Ravenwood: A West Ward Tale of Love and Labor

By Christina Georgiou


Ravenwood, as it is today, off the corner of Ferry and
Walnut streets in Easton's West Ward, is the result
 of a lot of labor...and love.

If you're familiar with the Easton's West Ward, you've probably noticed “Ravenwood”, that rather stately townhouse the oozes yesteryear charm just off the corner of Ferry and Walnut streets, in what was once one of the city's poshest neighborhoods.

And, if you're not a life long city resident, it's easy to believe that this beautiful home has always been this way. However, that is not so.

While originally built in Easton's late 19^th century heyday, Ravenwood's amazing old world charm and beauty is actually more of a survivor's tale, and the building's story in the past 30 years reminiscent of that of a phoenix rising from the ashes after near destruction.

For nearly destroyed it was. In the early 1980s, Easton was still reeling from the effects of the federal “urban renewal” projects that swept America following World War II, reaching culmination in the 1960s and '70s.

The concentrated federal pressure to declare city neighborhoods “blighted”, even thriving ones like Easton's Downtown commercial district, drove much of the urban middle- and upper-class out to suburban developments, leaving the surrounding neighborhoods to suffer from severe economic and social decline.




Earl Ball in front of Ravenwood, in the mid 1980s.
Faux brick tar paper covered the exterior clapboard,
windows were missing glass, the electrical and plumbing
systems needed complete replacement, and rooms
were strewn with trash when architect
Timothy Hare purchased the property. Below, the house
is shown as it continues to undergo renovation,
more than a year later.

  In 1984, when current owners Earl Ball, a minister, and Timothy Hare, a certified architect, came upon Ravenwood, it was in an utterly dismal state of genuine blight and disrepair. A friend had pointed out the property, up for sale for a low five-digit sum. But even at that price, and compared to the sky-high prices in New York City, the couple hesitated, rife with doubts about the work involved to make the property liveable.

“It was condemned,” Hare said. “So you couldn't get a mortgage or fire insurance for it.”



Earl Ball in the 1980s, removing
trash from Ravenwood's yard.

“Every room was filled with garbage,” Ball said.

“The yard was even worse,” Hare said. “There were just mountains of garbage and debris.”

The surrounding homes were not any  better off. Revitalization in Easton was barely in its infancy, and a row of nearby abandoned vacant homes was being auctioned off by the city for paltry four-digit sums under the “Old Homes” program of the time.

In the early 1980s, Ball and Hare were living in the Village in Manhattan but had met at Easton's first Heritage Day celebration in 1976. They fell in love at first sight, both agree, and they have been partners ever since—legally married in the several states that allow it, as well as in Canada.

Hare was also very familiar with Easton, having lived in the city in years prior and instrumental to saving the building that now houses the Quadrant Bookmart and Coffeehouse, along with securing the halt to the plan of bulldozing the rest of Downtown.

Living in New York was losing its appeal, but neither saw the suburbs as an ideal haven. So despite a number of reservations about the property, Hare took the plunge and bought it.


Tim Hare and Earl Ball, with Fluffy,
in the front parlor of Ravenwood,
talking about the work that has been
put into their antique
townhouse's restoration



Earl Ball shows off the woodwork on
the home's fireplace, in what was originally
the house's kitchen.

“We came in with snow shovels every weekend and shoveled it out,” Ball said. “I could see the potential though, even though there was no glass in the windows, and the wood was hatcheted.”

Getting to the point where they could even move in took a couple of years of steady hard labor, they said.

The plumbing and electrical wiring were not only outdated, but essentially destroyed from the many years of vacancy and neglect the property had suffered. So it all had to be replaced.

And, even when they finally moved in, the house was still a constantly ongoing project.


Earl Ball holds a photo, shown below,
of  how the room he's standing in
appeared , in the mid- to late
1980s before work on the house
was complete.

 Many rooms had pink walls over layers of wallpaper, and in others the plaster was badly damaged. The townhouse's original clapboard had been covered over with tar-paper with a faux-brick pattern at some point, which all had to be removed and the staple holes in the wood filled prior to the exterior being painted.

