Details tell the story.
Every project is a story. Rather, every project is a moment in many stories that come together for a time, intertwine, shape each other, and create something, leaving each changed from the experience. And in each story, it is the details of all the stories that come together to give form to that particular shape and richness. Likewise in a building, it is the details that give the life and personality of a space, they characterize and define the entire building. So, in this blog, we'd like to share with you the story of a project that is all about the details.
The Perry's Liquors building in Provincetown was once an eyesore of the neighborhood. On a prominent crowded corner, surrounded by beautiful antique cape and greek revival houses, one block from the water, the old building was indeed a stand-out detail of the area, but not a good one. It was a punky old single story building. The landlord had let it go, the front door opened dangerously onto the corner. It needed not so much of a renewal but a total rebirth. So its new owners, Tom and Scott, took on the project with an eye towards making something special, something that would fit and even become a fixture of the neighborhood.
It was a challenge, as we had a very small footprint to work with, and the dream was to turn it into a live-over shop. Once we had a big picture plan, we tore down almost everything except one wall and started bringing together all the details. It's these details that made this building into the neighborhood feature that it is today. Every square foot has touches that are historically meaningful, exact reproductions of period work, or actual antique salvaged items.
The process was one of constant collaboration with the owners who threw themselves into the project, coming up with ideas and hunting down antique light fixtures and accessories. We did reconnaissance spy work driving around the neighborhood with our cameras taking photos of exterior design elements, getting inspiration and context for our build. We saw a few examples of inset porches between two bump out windows which would solve our dangerous entry problem in the perfect way. We saw a slightly worn out but elegant small roof over a side door with intricate corbels holding it up. We took photos of all these pieces and brought them back to the design table and started building them into the new store design.
Every element was chosen with an eye towards solving the problems of modern building code with historic styling and detail. Just to draw your attention to some of the details, they're everywhere, take a look at the iron pipe handrails on the front porch (turn of the century appropriate), or the salvaged historic bracketing that holds up the flat roof over the back door, it's just like the one we scoped out down the street. Every element makes the storefront and exterior tell the historic story of the neighborhood and better embeds the building in its context.
Moving inside you'll see the antique wood floors and pillars. These are really special; they are all salvage pieces. The floors were salvaged from the Boston wharf reconstruction. The wood was milled from the old pilings that had been driven into the harbor mud hundreds of years ago. You can see the streaking in the floorboards where the mud stained the preserved wood. We found the structural pillars to complement the floors in local architectural salvage places here in Maine.
Each element represents a thoughtful project that fleshes out the dream of the clients made manifest in the particulars. Each one tells the story of coastal New England, the Cape, and the neighborhood. The details are the place where the clients and I intersected with each other, the history of our area, those that came before us, and those to whom we leave this building in the future.
This is what it means to be curious about each other about the possibilities within the project, to be a curiomaker. We work with a dream, a project, materials and we find solutions to problems that become artifacts worth saving, curios that people down the line will look at and ask questions of.
And so, through the process of asking questions, listening to what the clients really wanted, working through problems, dealing with differences in opinion and style, a beautiful home and business was constructed, the neighborhood was enriched and enhanced. But the real icing on the cake (perhaps even the cake stand) was the beautiful relationships that were formed in the process. Let me tell you one last story that sums it all up.
The taste of completion and of history
I've always been fascinated by the story of Ernest Shackleton's desperate and heroic Antarctic expedition. Well, one day after the Perry's Liquors project was finished, I came across an article that told of how historians had made an amazing find while restoring the supply outpost that Shackleton's crew had stopped at after their ship was crushed by the ice. The restoration crew had discovered three cases of perfectly preserved 100 year old whisky that had been left behind by the ship's crew under the floorboards. They pulled them out and brought one to the world renowned whiskey taster and blender, Richard Paterson. He got the pleasure of the very first taste and was tasked with blending a perfect replica of it. A very limited edition had been produced. So I called up Scott at Perry's Liquors to see if they could track down a few bottles for me. They could, it was expensive, was I interested? Was I ever!
So when the bottle finally came, he called me up and I raced over. We locked up the shop, pulled down the blinds, opened the bottle, and poured a dram of one the most historic whiskeys on the planet, something tied dearly to my interests and personality. It was magic. Enjoying the fruits of our work together, a taste of history, a shared moment of delight in every way. That is why I do what I do.