Before & After: Andrew Nilsson House

DAYTON-Inside the home, history is a verb. Artifacts that we keep are imbued with both sentimental, but also historical value. Part of the human experience is the stuff we collect. Equally important are the environments that hold them, our homes.

The construction of shelters and lodgings demonstrate the technology of a given time in action, magnifying the lens on events that happened there.

The National Register of Historic Places, administered by the The National Park Service, is the official Federal list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in American history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture.

National Register properties have significance to the history of their community, state, or the nation.

To be chosen, a professional review board in each state considers the property proposed for listing and makes a recommendation on its eligibility.

Being listed ensures the consideration of historic properties in the Federal Planning processes, eligibility for certain tax provisions, and qualification for federal grants, when funds are available.

For purposes of the National Register of Historic Places, properties must generally be at least 50 years old to be considered for listing, but the older the better.

Near Patit Creek, in the midst of some old growth trees, stands the imposing Nilsson House. It was built in 1885, when those trees were just saplings, by carpenters Carr and Frick.

This romantic Italianate Victorian features a winding banister staircase in the foyer, and spacious rooms that are brightly lit from large windows on the exterior and transoms on the interior.

There are four bedrooms and two bathrooms sprawled across 2,984 square feet.

This house retains much of its original character and architectural detail, reflecting the formality and classicism of the Italianate style, and illustrating the adoption of fashionable national styles popular early in Dayton's history.

The house form is square with a shallow hipped roof. It has a centered gable pediment with decorative scrollwork, with a pendant and returned boxed eaves. There are scrolled brackets under the decorative boxed eaves. The home also has two story bays with cutaway corners on the first floor and a modest front porch.

To say the least, it is handsome.

Inside, the home features hardwood floors, some leaded glass windows, and Corian countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms.

Andrew Nilsson, the original owner, was a Swedish immigrant who ran a large agricultural implement business.

Nilsson was busy, having served on the Dayton City Council and as a director and vice-president of the Citizen's National Bank and a director of the Columbia National Bank when the two merged. He also owned a wagon, carriage and blacksmith shop on South 4th Street.

The house was officially registered as a historic place in 1987.

In the early 1990s, a master bedroom was added to the first floor adhering to the National Register guidelines.

The current owner has restored the original wood floors and smooth-coated all the interior walls to reflect the original plaster. Period appropriate colors appear on both the interior and exterior, adding to the historical significance of the home.

The current owner, who chose to remain anonymous, very much enjoyed putting the effort and well into six figures' worth of funding into the house, but also wouldn't do it again and wouldn't recommend it. A great deal of extra expenses came from hiring experts who were not local.

At some point a previous owner had split the home with the idea of renting it out. Over time design decisions were made that weren't necessarily true to its origins. One such choice was the fake shutters attached to the front of the house. That was the first thing to go for the current owner.

Still, the intrinsic value, and elevated living made possible by the exquisite charm and original character of this house are clear even from the curb. Architecture is the art we live in.

To live contemporarily in a historic home is a compromise of anachronisms for history is modernity, given the right context.

Source: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/index.htm

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75610936