It's a big weekend in Somerville Massachusetts - the 11th Annual Somerville Open Studios weekend, one of the largest open studios events near Boston.
Somerville MA has a vibrant arts community and local artists' work will be showcased this weekend with more than 300 artists participating at over 100 locations. See artists' work in a variety of mediums including painting, photography, collage, jewelry, fabric art, glass, sculpture and much more.
Open studios are spread throughout the city but you'll be able to visit quite a few in any one area - making the tour easy to do by foot. There will be a free trolley service and SOS, in their excellent tour booklet, encourages attendees "to use public transportation, trolleys, bikes, scooters, and walk by foot if at all possible." Resident parking rules are in effect on Saturday but not on Sunday. If you've arrived by car and need to park, free parking will be available during the event at:
Trolley stops include Union Square, Davis Square, Ball Square, Magoun Square and Gilman Square.
Tour maps are available online and are a good starting point for planning your day. The tour booklet is essential to pick up and will be available at many locations this weekend - I picked mine up from an envelope tacked to a tree outside one of the studios near Davis Square.
Somerville Open Studios takes place Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3, 2009 from noon to 6pm. Admission is free.
Need more art? Visit my website for a calendar of Open Studios in Massachusetts.
No - it wasn't snow - but it sure looked like it yesterday as the spring breezes filled the air with falling petals from the beautiful flowering trees all over Cambridge.
It was so nice to have a couple of spring-like days since within a week of shutting off the heat we had temperatures over 90 degrees. With no leaves on the trees that makes for a lot of unshaded pavement. Ugh! For the time being temperatures have cooled.
I've so enjoyed - vicariously - all your beautiful pictures from warmer parts of the country as we plodded through an endless winter. So before we immediately segue into summer here's some proof that we do get indeed get spring in Cambridge.
Recently, as part of a series on local architecture on my blog, I wrote a post about Greek Revival houses, an architectural style popular in Cambridge and nearby towns and cities.
Of course I had to take some photographs to illustrate the post.
Well now I can't stop. I see wonderful examples of Greek Revivals everywhere. Not to mention the bungalows, Victorians, and triple deckers that are subjects of other posts.
So far my colleagues are bearing with me as I slam on the brakes and leap out of the car to take yet another photograph. But their good will may be tested as I hold up our tour, retrace my steps, ever in search of yet another photo of a great house.
I guess this obsession shouldn't be a surprise. Years ago when I lived in New Haven Connecticut my daily walk took me past an absolutely beautiful selection of houses. While I have nary a photo of colleagues or friends from my two year stay, I do have two photograph albums of my wonderful houses I passed each day.
Here are a few of my favorite Cambridge Greek Revivals.
The Medford Public Library hosts superb lectures and this week's lecture sponsored by the Medford Historical Society will be a treat.
This Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 7:00 pm, local author Anita Silvey, will speak about her new book I'll Pass for Your Comrade: Women Soldiers in the Civil War. From the library newsletter:
"During the Civil War, hundreds of women assumed male identities, put on uniforms, and went into battle alongside their male comrades. Author Anita Silvey will talk about the fascinating secret world of the women soldiers of the women soldiers of the Civil War, who they were, why they went to war, and how they managed their masquerade."
The lecture is the last in the series sponsored by the Medford Historical Society to accompany the exhibit Of the People: Faces of the Civil War which runs through this Sunday at the Medford Historical Society, 10 Governors Avenue, Medford Massachusetts. The last chance to view the exhibit will be this weekend at the Historical Society:
The Medford Historical Society owns one of the largest and most important collections of Civil War photographs. The photographs were collected by Civil War veteran General Samuel Crocker Lawrence and donated by the Lawrence family to the Society in 1948. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to view these photographs first hand.
Silvey's lecture about Women Soldiers in the Civil War takes place at the Medford Public Library,111 High Street, Medford MA on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 at 7:00 pm. Admission is free.
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Elizabeth Bolton is a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker helping clients buy and sell real estate in Medford MA and nearby communities.
Nowadays many people talk about houses as investments and advise buyers not to get emotional about the home buying process. While I'm happy to work with buyers seeking to aquire real estate solely for its investment value, the truth is, buying a home to live in often is about emotions.
After all, when you buy a house to make it your home, you're charting the course for you and your family and friends. This house will be the place where you celebrate holidays, where your memories are formed, the place you come home to. The good and the bad - this will be where it happens for however long you live in your home. Your home will be your haven.
You'll care for your house. You'll put your own stamp on it. Inside and out you'll make it your own. And the house will make its mark on you. For ever after, the house will play a role in all your memories of the years you lived there.
To Make A House A Home: Four Generations of American Women and the Houses They Lived In by Jane Davison and Lesley Davison is a fascinating look at the central role that our homes play in our lives and how our view of home has changed through several generations.
To Make A House A Home is a 1994 reworking of the 1980 book The Fall of a Doll's House by Jane Davison. Davison's daughter Lesley has added vintage illustrations throughout the book and chapters of her own including "Generation of Renters, 1980 - 1994". That's a generation I can relate to as it closely mirrors my own renting years before I was able to finally buy my first house.
The book is part social history and commentary, part local memoir and history (Jane Davison grew up in Summit, New Jersey and lived in Cambridge and Boston in the 1960s and 1970s), and is greatly shaped by Jane Davison's feminist viewpoint. Publisher's Weekly described the earlier version of the book as a "classic history of the love-hate relationship between the American housewife and her place of residence." Lesley Davison's additions update her mother's viewpoints and the vintage photographs of people and their homes are priceless.
The chapters about Cambridge in the sixties and early seventies, are great fun to read for a look at Cambridge before real estate values went wild. My parents are of Jane Davison's generation but chose the suburbs when they bought their first house though my father had grown up in Cambridge. Many a time my mother has remarked "If only I knew about Cambridge and we had bought there instead" as young newlyweds. Instead my early experience of home were formed in the suburbs of Medfield and Concord and it was an adult that I moved to the city. Who would I be had I grown up in Cambridge? Somebody slightly different - or very different - I think. Where we live changes who we are and who we become in ways both subtle and significant.
To Make A House of Home is out of print but available online or at your local used bookstore.
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My bookcases are filled to overflowing with books - many of them about houses, real estate, and local history - I collect books about anyplace I've lived so have shelves lined with books about Cambridge, Arlington, Somerville, Concord, New Haven, New Hampshire and New England. Some of the books, many in fact, are out of print but many are of interest to those who sell houses, who love houses, or who are hoping to buy a house and want to know more about the history of a community. I'll be regularly featuring books from my shelves in future posts.
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Enthusiasm, dedication, and a passion for all things real estate. Serving buyers and sellers in Cambridge, Arlington, Belmont, Medford, Somerville, Watertown and nearby Massachusetts communities.
ActiveRain Corp. is not responsible for the accuracy of the site's content (which is written by members of the ActiveRain Real Estate Network) and does not endorse the views of the real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and others listed here.
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