Ball spent countless hours and days, meticulously working room by room personnally to restore details in the wood trim that had been hacked and damaged and fixing damaged plaster work, as well as painting the exterior himself, twice now in the time the couple has lived there.



The process has taken many years to complete.

“I enjoy the process of restoring (old things) and bringing it back,” he said of what many would label tedious tasks.

A number of the house's details had been removed during its decline, such as doors, and had to be replaced, however. Not willing to compromise the house's historical details, Hare scoured curbsides near old house cleanouts both in Easton and in Harrisburg where he was working at the time, and brought home architectural details appropriate to the house to be incorporated into the restoration.



 It saved a lot of money, Hare said, and was also in keeping with the couple's goal of revitalization and renewal for the antique home.

Today, 28 years after Ball and Hare started its restoration, Ravenwood may well be more grand than it was when it was originally built. The two have additionally added an enchanting garden, and bought the adjacent vacant lot, which they have also improved by cultivating more garden space.

Having tracked down its history, Hare said the house was built for Easton blacksmith and carriage maker Eli Oberly and his family, and probably completed in 1871. Oberly, he added, was prosperous but not a very rich man.



The "servants' staircase"

 

The main staircase

“So while this was a big house, it wan't a fancy house,” Hare said.

Still, the house has a plainer, second staircase for servants' use leading to the second floor in addition to the grander staircase off the foyer, and while converting the third floor attic space into an open floor plan, there was evidence this space was used at one time for servants' quarters, an indication Oberly was probably doing fairly well.

The attic space also yielded some bits of history that were preserved despite the house's near fatal decline prior to its restoration and hint at previous owners' lives.

A trunk hidden away in the attic servants' quarters contained clothes, including an apron, a late 19^th century corset and bust enhancer.

A woolen cap, typically the type a workman or young boy would wear was also found by Ball in the walls, along with a stash of beer bottles from an old Easton brewery.

And, in the yard, bottle and pottery shards, along with the “prize” of finds—a belt shield from a Union soldier dating back to the Civil War.

Ball has carefully kept and preserved these and other artifacts he's found, labeling them along the way. They're part of the house and its history, he says. 

 

But while Ball and Hare happily live among the fruits of 28 years of patient, meticulous labor and still love the neighborhood, they both have recently retired and say it's nearing time to pass their historic home to the next generation.

“This house needs someone younger, a family, perhaps, to carry it forward into the future,” Hare said.

To that effect, an ad on the Manhattan Craigslist appeared last week, declaring their intention to sell to the right buyer. The adjacent garden lot they will keep for now, but intend to allow first-option rights to whoever purchases Ravenwood.

They intend to stay in Easton, they said too, adding that they're not sure where they will move, but it won't be College Hill.

“We like the diversity of this neighborhood,” they said. “So wherever it is, we're not giving that up.”

Ravenwood is only one of a near-countless number of unique, one-of-a-kind historic buildings in the City of Easton, and The Easton Eccentric would like to highlight more of them. Are you currently restoring one of the city's numerous architectural gems? Do you own a house or other building that you'd like to highlight? Or, perhaps there's a structure you feel deserves some attention so it can get the love it deserves to further the mission of revitalizing our city?

If so, please email us! Your suggestion could very well be next on our list!

Hare Salon Is More Than Just Another Art Gallery

By Christina Georgiou


Timothy Hare shows a visitor around his
new salon on Spring Garden Street.

Local architect and artist Timothy Hare's new gallery is a bit different from most--he doesn't expect to sell much art.

Now retired after a long, successful career, he instead hopes his new Downtown space will be host to thoughtful exchange of ideas and conversation, in addition to his books and art.

Originally a surrealist and pen-and-ink artist, in addition to his architectural work, Hare's most recent works are bold abstracts, and grace the back room of the gallery space.


Two of the books containing Hare's
pen-and-ink illustrations of Easton
architecture.

The front room greets visitors with the artifacts of Easton's struggle with urban renewal in the 1960s and 70s and Hare's past work, including two books of his pen-and-ink illustrations of Easton.

