The following is from an email sent to the Beta Nu Alumni email list by Chuck Green (1967):

I have been asked to compare the newest house we own with the house we last owned on Bellflower. I did live in the Bellflower house. We moved to the Mistletoe house during the summer that I graduated, 1968. I visited the new house on Friday, January 26. I spent several hours walking all over the “new to us” building. Here are my thoughts.

Land:

Before visiting the property I checked the county property records web site to compare the sizes of the lots the two houses were on. Unfortunately the county does not list the depth of the property, so I had to get creative. Looking at the width, the new house land is 86.5 feet wide. The old house was on land 98 feet wide. Looking at the area, the new property is 0.43 acres. The old property was 0.37 acres. A little math tells me the new property is 216.5 feet deep. The old property was 164.5 feet deep.

Thus the new land is slightly longer, but slightly narrower than the old land. In comparison with the current university property on Magnolia, it is 0.42 acres on a ‘pie’ shaped property. I note that the parking lot in back of the current house is actually on a different piece of property.

First Floor:

The square footage of the heated part of the first floor of the Bellflower house seems to me to about the same as the new house. The Bellflower house had four rooms on the first floor, living room, library, dinning room, and kitchen plus a half bath. There was a center main door at the front. On the right side there was a back door to the driveway about 2/3 of the way back and a door from the kitchen at the rear.

The new house has a very similar first floor room arrangement but with the main rooms swapped left to right. There is again a front door in the middle and a side door on the right onto the driveway again about 2/3 of the way back. The new house has two rear doors. One from the kitchen and another from the main part of the house.

With the Bellflower house on a wider property, there was room on the property for an unheated enclosed porch on the left side of the house. We had a ping-pong table in this space with plenty of room to play. This porch may have been 12 feet wide and ran about 2/3 of the length of the house. This porch had doors to the front and rear yards.

Both houses had the driveway on the right side of the house.

The Bellflower house had the living room on the right side of the first floor. A library with built-in bookcases was on the left side in front. The dinning room was in back of the library. The kitchen was in the back along the driveway. There were matching fireplaces in the living room and library. The living room fireplace was in a several foot bump out with a window on each side. This was a great place to store the firewood.

The new house has a slightly smaller living room on the left side with a flat wall probably due to the narrower lot. In back of this is an outside covered patio that extends to the back line of the house. The new house has a wider front hall than the Bellflower house. The main stairway in the new house does look more impressive. The main room on the right looks larger that the library of the Bellflower house. The dinning room of the new house is smaller than in the Bellflower house. The dinning room size is limited by the kitchen being in back of it. In the Bellflower house the dinning room overlooked the side and rear yards.

Both houses have/had a butlers pantry connecting the dinning room to the kitchen. The Bellflower house had the “original” kitchen as a large open space. The new house has had the kitchen cut up into many smaller spaces. I think that we should consider removing some of the excess walls. The new house shows evidence of a dumbwaiter which the Bellflower house never had. There is also a half bath on this floor.

Both houses had fancy main stairways from the first to second floors at the end of the front hall. The servants stairway is located in the back through a door and connects all floors.

Second Floor:

The Bellflower house had four main bedrooms on the second floor for the family. There was one on each side in the front with a jack-and-jill full bathroom in between. The bathroom had a window above the center front door. We had removed the bathtub and replaced it with two prefab shower stalls. Both of these bedrooms had fireplaces. These were directly above those on the first floor.

The rear wall of the right bedroom had two glass window double doors into the rear bedroom. This was probably designed to be a nursery. The nursery did have a door into the hallway.

On the left side of the hallway was another full bathroom. This bathroom had a connecting door into the rear bedroom on that side. The bathrooms were arranged to allow access from most bedrooms without using the hallway.

In the Bellflower house there was a storeroom in the back that was accessed by the back (servants) stairway. This storeroom was above the kitchen.

The new house is much larger on the second floor. Unfortunately, a lot of remodeling has been done and the original design of many rooms is unclear. Here is what I think was the original design and how the building has been changed.

