A new locally produced, five-part TV series will be showing on Channel 3 by late January (the Voice will later announce the schedule). Titled Macombs Historic Homes, its a project that has taken about two years—for the planning, funding, scripting, shooting, editing, and designing.
In a sense, its a follow-up to the very well-received, three-part series, Macombs Historic Places, which first appeared on local TV in 2009. But this video project is more innovative: it focuses on some outstanding older homes that reflect the history of our town through a residential perspective, from before the Civil War to fairly recent times.
It also presents a variety of remarkable local figures, like lawyer and land speculator Cyrus Walker, noted judge Damon G. Tunnicliff, pork packer and banker William S. Bailey, druggist and mayor John Keefer, pottery owner Washington Pech, teacher and scholar Irving Garwood, and newspaperman William Rudolph. And it shows Macomb examples of noted architectural styles (federal, Victorian, Queen Anne, Georgian, etc.) as it reveals the beautiful results of renovation and restoration work by contemporary homeowners.
If there is another such video history of an American town through the perspective of residential development, home design, and private lifestyles, I am unaware of it. Like Macombs Historic Places, this TV series (soon available on DVD) will bring helpful attention to our town while it also promotes a sense of community among local residentsand hopefully, encourages the preservation and renovation of older homes.
The Macombs Historic Homes series is directed by Roger Kent of University Television, researched and historically illustrated by Kathy Nichols of the WIU Archives, scripted and hosted by yours truly, and supported by a number of agencies and people, including MidAmerica Bank and the McDonough County Historical Society. Its a fine illustration of the kind of cultural achievement that is impossible in many small towns but is characteristic of Macomb when suitable goals result in broad cooperationespecially between town and gown.
As the planning and shooting of the segments took place, in conjunction with a series of knowledgeable and committed homeowners, I realized how profoundly affected many people are by the homes in which they live. In their chosen domestic places they can express themselves, reduce their loneliness, experience security, appreciate others, sometimes manage families, connect with the past, cherish art and antiques, and develop a sense of belonging.
In regard to historic homes, owners may renovate extensively—as so many of the series homeowners did—but in a sense, their house also renovates them. As poet Derek Walcott once said of his own home—and to his home, as if it were alive: I do not just live in you. I bear my house inside me everywhere.
The historic homes in any small town also symbolize collectively remembered stories, of individual experience in a particular place. Those stories bind the townspeople together, helping to make community possible in that locale.
As the program series reveals, a federal style house on East Washington Street evokes the anxiety-ridden world of the Underground Railroad, notable figures in the legal community, and three sisters who were social crusaders. A Victorian style home on South Lafayette Street expresses the prominence of a druggist and investor who led the early effort to shape Westerns campus. A Queen Anne style house on North Randolph Street reminds us of a wealthy lumber dealer who hired a noted architect and a soft-spoken lawyer who became the mayor. A prairie style house on Normal Street recalls an early Western professor who built an earthen stage in his back yard, for performing Shakespearean plays, and hosted British revels at Christmastime.
And historic homes often relate to someones personal or family past. In the series, an older woman from a prominent family recalls life at the stylish art deco home built by her parents in Compton Park during the 1930s. Our new mayor tells of a relative who raced horses at the fairgrounds, where his southern neoclassical style house now sits on several acres. And a woman who sold movie tickets as a teenager now lives in the Georgian style house that was long owned by her boss, who dominated the local media for forty years.
All of this reminds us, too, that our commitment to be at home in a particular house, in a town that matters, can be as deep as our commitment to another person or to a cherished cause. In fact, the designing, renovating, and re-decorating of a home symbolizes a complimentary truth—that to have a meaningful experience anywhere, we must become the thoughtful designers of our social and spiritual lives.
- Author and local historian John Hallwas is a columnist for the McDonough County Voice.