{"id":473,"date":"2017-03-06T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/wordpress\/?p=473"},"modified":"2017-03-06T13:16:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T13:16:30","slug":"an-historic-american-home-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"An historic American home – mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"In today’s Joie de Vivre<\/em> post, I’ll be talking not about France, but about America, and the joie de vivre<\/em> \u00a0I experienced growing up in an historic home n Shenandoah, Iowa. \u00a0 Built in 1895, it was and is beautiful and spacious, elegant on the outside with a wraparound enclosed porch and a turret, and on the inside with thick oak doors, a highly polished wooden staircase with newel post, stained glass windows and two living rooms, one upstairs, one downstairs, both with fireplaces.<\/p>\n

I associate the house with my “roots”: \u00a0I am the sixth generation of the Welty family in Shenandoah which began with Samuel Welty in 1855. \u00a0Most of our family lived on farms outside Shenandoah and my father was the first to buy a home “in town”. \u00a0When he bought it in 1948 from the original owner, I was 3. \u00a0I thought it was a family myth but my sister recently confirmed that the place was so big that on moving day I got lost!<\/p>\n

The house was the center of my universe. \u00a0In fact, as I started thinking about our home on Center Street, I realised that I lived in the center of the country on Center Street, attended Central School (now unfortunately torn down), married a Frenchman who attended “Ecole Centrale” (also Central School) and whose family hailed from the Massif Central in the center of France. \u00a0Plus, \u00a0the house was central to my love of architecture and old homes and support of preservation efforts everywhere in the world.<\/p>\n

Recently \u00a0“our” home, which I lived in until the age of \u00a023, was \u00a0featured in our local newspaper,\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>and I was thrilled to see that the present owners have kept it up beautifully. \u00a0You’ll find a written description of the house’s amenities in the well-written account of it in the Valley News<\/em>. \u00a0http:\/\/www.valleynewstoday.com\/news\/historic-homes-ron-and-kris-larock\/article_b259a6e4-faad-11e6-ad7e-b73969b064fb.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share<\/a><\/p>\n

I have visited Shenandoah several times and have always gone to see the house – from the outside. \u00a0Sometimes friends are surprised when I say that I never wish to go inside and that even if I were invited, I would not. \u00a0Why? \u00a0A house like that has a spirit of its own. \u00a0It warmly wraps a family inside it. \u00a0I will leave it to the present owners to enjoy their turn as custodians of this very special place.<\/p>\n

Even today, even after having lived in France for more years than I lived in the States, I can and often do take a mental tour of it, traveling from room to room. \u00a0I remember the wallpaper in many of the rooms, the smell of the cedar closet off the upstairs living room, \u00a0my cozy \u00a0bedroom under the eaves, our family’s sit down dinners around the table in the dining room (where there was even a bell for servants in the floor under the table – no servants, though), the creepy basement and scary attic, the gatherings of friends around the grand piano, nights chatting lazily with friends on the front porch.<\/p>\n

The house is no longer “mine” but I carry its beauty and \u00a0warmth wherever I go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In today’s Joie de Vivre post, I’ll be talking not about France, but about America, and the joie de vivre \u00a0I experienced growing up in an historic home n Shenandoah, Iowa. \u00a0 Built in 1895, it was and is beautiful and spacious, elegant on the outside with a wraparound enclosed porch and a turret, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":783,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/783"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrietweltyrochefort.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}