In the 1970s, jet-lagged and just back from Australia, Hare landed in Easton by chance, he said, just as wrecking balls were about to destroy what is now the city's historic district. Their work had already begun years earlier, and whole blocks of the city's unique antique architecture had already been removed.

The citizens of Easton had protested vigorously against their eviction and the destruction of their homes, to no avail. When Hare arrived, a demolition crane was set up next to the building that houses the Quadrant Coffee House and Book Mart, slated to be the next victim of elimination two weeks hence.


The front room greets visitors with the artifacts of
Easton's struggle with urban renewal in the 1960s and 70s,
along with a collection of hares.

 By that point, though he didn't know it, whole chunks of the city were already lost to the federal government's plan to "renew" urban areas by replacing them with parking and squat light industrial buildings, forcing the relocation of residents to the suburbs. No new residential housing was allowed as part of the plan.

Although Easton was still thriving and bustling with commerce, despite what had already been lost, most of Downtown was being declared "blighted" which paved the way for the ill-conceived destruction of heart of the city.

Despite his fatigue, Hare went to that evening's city council meeting to ask what was going on and why, he said. Not receiving satisfactory answers, he refused to leave until city officials showed him the plans and explained what was going on.



A map of Easton's Downtown
district, showing in black what
buildings had been razed
between 1945 and 1960.



This map shows Easton's Downtown,
with black areas depicting buildings
demolished between 1945 and 1993.
Most were razed in the
1960s and1970s.



Deeply disturbed by the ultimate answer, that Downtown Easton was being flattened and residents forcibly removed from their homes, despite ownership, he decided to do something about it. Having worked in Australia on historic preservation and in America with government contracts, he knew what to do.

Not owning a car, Hare decided to take a bus to Washington DC the next day to attempt to get an injuction against the construction project, of which the demolition was the first phase. He believed from seeing the plans the night before that the city officials had not crossed T's and dotted I's when it came to federal permissions to enact the construction plan, which they were in charge of having been enticed by the millions of federal dollars the city was granted for agreeing to it.

He knew if he was successful the demolitions would be halted, and the city not only would be forced to return the unspent portion of the funding, but wouldn't be granted more, due to their failure to spend it on the project in time.

Three paintings done by Timothy Hare
that depict Easton's various
City Halls through time.

Hare never made it to the bus station, he said. Before he could leave his house, which he had just rented, a woman who had heard about his "making trouble" at the previous evening's meeting knocked on the door and offered her help. She was incidentally the relative of a person of some importance in the federal capitol, who she called upon to help find a skillful presentation lawyer, which sped up the process of Hare getting through the proper doors to file the right paperwork for the injunction.

His efforts were successful, where the protests of 12,000 City of Easton residents had failed, though not before more than half the city's Downtown buildings were gone.

Up until fairly recently, the reasons behind the federal push for urban renewal projects across the nation were a classified secret of the Department of Defense, which had pushed for cities being vacated after World War II, ostensibly to protect them from becoming targets in the event of nuclear war.


Hare's master thesis based
on research into the
reasons for Easton's
ill-conceived urban renewal
attempt, the effects of which
the city still suffers from today.

Hare did his master's thesis on that subject, and a copy of the thesis also resides in his new gallery, housed in a graceful Federal-period building on Spring Garden Street--one of the ones saved by his efforts now nearly four decades ago.

"When I think about it now, if I'd known what I was really up against, I don't think I would have done it," Hare said. "But I'm very glad I did."

Already, it seems, despite officially opening only earlier this week, the salon is a success, not only for being the home to Hare's art, much of which reflects the struggle Easton faced, but for already fulfilling the mission of thoughtful exchange of ideas and historical information, too.

Hare Salon, located at 229 Spring Garden St., is generally open Wednesday through Saturday, from noon to 5 p.m., with other times by chance or by appointment.

To contact the salon, email theviewfromhare@gmail.com. Or just stop by some time.

Update, July 2, 2012: Summer hours for Hare Salon are by chance or by appointment.