House Beautiful Indeed

One of my favorite homes, located on the water near where I spent some of my formative years, is the Hawkins Ferry house in Grosse Pointe.

W. Hawkins Ferry is best known for authoring the definitive book on Detroit architecture, The Buildings of Detroit. But he was also a philanthropist, art collector, educator and modernist and was responsible for such great things as the core of the Detroit Institute of Art's modern art collection, the Marcel Breuer-designed Grosse Pointe Public Library (including Calder sculpture) and his own International Style home on the shores of Lake St. Clair, designed by noted local architect William Kessler in the 1960s.

Built as a house for art and entertaining, the residence was featured as the cover story in the September 1969 issue of House Beautiful. Here are a couple scans of this really incredible house to inspire you, or make you feel really inadequate. Most of the art you see in there (dig the Giacometti sculpture) can now be found at the DIA. The floorplan should be helpful to you when the time comes for you to design your own home.

Addiction

As I drove past Greektown Casino this morning I saw an elderly woman getting out of a cab to go in for, presumably, a day of nickel slots. I questioned to myself how someone could find that entertaining, and thought about the way that people get addicted to the high of winning and just end up losing. What a terrible thing, don't do it little old lady!

And then I stopped and reprimanded myself for (a) judging someone else's good time (as usual) and (b) being a total hypocrite. Because nothing beats the high of a good vintage score, especially after a dry run.

I obviously jinxed myself with my last thrifting post because it's been miserable going since. I was planning to go on hiatus for a while, and then at the last minute yesterday decided to hit a couple of my regular spots. A guy I know on Facebook posts every week about "speaking into your existence" and willing yourself to have a good week, so I tried to will into existence some Arabia Ruska dinnerware, an original Braun Aromaster or a Sony PS-F5 linear tracking turntable but my optimism was not rewarded. 

At my final stop, lingering to prolong my chances, I ended up poking through the books (generally a fruitless endeavor at thrift stores). Jackpot.

I don't know how a trove of vintage architecture books ends up in a random thrift store in a working-class suburb, but I'll take them. Naturally the hiatus is a distant memory - I'll be back out there thrifting the next time the opportunity arises. It's a sickness, people.