"Restore, Renew, Rediscover Your Historic Neighborhood Schools!"

3rd Annual Preservation Week 2002 Photo-Essay Competition

Cleaning the house is never a fun chore no matter where you live. However, for my sisters and I, it's an especially daunting task. That is because we live in a huge Victorian house which was built around 1890-1893. With eleven rooms, two hallways, and a larger foyer, taking care of it is a huge task. Never the less, we love it anyway. It's been identified by the National Historic Preservation Society as a historic building, and preserving it is our way of keeping history alive.

Our house was started in 1890 and finished in 1893 and was owned by a wealthy banker from Burlington named Allie Corn. He made his fortune from banking and selling hay to the livery stables in Cincinnati. He married a cousin of my great-grandfather, whose nickname was Nanny. Allie and Nanny had a daughter, Mary Corn. They lived happily in their beautiful home, the Allie Corn House. At that time, the house had nine rooms, two hallways, a screened-in porch, two foyers, and a full basement. The basement was unusual because most houses at that time had small basements under one room of the house. The foundation was made of stone with cement mortar. On the front of the house was a wrap-around gazebo porch, adorned with gingergbread carvings and dainty spindles. The roof was Virginia slate. Around the house, the plantation contained a smoke house, a hen house, a cabin and two tenant houses for the hired help, and an an outhouse. Down the hill was the milk house and ice house. There were two large barns, the bank barn and the dairy barn. Both were made of large wooden beams and put together with wooden pegs. All together there were around 360 acres.

Within the house, beautiful staircases and wood carving graced the rooms. The main staircase was made of solid cherry, as were the mantles in four of the rooms. The others were oak or walnut. Large mirrors sat on top, in true Victorian style. The floorboards were wide, pine boards. There was a large fireplace in every room of the house, their chief system of heating, except for the kitchen, which contained a flume for cooking.

At the age of twenty-seven, Mary became ill and died. Her bereft parents sold the house to the Matthews family. After a few years they sold it to the Branahm family. This is who my great-grandfather, Bob Reimer, acquired it from in 1948. It's been in the care of my family ever since, first my great-grandparents, then my grandparents, and now my parents. Someday I hope they will pass it down to me.

Some things have changed these past 11 years. Gone is the cabin, one of the tennant houses, the outhouse, the milk house, and the dairy barn. Gone is the slate roof. It lasted until last year, when we had to take it off because of all of the missing slates and miscellaneous leaks. Gone is the screened-in porch, which was converted during an expansion, and now serves as another room. A street, Graves Road, now cuts through the middle of the acreage, which has thoroughly diminished due to subdivisions and development. However, much remains the same. The conversion of the porch was the only structural alteration done to the outside of the house. For the past three years we have been remodeling and restoring. The gazebo proch was rotting, so we took it apart and replaced only those boards, leaving much of the original still intact. We repainted the outside and fixed all leaks and drafty windows. The summer kitchen, smoke house, and hen house are still outside. Across the street, we can still run over and play in the large red barn, balancing on the huge beams and marveling at the wood pegs holding it togheter. We still use the same water system, fed by the natural spring across the street. Inside the house, the high vaulted ceilings, ten to twelve feet high, loom above. There's still a fireplace in every room, though none are used. We've tried to preserve as much of the original as possible.

Though it's never been a battle station in any wars, or a stop on the underground railroad, our home is still an important part of history. It's a perfect example of Victorian architecture. Our home is a "Queen Ann Victorian," a specific style of Victorian houses. The Victorian Age lasted from around 1870 to 1920. During this time, buildings had outstanding arcchitecture. Elegance, grace, and style were the main focus. Gingerbread and fish scales, both types of fancy, intricate woodcarving, are abundant along the roofline of our house. There are many points and slopes to our roof, and the porch is adorned with spindles and beautifully carved posts, all little details that made the Victorian era so unforgetable. Upon passing, many people remark that our house looks like a giant dollhouse. Since dollhouses were modeled after Victorian homes, we take that as a compliment. Our home is like an excerpt from the past, giving people a little glimpse into a time many years ago. This is why it is so important that it must be preserved.

In this world, there are many historic sites or buildings that transport us back to a different time and age. Some are well know, like the pyramids, but some have already been lost forever. History is not reproducible. You can't reproduce the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon, or the Statue of Liberty. Once the original is gone, it's gone forever, no matter how hard we would try to reproduce it. That is why it is imperative we protect our historic resources, for ourselves and for future generations. The Allie Corn House is like a fingerprint of history, precious and valuable. There is not an example of Victorian architecture exactly like it in the whole world. By preserving it, and other historic sties, we're giving future generations a chance to discover them for themselves. Historic sites can disappear by time, but they shoudn't disappear by choice. I know how interesting and beautiful.

This essay and photograph(s) are the property of Preservation Kentucky, Inc. and Kentucky Heritage Council and that any use of the photo or essay must be approved by PK and KHC.