Welcome to Full Circle House

Located in Reno Nevada, our house is over one hundred years old. We know the names of everyone who has lived here. In most cases, we know their history. We've never blogged before, so this will be something new to us. Besides the history of our home, we will be adding information about the neighborhood we live in. When our neighborhood was developed in 1905 it was called the Wells Addition. Today we call it West of Wells. Through future posts and, as we learn more about blogging, there will be more about Full Circle House and our unique neighborhood.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Reno Harvest of Homes Recap

Yesterday was the First Annual Reno Harvest of Homes tour put on by the Historic Reno Preservation Society. The tour was conceived as both a way to show distinguished homes in Reno and to form a fund to help preserve the old and historic homes of Reno.

Six distinguished homes of historical and architectural significance were on the tour. I was joking up to the day of the tour that there were five distinguished homes on the tour and then there was ours, but after touring the other homes, I can honestly say our home held it's own. It was the smallest, most unassuming home on the tour. We didn't have great landscaping like the Enchanted Garden/Ricky's Resort house nor did we have unique features like the oriental design of the Hart house, however, based on the reactions and comments from people I met who had visited it, Full Circle House was a big hit. As far as I can tell almost everyone who toured our home loved it.

Between two and three hundred people came through our home in four hours. I had the opportunity to be home at the beginning and end of the tour and was able to interact with people on the tour. Many of the older attendees knew the name Machabee and remembered Machabee and Morrill Office Supply. Several of them knew the Fants or knew of them.

The mystery of the stick with W. J. Machabee's name on it was solved by one of the attendees. It is used for a process called scaling in which a scaler will estimate how much lumber, measured in board feet, a log will produce. William Machabee worked in the lumber industry and would have used the stick while scaling a log. If not for the tour, we may never have learned its true use.

The preliminary results from the tour are great! There were over 350 attendees and 75 people acting as either home hosts, volunteers or working on committees. While preliminary, the president of the Historic Reno Preservation Society, Sharon Honig-Bear, reported today there should be between $7000 to $8000 to start the preservation fund.

We'll be posting more about the other houses on the tour over the next few days.