It’s November again, which means it is time for this year’s gratitude project. Last year I diverted from a general list of things I’m thankful for leading up to Thanksgiving and focused on my many fortunate opportunities to see the world through travel to places like Hungary, Australia, New York City, Latvia and more. This year I’ve decided to focus my posts on people I’m grateful for and thank them in a post.
Instead of just introducing this year’s theme and waiting until tomorrow to post anything, I’ll start today with a recent experience—spending Halloween at a historic home. How does this focus on people? Well, let me tell you.
About two years ago, a beautiful, architecturally significant home was about to be demolished when a benefactor, who would wish to remain anonymous, stepped in and saved it. You can read about it here and here. Anyway, that individual and friends have taken on the important work of preserving this home and are striving to share it and its story with others. It will be a long journey to their ultimate and wonderful goal, but they have made great strides. So, today I want to say thank you to those who saved the David and Gladys Wright House from being lost and forming The David and Gladys Wright House Foundation to preserve and interpret the wonderful architecture. Thank you!
Now a little about my Halloween at the historic home. Since I’ve written about the David and Gladys Wright House a couple of times (here and here) I won’t go into much detail about the beautiful building, its architect or the ongoing preservation efforts. Instead, I wanted to share some pictures from its Halloween celebration that I got to be a part of.
This year for the spooky holiday, the David and Gladys Wright House Foundation decided to invite some neighbors over for a festive evening, two actually. First, a few days before All Hallows Eve, they invited an entire local elementary school to drop by for some fun including getting some goody bags. I wasn’t there for that, but I was invited to come Halloween night for their house warming Halloween party.
The property was definitely decorated for the occasion with giant spiders crawling up the walls, smoke filling the courtyard, hundreds of pumpkins artfully placed on the ramp and thousands of votive candles lining every detail of the property making for some really cool pictures. Hundreds of locals dropped by to trick-or-treat, some I recruited by standing at a nearby intersection and pointing people to the house. It was a great way to introduce people to the historic home that will hopefully be open to public tours someday soon.
Here is a handful of pictures from the festive evening that I took with my brand new camera (Sony a6000). There are not many better ways of breaking in a new camera than with a house like this.
Again, thank you for investing your time, energy and resources to preserve this marvelous piece of architecture and its story.
