Will I Burn in Hell?

Ladies and gentlemen, I need some hand holding. What do you think about a door like this for the Devil Queen? Since her original, 118 year old door was done in by some morally degenerate thief, I need a replacement. And, I need it soon because what is left of the original door is falling apart. So, waiting for months or years for the perfect, period piece is not an option.

Will I burn in hell for replacing our kicked-in front door with something like this? This door is new, solid wood from National Home Center.
	Yes, there is a special place for people like you.
	Yes.
	Maybe.
	No, but it still sucks.
	No.
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The Importance of Age

I came across this while doing some art research:

"Ruskin had a deep respect for Gothic architecture and old buildings in general. To him, the building's age was the most important aspect of its preservation: 'For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, not in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.'"

Shock of the Old New

Okay, after looking at these pictures (and these) at Der Spiegel, I think I may have found my repressed, inner modernist. Really though, I've been doing a lot of reading about the art and literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it’s amazing how mind blowing a lot of this stuff was, particularly when juxtaposed with everything that had come before.

The Strange Tale of the Triple Sash Window

I'll start with my disclaimer. Some of the following is what I've read into the facts as I know them. I can't help but make a story out of this.

In a previous post, Brenda of Flatbush commented on the peculiarity of our triple-sash window. Mainly, she'd never seen one before, and, until we made the Devil Queen's acquaintance, neither had we. The other old homes in the area certainly don't have windows like this one.

Including the trim, the window is roughly three feet wide and ten feet tall. To accommodate the third set of weights, the trim is built out into the room. The pockets are eight to ten inches deep total. If you open the bottom two sashes up, the opening is tall enough for someone like me to walk out onto the front porch.

So, why did they build this particular style of window? My wife and I are not sure, but, as you might imagine, we have a theory.

The Devil Queen's original owner and builder, Van Boswell, married Amelia, a girl from New Orleans, Louisiana. Her father was from Georgia and her mother was daughter of two French émigrés. Somehow, they all came to live in Russellville, Arkansas, after the Civil War, and it was there that she met Van.

I don't know how much of her life Amelia lived in New Orleans, but it seems that she was old enough to remember the long, floor to ceiling French windows that grace the city. Perhaps there was some warm, happy memory tied to them which she carried with her years after she'd come north to Russellville, more a glorified frontier town than a proper city.

Van and Amelia had been married for several years before the Devil Queen was built. First they lived with her parents, and then in a home of their own on Commerce Street. Van was a blacksmith, carpenter, and contractor, but, judging from the remaining homes from that time, windows of this sort were unheard of there. This window was something special for his wife, as was the house. As Scarlet says, the Devil Queen is a lady's house if nothing else.

Sadly enough, several years after the Devil Queen was completed, Amelia died. She was in her early thirties.

* * *

Most windows of this type operate more like doors, two huge sashes full of glass panes which swing inward on hinges. A Google search turned this one up on eBay.

[Outside frame. 51" WIDE X 3" THICK X 94 1/2" HIGH]

On the outside, shutters are typically hung. The shutter hinges are still mounted on our window's exterior trim, but the shutters have been gone for at least 40 years.

My wife and I always wondered why our triple-sash window didn’t look more like the one above. Maybe Van Boswell wasn't entirely clear on what his wife wanted? Maybe this was his approximation of it based on the styles he was familiar with? Then, while searching for images for this post, I found this picture.

A floor to ceiling, triple-sash window in New Orleans. The Devil Queen's window is exactly how it was meant to be.

After years of looking, why didn't I find this before? I just don't know. So, thank you for the comment Brenda. You inadvertently led me down the road to solving a long standing riddle. It leaves me with a small sense of satisfaction which has been hard to find.