The Buxton Inn on Broadway at dusk: orange clapboard, black shutters and a two-story porch lit from within under dark street trees.

Know what you’re looking at

Old houses in a village of brick and clapboard, and land in the hills behind it.

The Buxton Inn, Broadway, at dusk

A dark door in a stone wall, framed by white-painted pilasters and a plain entablature. — Door and entablature at the Bank of the Alexandrian Society, East Broadway, now a museum.

Before this I was a restoration carpenter

For the better part of fifteen years I worked on old houses in this county and the counties either side of it: sash, sills, door casings, running trim. Most of what I know about how a house is assembled I learned with a piece of it in my hands.

People on the ladder next to me kept asking what the house was actually made of. I turned out to be better at answering that than at the carpentry, and in due course the answering became the work. What condition any of it is in is a question for someone whose job that is, and I will make sure it gets asked early.

FederalThe earlier brick
Greek RevivalWhite paint, heavy trim
Gothic RevivalLater, among the rest

A warm sitting room with a lit fireplace in a stone surround, a bookcase and a low chair beside a wooden table.

What I work on

A two-story white house with a center door and a bright red maple in autumn.

Village housesBrick and clapboard, nineteenth-century and earlier-twentieth.

Orange clapboard, black shutters and a white porch rail with a lattice skirt on the front of the Buxton Inn.

The built fabricWhat every part of the front of a house is called.

Rolling farmland in Licking County in autumn: open fields in front of a wooded ridge in deep red and copper.

Land in the hillsRolling country on every side of the village.

Houses you’ll see around here

None of these is for sale. They are examples of what the county is built from, and the kinds of houses people write to me about.

A pale yellow house with tall white columns and rows of arched windows, half hidden by trees in gold leaf. — **Columns and arched windows**Licking County

A dark red cottage with a steep center gable trimmed in white gingerbread, behind a white picket fence. — **Gothic cottage**Licking County

A white clapboard house with a slate roof, blue shutters and a wraparound porch in autumn. — **Clapboard and a wraparound porch**Granville

A red brick Gothic Revival house with white bargeboards, tall chimneys and a lacy white porch. — **Brick Gothic Revival**Newark, Licking County

What you are looking at

Ten things you will see walking Broadway, and what they are called.

Entablature: The horizontal band carried above columns or pilasters, in three parts: architrave, frieze and cornice. It is the heavy level line over the doorways and porches of the Greek Revival buildings along Broadway.
Cornice returns: Where the cornice at the eaves turns the corner and runs a short way along the gable end instead of stopping dead. You see them on the older frame buildings in the village.
Pilaster: A flat column standing only slightly proud of the wall, with a base and a capital like the real thing. Look for them at corners and around front doors on the Greek Revival frontages.
Sidelights: The narrow fixed windows on either side of a front door, which bring daylight into the hall behind it. You see them on Greek Revival entrances here, often with a transom above.
Fanlight: A half-round or half-elliptical window over a door, its glazing bars spreading like an opened fan. It is the signature of a Federal entrance.
Six-over-six sash: A window with six panes in the upper half and six in the lower. It is what you are looking at on most of the older houses here. What condition a particular one is in is a different question, and one for somebody whose job that is.
Clapboard: Long thin boards laid horizontally, each lapping the board below. I can tell you that it is clapboard and what it is made of. What shape it is in is a question for someone whose job that is, and I will make sure it gets asked early.
Brick course: One horizontal row of brick. The pattern the courses make is called the bond. Flemish bond alternates the long and short faces of the brick along each row.
Federal: The style of the early republic: light, flat and careful, with fanlights, slender trim and brick laid in a fine bond. In Granville it belongs to the earlier nineteenth-century buildings.
Greek Revival: The style that followed, built on the proportions of Greek temples: low pediments, heavy entablatures, columns and pilasters. It sits alongside later Gothic Revival on the same street, so Broadway is a mix and not a set.

The village and the hills

Broadway is the backbone of the village, with rolling country running out on every side.

Open fields in Licking County rising to a long wooded ridge in copper and red.

Broadway

Brick and clapboard, Greek Revival and Federal frontages with later Gothic Revival among them, set under mature street trees.

The hill

On the hill above the village is Denison University, founded in 1831: the building line you see from Broadway, and one of the larger employers in the county.

The founding

Welsh settlers took up land in these hills in the early years, and a larger group from Massachusetts and Connecticut founded the village, which is why it still looks more like New England than most of Ohio.

The season

Autumn color runs deep here, and late in the year the light comes long and low across the tree lines.

A curved staircase with a turned white balustrade and a dark rail, rising from a black and white tiled hall.

Buying and selling

Buying

The street first: We talk about the street and the kind of house before any particular house.
Walk it properly: We walk places more than once, and I name what is there as we go.
The list, early: The condition questions go in front of the people whose job they are, and I stay on it through to close.

Selling

Say what it is: The right name for the right feature sells an old house better than an adjective does.
Show the fabric: We photograph and list it so the materials read.
The follow-through: I handle the inquiries, the showings and everything after them.

Ask me one question

One question about a street, a house or the hills is a perfectly good reason to write.

(740) 555-0192

everett@hollowandridge.com