Mac, our venerable Warehouse volunteer, and old-home guru, says that the fragments are sometimes found as pavers in the yard or clean-fill.

The Chas. Graham pottery (1878-c.1913), located at 966-1018 Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn, specialized in this kind of ceramics, manufacturing vats and even spigots and connectors in stoneware.

It was one of these vats, whispered an 1893 newspaper article about a fire in the pottery, that may have been used by a murderer to dissolve the body of a young girl who had gone missing some years before.

Now, scrubbing your mind of this gruesome detail, join us in the laundry of the modest 1919 Colonial suburban Albany home in which our three-basin Chas. Graham unit was found.
Located in the basement, the basins were aligned in a row, standing on four paired cast-iron feet with foliate decorations and covered with the wooden top. The two sets of feet with ears cast into their tops go in the center locations, beneath the straddling sinks.

The sinks were held in place sandwiched under the wooden top by three iron straps, also elegantly decorated, along with some lengths of threaded rod, which, alas, were too rusted to salvage but easily gotten at your local hardware store.

Why, might you ask, were there three sinks here to do laundry? We suspect it had to do with who the house was built for, a dentist who likely had lots of washing to be done as part of his profession.

These must be sold as a set. The four original, very interesting spigots included. Total: 32 ¾” high x 87 ¼” long; individual sinks: 27 ¾” wide x 24 deep x 15 ¼ basin depth

Instagram: @architectural_parts_warehouse
Facebook: HistoricAlbanyPartsWarehouse

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