Historic Preservation Commission Agenda and Packet 2014 09 25

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Information about the House and Alterations From Social History Henry and Flora Hawkins's daughter Gloria has provided information about the house from when she lived there and from later visits to her parents. She said that the house used to have a living room, dining room, a kitchen at the southeast corner of the house, a back porch, a front porch, and two bedrooms. Wilma and Gloria shared a room with twin beds. When their grandfather Joe Zarini moved in, he and Gilbert had the bedroom with the twin beds. Wilma and Gloria then slept on a studio couch kept in the dining room that had to be set up and taken down every day. When Wilma married and Gloria went to nursing school and Gilbert left for the service, Gloria would sleep in her old bedroom in one of the twin beds when she would come home to visit. In the 1950s, Henry made some changes to the house. The 1955 County Assessor card makes reference to some remodeling. What had been the kitchen on the southeast corner became another bedroom. Henry then added a new kitchen and a utility room to the back of the house. The utility room was where the back porch used to be. There was a dirt cellar with a dirt floor where they kept foods that Flora had canned, plus home - brewed beer and root beer that Henry made. The entrance to the cellar used to be in the floor of the back porch. When the back porch area became the utility room, the door to the cellar was then from the utility room. Henry poured the patio and covered it with a roof by the new kitchen at the back of the house. Henry Hawkins also enclosed the front porch. It contained a couch and a chair and became a little more living space. The Hawkins' daughter, Gloria, talked about what the yard used to look like. She said that a one -car garage used to be on the alley. Also in the back yard were a coal house, wood shed, outhouse, and ash pit, plus a large garden that went from the house all the way to the current garage and all the way back to the alley. Where the current garage is was the location of a chicken yard where they raised chickens to eat. Daughter Gloria said that there wasn't a bathroom when she grew up in the house. The bathroom was likely added in the early 1950s when Louisville voters passed a bond issue to fund a sewage system for the town. The Rasmuson /Hawkins house didn't have a furnace when Henry and Flora Hawkins raised their family. The family had a coal stove in the kitchen and a heater in the living room. The Hawkins' daughter, Gloria, said, "It's a special house. It never was fancy, but it was home. We were warm and fed and happy. Even though it was crowded, we never thought of it that way." The following photo of the building is from the County Assessor Card and is believed to date from 1948: 4