Category — Healdsburg

The grande dame around the corner on North St is my favorite Healdsburg fixer, but this “white elephant in the rough” ranks right up there as a challenging repair prospect. Several owners have pondered remodel, tear down, new house, refit, and haven’t managed to find the right combination. There are plans for a new house, but I still think lifting the house to create parking underneath and repairing the house could create a great shared housing project. Sadly, almost all of the original detailing is gone on the interior, but the gutting of the house makes it much easier to see what needs to be done and to create an efficient and modern internal floor plan with up to date wiring, plumbing, insulation, etc.

The outside still has some wonderful details and an architectural presence that isn’t timeless, but is solid and genuine. In any case, this is an interesting opportunity for a project as close to the Healdsburg plaza as you are going to find.

We don’t have a lot of old bridges left, at least steel truss bridges that remind me of the Erector Sets I grew up with. There’s one in Guerneville, but so many RV’s got dinged up trying to pass each other that they’ve made it into a pedestrian bridge and created a functional, but un-dramatic concrete replacement. This bridge, the Wohler Bridge, not only represents the engineering past for all of us, but it crosses the Russian River between Healdsburg and Forestville at a particularly beautiful stretch.<More>

I can’t help it. I’ve always found round porches to be enticing features for a home. Maybe it was growing up in the 50’s with Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe as prototype women, but curves have always attracted me. Healdsburg’s grand dames have more of these finely detailed fronts than anywhere else I’ve been. Here are a few choice models from within a few blocks of the Healdsburg plaza.

Driving down the road yesterday I just had to stop and grab this picture of Sonoma County’s most prideful crop; the grape. One look should convince you of the correctness of the proposition that the grape is among the most beautiful, the most luscious, the most perfect expression of nature’s goodness. We are beloved creatures to have such bounty lavished upon us.