Hunt-Morgan Home

          As I wandered into the dinning room of the Hunt-Morgan house it was as if I was in a time machine. The house was built in the 19th century (1814) and it uses the styles and concepts accordingly. A large part of the design is through coordination of architectural elements, furnishings, wall colors, and objects. For example the house was built federal style meaning that the right side of the house mirrored the left giving it pure symmetry. Another example were the baseboards that matched the color of the Chinaware which was typical of wealthy families in the 19th century. My favorite piece was the glass about the front door. There are 13 individual pieces of glass that unify to represent the 13 original colonies.
          As we marched up the stairwell the tour guide told us about the floors being made of a red oak but as soon as we got upstairs the floors changed to a contrasting, "more modern" wood. The upstairs was turned into a boarding house for employees of a local college and they took the floor up and put in the new floor. The wood was thin in width and using the element of lines, it looked as if it stretched the hallways further than they were. The first room we saw was the master bedroom. It, like the rest of the house, had a sense of harmony as you progress through the bedroom.  Down the hall was the daughters bedroom, designed unlike any other part of the house. The room has a flower like pattern on the walls that will catch your eye as soon as you walk in. The woman that lived there redesigned the house to cater to her needs, one of which was the flower wallpaper. The granite fireplace was added to burn coal in place of the traditional wood fireplace. At the time the home had a lighter feel to it as America was parting ways with England's ways of life. When this woman redesigned the room she got rid of the "lighter" look and went back to the solid, heavy furniture that England was known for. The civil war memorial showed how military, materialism, men of war, and war itself has drastically changed over time. Back in the Civil War era they wore uniforms that were almost like robes. The uniforms had a think heavy looking texture to them and they were rather dull. When you look at uniforms today you see all types of colors and camouflage patterns. It is amazing to see how people lived in the 19th century and how contrasting parts of everyday life were compared to everyday life today.