Since the last post on the Black Cinema House, back in May, much progress has been made.
Two weekends back, there was a a great cookout in the back of the library house, where the garden has been expanded and newly bordered in the back with a substantial brick wall. The lady and I toured the now-empty garage next to the library house, which has been gutted.
Across the street, the BCH is slowly taking shape. Finish carpentry is a painstaking craft, and the whole building is a piece of art. I feel like that is often said about buildings, usually referring to some starchitect museum complex or luxury condominiums that use imported marble and titanium cladding. This, however, really is a work of art, marked with the evidence of a dozen skilled craftsmen.
6901 Dorchester Avenue is a different, truer piece, made by hand from the bones of old buildings. Just last week I glued together a broken maple stair tread, added a piece of walnut flooring to fill it out, attached a piece of poplar to shim it up, blocked out a new structure in the stairwell, sanded it down, and re-fit it. This is not about speed, or modernity; it is about resurrecting something fractured, reuniting something split, and rebuilding with the remnants of something long since past.
Two weekends back, there was a a great cookout in the back of the library house, where the garden has been expanded and newly bordered in the back with a substantial brick wall. The lady and I toured the now-empty garage next to the library house, which has been gutted.
Across the street, the BCH is slowly taking shape. Finish carpentry is a painstaking craft, and the whole building is a piece of art. I feel like that is often said about buildings, usually referring to some starchitect museum complex or luxury condominiums that use imported marble and titanium cladding. This, however, really is a work of art, marked with the evidence of a dozen skilled craftsmen.
6901 Dorchester Avenue is a different, truer piece, made by hand from the bones of old buildings. Just last week I glued together a broken maple stair tread, added a piece of walnut flooring to fill it out, attached a piece of poplar to shim it up, blocked out a new structure in the stairwell, sanded it down, and re-fit it. This is not about speed, or modernity; it is about resurrecting something fractured, reuniting something split, and rebuilding with the remnants of something long since past.
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| The library house. |
