Monday, July 30, 2007

Anatopism II

House on Highway 9, south of Carlyle, SK

What caught my eye here?

No, it's not the resemblance to a face.

It's that rectangle of plywood with the weathered paint, in the upper middle of the wall, looking like a nose.

What does that boarded-over doorway look like from the inside?

I'll admit, my own house has a door that opens into a bit too much air at the moment, but nothing like this one.

I have seen another doorway like this, though. It was on a house right here in Arcola, across the street from the schoolyard.

Why would anyone want a door opening off the second story into empty space?

3 comments:

arcolaura said...

No guesses? I'm wondering about snow drifts. There are stories in the area about entire houses being buried, or streets piled so high with snow that you could walk across between the upper windows of the houses on each side. Maybe this house was built shortly after the famous winter of '47?

Jim said...

Hi Laura-

My guess is that there was once a porch or staircase off this door which became rickety or unsafe and had to be removed.

Back in the '60s, a friend and I lived in a little mountaintop cabin where the front porch had crumbled and fallen over the hillside, leaving about a 7 foot drop from the threshold to the ground, so we just used the back entrance.

Apparently the owner couldn't afford to replace the porch and stairway which is how a couple of kids fresh from high school came to live there. The rent was cheap!

;~)

arcolaura said...

Hmmm - that makes sense, too. Especially on the larger houses, where perhaps the second story was separate quarters for hired help or married children or such, and the staircase provided a separate entrance.