Harrisburg Candlelight House Tour 2022
The Princess of Patience and I have an annual event we enjoy, and that is the Candlelight House Tour organized by Historic Harrisburg Association.
The homes are historic, often brick and stone, but increasingly being rehabbed and rebuilt to suit modern lifestyles. Mid Town Harrisburg is the center of a great deal of this gentrification and re-use, the reclamation of its former glory days by investors, young couples, and entrepreneurs taking empty dilapidated homes and fixing them up into tax-paying structures once again.
Often the true downtown homes are as-is-as-found-as-was, somewhat cluttered and dark, filled with holiday tsatchkes, very homey and comfortable. These downtown spaces are all smaller attached homes from the 1860s-1900s, whose original materials and design often require a significant boost to make them truly livable today. And yet so many owners keep the original pine flooring, which is as attractive now as it was 130 years ago. Many owners aggressively incorporate new steel I-beams and wall materials, and install new windows in the former closed brick, while maintaining as much of the original construction as possible. The result is always a fun and harmonious combination of antique and modern, and I would say that most of them make me wish I had it as a pied-a-terre.
One of the big efforts is taking old mansions and commercial buildings and turning them into apartments. This is not an easy or cheap thing to do. When I was in graduate school, I lived in an old Victorian mansion on Lyle Avenue that had been turned into apartments by an enterprising cocaine addict named Steve. Steve lived in one of the larger apartments that spanned from the basement to the roof. One day, while watching Steve hold his own, raging drunk, buck naked and armed with a single shot .22 rifle, in an armed stand-off with the Nashville police, who had taken cover with their service revolvers over the hoods and roofs of their squad cars and a humorously deployed bullhorn, I came to appreciate the thick, strong brick construction of the building I was in. If the bullets ever flew, I was without a doubt immune to dying from acute lead poisoning behind those bunker-like walls. Ever since then I have admired the must-be-crazy people who seek to bring these clunky dinosaurs into the current day and age as livable spaces.
One of the people I spent time talking with was Nathaniel Foote, who took the old Carpets & Draperies building and provided Harrisburgers with luxury loft apartments. His emphasis is on short-term nurse housing. Another entrepreneur I spent time talking with was Justin Heinly, who has restored both the historic Cottage Ridge Mansion and the historic Donaldson Mansion next block down. Justin told me true rehab war stories, like finding old brick chimneys upstairs that had been pulled apart downstairs, thereby leaving thousands of pounds of hidden unsupported weight bearing down hard on the floors below.
This historic home rehabilitation work takes real dedication, risk, and sacrifice by people who have slight streaks of both crazy and artistic creativity. This work directly benefits everyone who lives in Harrisburg, or who owns real estate in Harrisburg. Thank you Nathaniel, Justin, and all the others who are making Harrisburg’s old abandoned areas now livable and desirable once again, one building and one apartment at a time.
And thank you to all of the home owners who let the public enter their private spaces, and to Historic Harrisburg, for bringing us all together as the community we are.
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