Take It Off!
At the Historic Preservation Commission meeting on Friday, proposals to remove the aluminum siding from two buildings in Hudson's East End were announced. The first is 742 and 744 Warren Street, the locations of Rev and Wunderbar respectively.
The two buildings were clad in aluminum siding at the same time, and they will be liberated from their aluminum siding at the same time. It is expected that all the window trim, cornices, and corbels are still there under the aluminum siding, just waiting to be revealed.
Another building that is soon to shed its aluminum siding is 736 Union Street.
In this case, the aluminum siding will be replaced with wood siding, since it is not believed that the original clapboard underneath is in very good shape. The owners of the house are also planning to replace the porch, which is believed to be a later addition to the 1893 house.
There are no historic pictures to guide the facade changes being proposed for this house, although a search for old pictures has been going on for quite a while. If any readers have pictures of this house, or pictures that capture this house in the background, before the aluminum siding was added and the picture window introduced on the ground floor, please contact Gossips, and I will forward them to the house's owners.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CAROLE OSTERINK
One could make a good living hereabouts recycling scrap aluminum and vinyl.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 1970s we removed aluminum siding from our house in Cambridge MA (a house described on the rolls of the historic preservation commission as a “worker’s cottage”)to find that the aluminum faced house wrap of the time, under the siding, was completely covered with traces of water condensed on it. Amazingly the wood clapboards were in such good condition that some scraping and a fresh coat of paint completely transformed its appearance. For much the better.
ReplyDeleteNeighbors told us that the house had suffered the fate of aluminum siding salesmen in the 60s who promised, “You will
nevef have paint again!!”. What a bargain.
What a bane, aluminum siding. . Mark Orton