The front bedrooms original design seems to be similar to the Bellflower house. This was a common design at the time. There is a bedroom on both sides with a jack-and-jill bathroom in between. Both of these bedrooms had a fireplace. Today, many changes have been made. The jack-and jill bathroom has been removed and one fireplace is covered over. I do not understand the wall next to the fireplace.

There are still two more main bedrooms in this part of the house. These are in back on both sides of the house. One extends over the outside first floor porch. In the servants part of the building and above the kitchen is a complete suite. It has a locking door with a full bathroom, kitchen, and large bedroom.

This expansion of the second floor over the outside porch and kitchen allows this new house to have much more usable square feet than the Bellflower house.

Third Floor:

The Bellflower house had two small bedrooms, a full bathroom, and a large “rack” room on the third floor. For health reasons, the windows of the rack room were always open. The rack room had rows of bunk beds where we slept. This floor was accessed by the back (servants) stairway. There was also an added outside fire stair down to the ground. One front window had a rope that could be thrown out for another escape route. This was above only the center part of the house.

The new house has a main stairway from the second to the third floor. Thus there are more fancy bedrooms on the third floor. There are also servants work areas and store rooms on this level. Again, this new house has a huge amount more floor space on the third floor. The location of the original servants quarters are not clear today.

Basement:

The Bellflower house had the basement divided into three spaces by the load bearing walls. We used one room for the “party” room with a bar and fancy lighting. The second room had the TV and couches. The Third room had the pool table. The furnace and hot water tank were at the end of this room. There was no basement under the kitchen.

The new house has the basement divided into many small rooms whose original purpose is unknown. In one Cleveland Heights apartment building the servants rooms were in the basement of the building. Today, each apartment has a “storage” room that is the old servants room.

Carriage House:

The Bellflower house had a carriage house in back along the property line. This had room for two cars with a pit to service the underside of the vehicle. Above there was a two room suite with a bathroom. We usually had two brothers living in this space.

The new house has no garage or carriage house. There was probably one originally, but it was probably removed to add parking. I remember that the current house used to have a garage.

Rear Yard:

The rear yards of both properties were used for parking cars. I was told by a much older brother that the Bellflower house once had a working fountain in the back yard. It was gone before my time.

The new house probably had a fancy garden originally. The paved parking is an improvement over the cinder/dirt in the Bellflower house. I made the phone calls to the university steam plant to find out who hauled the cinders from their coal fired boilers. Then I arranged for a truckload of cinders to be dumped in our back yard to cover the mud. We paid almost nothing for the cinders and the trucking company saved the dumping charges.

Final Comments:

About 1967 we needed to replace the rug in the living room of the Bellflower house. We bought two 20 foot long pieces of carpet 15 foot wide from Sears. These were sewn together and bound at the edges to make a 20 by 30 foot area rug. It was bright red. It fit into the living room with a few feet of bare floor on all sides. I know that the rug was moved to the Mistletoe house. I never followed it further. It was much better than the previous carpet. That carpet was infested with ants that were living on all of the spilled beer.

The Bellflower house was originally wired for 240 VAC back in 1904. This is the same type of AC power that we use in homes today. The wires were underground. The old fuse “boxes” in the house were marble with bright brass or copper bars connecting double knife switches that controlled each circuit. The fuse box on the first floor was several feet high and wide. The fuses were lead wires about two inches long. Replacing a fuse meant opening the switch, removing the burnt out fuse wire, and replacing it with another piece of lead wire. (We used solder.) Then tighten the two thumb screws. Finally, close the double knife switch to reapply the electricity.

The Mistletoe house was originally wired for DC. In the garage there was a wood connector to plug in the Baker electric car to charge the battery. When I visited, this was still live, but now with 120 VAC, not DC. Most of the house had been rewired with conduit run on the surface of the walls. Some brothers thought that the old wires were no longer used; but, when they checked, all of the wires were live.

Chuck Green

BN Class of 1967/8