The story of the American home is the story of the American Dream, and each home tells a story, stories being filmed for a five-episode television pilot whose sizzler (the long commercial) can be seen, HERE.
“Home” is a big story, a story told in part in THE BEAUTIFUL HOME, the ezine now being constructed, now delayed by extra work and extra expense needed in foundation. Why? Because, it seems, with more on top, “HOME: A HISTORY”, the ezine’s foundation needs be broader, thicker, stronger.
Actors in the “Hollin Hills, Mid-Century Modern” episode. credit: M. Curtis
What might we expect of the telescreen, HOME: A HISTORY.
Well, of the pilot, a scan of American homes, families, traditions, the fashions of four-hundred years. Pilot episodes include
the Georgian, Fawcett House, 1772;
the Federal, Adams House, 1804;
the Greek Revival, Lyceum, 1838;
the Mid-Century Modern, Alcoa House, 1957;
the Classive Palladian, Morris House, 2001,
and many other homes of Alexandria, Virginia, George Washington’s hometown. You might be interested to know that George, when yet a boy, surveyed streets along the wooded Potomack River and drew Alexandria’s first maps. Later, the first boundary-stone of Washington, The District of Columbia, was laid just off George’s map at Alexandria’s edge. Yes, Alexandria was once a part of the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
Filming a “Hollin Hills Mid-Century” Scene, the Martini Party. credit: M. Curtis
Likely, you know that many of the nation’s great architects have worked and lived in Alexandria. Many other famous people have called Alexandria, “home”: Geo. Washington, as mentioned, Robert E. Lee, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Willard Scott, Mama Cass, John Phillips, Jim Morrison, and more US representatives, senators and well, Roberta Flack, I mean to say, “more choices of homes and interesting stories than sixty-minute episodes allow”.
Architect Robert Bentley Adams with Mike Curtis at a home of the “Palladian” episode. credit: Katherine Kerr
So much more to tell of “Home”: the staged tableaus, the tours, the interviews with architects, builders, craftsmen, philosophers, historians, theologians, ladies, and fathers and children, all those of families in nearby houses, your neighbors’ homes.
We Americans are a richly diverse people, a people of hopes, of skills, of ways of being, of crafts and arts and games and songs from many places around the world, a world distilled here, in states united by liberty, bound by Constitutional conduct, formed by the Declaration’s philosophical principle, “all men are created equal, endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which, life, liberty, and arete, that excellence which allows humane flourishing, ‘happiness’”.
Filming of first episodes is nearly complete, then, post-production, then, opening the door to all which is HOME: A HISTORY. We look forward to seeing you, at “HOME”.
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Perhaps You Knew: John Ruskin opined,
When we build, let us think that we build for ever.
I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be within and without: . . . with such differences as might suit and express each man’s character and occupation, and partly his history.
Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.
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Featured image, “Thomas Bloom filming the ‘Palladian’ episode“.
