Over a Hundred Years of Living

A HOUSE WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"What have you seen in your hundred years?"
[Additional Contemporary Photos]

Memories of 443 as shared by a previous resident,
Robert W. Topping (1925 - 2009)
"The house at 443 Robinson Street needed both repair and paint when my parents and their three sons (aged 13, 7, and 4) moved into it in 1911. Grandpa Topping and Dad's wealthy Long Island aunts loaned him the money to buy the place -- the only residence Mother and Dad ever owned and my only childhood home.

Young Bob Topping on Robinson Street
Click to see more photos from the Topping Era

"Robinson Street was the main north - south thoroughfare on the extreme east side of West Lafayette, or at least east of Salisbury Street. It curved northwesterly up grade from the North River road, probably an original cow path traversing the clay - and - gravel bluffs along the west bank of the Wabash River meandering generally west and south as the natural division between Lafayette and West Lafayette.

"Our property comprised about three - fourths acre and lay about thirty to forty feet (I judge) above the Wabash flood plain and overlooked the river and most of Lafayette, especially a nondescrpt industrial building that sat like a dirty loaf of bread nearly along the river's edge with high, easily read letters that spelled "Lafayette Ice & Coal Company" on its west wall. Later, after the end of Prohibition, the sign was repainted a tawdry yellow with huge red letters trimmed in black that read "Home of YE TAVERN BREW." It advertised the local brewery that beer drinkers joked about. . . . Dad hated the sign and complained between clenched teeth that his view of the Wabash Valey and Lafayette was obstructed by the largest, ugliest monster ever . . .

"Built in 1896, probably by a retired Tippecanoe farmer, our house was a three - story, massive - looking, white clapboard edifice classed as Queen Anne style architecture. From its outside, you saw a long sloping roof up to a ridge pole and on the northeast corner, a three - sided cupola and a red - brick chimney that vented a handsome Italian marble tile parlor fireplace that Dad and Mother never used. "Could burn the place down," Dad would say. Built on a high foundation with a rather shallow, brick - floor basement, the house also had a broad front porch; and since the lot sloped from rear to front, one had to climb seven wood steps to the porch and front door but only two at the screened back porch. There was also a north porch entry to the living room.

"Inside, the house boasted the aforesaid parlor, a front hall and a two - landing oak banistered, open stairway to the second floor, a living room,and a dining room. The front hall was impressive, its main feature the polished banister that frequently warmed the seats of the pants of all five Topping male offspring who believed its purpose was for sliding. But most impressive were the front hall bookcases. Three rows of glass fronts displayed the complete works of Mark Twain and most of those of Charles Dickens, several volumes of Victor Hugo, and Shakepeare, and one high book case that contained volume after volume of the Proceedings of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. A halltree (we called it) held hooks for coats and hats and the seat was a lid beneath which we kept an assortment of knit hats, scarves, and gloves for winter. The odor of mothballs in it could knock you over. A smaller closet under the second stairway landing held more coats plus the family vacuum cleaner. . . . "

A few alterations, but you can see it just as Bob describes!

I want to share more of Bob's Robinson Street reminiscences, but for right now, I must stop to insert this poem whose opening stanza connects perfectly with the image of the Topping brothers sliding down the banister (or, as poet Linda Pastan writes:
" . . . the lovely children of earth
who run up and down the stairs so lightly . . ."

To An Old House

What have you seen in your hundred years?
If asked, what would you say,
Of the dozen families that lived in your walls,
Of the hundreds of children at play?
Did the boys slide down the bannister rail,
To a mother’s angry scolding?

How many laughs, and how many tears
Have marked the years unfolding?
Every time a floorboard creaks,
The sound tells a story.
A hundred summers in their heat,
A hundred Christmas glories.
Here in this kitchen, a dozen mothers
Have left their stories behind.
Open the cupboards, look and see,
There a tale you’ll find.
Old recipe on yellowed paper,
Phone numbers scribbled on doors,
A catalog from ’65,
1950’s floors.
A hundred years of living,
These walls have seen each day.
A dozen families loved this place . . .

But memories linger in these walls,
And memories always will.
Do ghosts hide here, in your shadows?
Are there secrets, hidden well?
Oh, that you could only speak,
The tales that you could tell.
To walk your halls in quiet step,
Just listen, hear the story
That an old house can clearly tell,
In matchless oratory.
“I am the years gone by . . . "

by Rick W. Cotton© 2018

It's true!
Here at 443 we have those friendly ghosts who have left behind
their names and numbers -- saved from who knows how long ago?
Immortalized down in the basement, on the brick.

Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, May 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ "443 Historic House Photos"
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com