I was raised on Williams Avenue, 710 West Williams Avenue, to be precise, in a yellow stucco house that still stands, now wearing a lighter color. It currently houses Hendrix Insurance Agency. In 1946, my father, Ernest J. Maupin, Jr., commissioned Nevada architect Frederick DeLongchamps (1882-1969) to design the house for a growing family. Shortly before, my twin sister and I had made our rather unexpected entrance into the world. My parents were expecting a large boy. Pre-sonogram. Their bungalow on Maine Street was no longer large enough, and my mother was pregnant again.
I have tried to guess how and why my father was able to persuade the famous DeLongchamps to build the house on Williams Avenue. After all, by the time DeLongchamps designed my family home, he had become one of Nevada’s most prolific and best known architects, having designed imposing and beautiful buildings across the state, including the Washoe County Courthouse (1911), the Lyon County Courthouse (1912), Douglas County High School (1915), the Pershing County Courthouse (1921), the Humboldt County Courthouse (1921), Ormsby County Court House (1923). The list of DeLongchamps-designed buildings is ten times the length of the short list given here, and, more to the point, it also includes several recognizable Churchill County landmarks: Oats Park Grammar School (1914), Robert L. Douglass ranch house (now the Frey Ranch,1920), Fallon City Hall (1931),Dodge Construction Company Machine Shop (1937). The Churchill County list provides clues to my father’s acquaintance with DeLongchamps’ work. At the time the Dodge Company Machine Shop was built, my father was Vice President of Dodge Construction Company and was surely involved in the planning of the machine shop. I might also surmise that my father already knew DeLongchamps through his close connection to the Robert Douglass family. Whatever their relationship was based on, DeLongchamps must have respected my father enough to agree to design the house.
I have always thought that the house was emblematic of its time, then and now. It was fairly small by today’s standards, about 1600 square feet, but the garage was free-standing and large enough for two coupes, one for my father and one for my mother. The front of the house was signature DeLongchamps, marked with white ionic columns, suggesting an entrance to a small courthouse. It was absent a white picket fence, but, better yet, sported two freshly painted white trellises extending to the East and West of the house, upon which roses rambled their fragrant way. My father took care of a large lawn surrounding the home. It was mowed, fertilized, manicured…weekly.
I still love to look at photographs of the original living room décor. The floors were hardwood. A very large picture window was draped with a tapestry-like fabric featuring green and red Chinese Pagodas, like window coverings borrowed from a 1940’s movie set. A sleek, black-tiled fireplace was flanked by wood storage boxes, whose hand-painted doors showcased fiery red and orange dragons! Glass bricks framed the southeast corner of the house, adding texture to the walls and filtering the sunlight. In the northwest corner of the room, long brass door chimes were installed into a niche dedicated to them. When someone rang the doorbell, the chimes sounded like carillons on a Sunday morning.
Sometime in the nineteen fifties, my parents, following the unfortunate style trends of the times, carpeted the floors, draped the window in an aqua polyester fabric, paneled over the stuccoed walls, and painted over the dragons. But the heart of the house remained. My sister and I and my two brothers were nurtured there and tearfully launched out the columned entrance to experience college, careers, marriages, and different houses. My father died in 1979, and my mother, reacting to the increased noise and traffic on Williams Avenue, sold the house and moved to a quieter neighborhood. The house had fulfilled its domestic role, pleasingly, thanks to Frederick DeLongchamps.
Please send your stories, ideas for stories, and comments to [email protected].
Comment
Comments