An 1887 photo of the William G. Hacker Residence at 1055 North Lawrence (now Broadway) . Family members and a housekeeper are posed throughout the various porches. Note the lawn sprinkler (left). By 1896 this house had become the home of Levi S. Naftzger, prominent local banker. This home is believed to have been designed and built by William Henry Sternberg (1832 – 1906). This home has several strong Sternberg design features including multiple highly corbelled chimney flues, a wooden fence (very similar to other confirmed Sternberg properties like the Miller Residence), multiple functional porches on the first two levels and decorative porches on the third level (3rd floor porches too small to be functional and of a style known to be used repeatedly by Sternberg), a broken roof-line with multiple angles, pitches and dormers as well as fancy milled woodwork. Reports of other Sternberg-designed homes report an abundance of colored glass windows on the third floor. This home also has a number of colored glass windows (only on the 3rd floor). Compare the wooden fence here to the fence on the C.R. Miller residence (a confirmed Sternberg design) and notice the striking similarity.
The Hacker Residence at 1055 North Lawrence (now Broadway) was next door to the John A. Wallace home at 1021 North Lawrence. The Wallace home is a confirmed Sternberg-designed and built home. In the picture here, the Wallace home would have been just off to the left. Images of the Wallace home have been posted to this photostream. Note the wooden sidewalk out front of this house and the carriage and buggy sitting in the "driveway" to the left of the house. There appears to be a short "railing" on one side of the sidewalk. Was that to keep people off of the grass?
This house was painted in several different colors. Unlike Victorian homes today which tend to be painted in brighter colors (yellows, pinks, lavendars, purples…), Victorian homes in the 1800s were indeed painted multiple colors, but those colors tended to be browns, greens, cream colors and other more muted colors. Paint in the late 1800s was not the quality we can get today, but it was surprisingly durable. Paint has been around for thousands of years, but in the very distant past (like over 150 years ago or so) it was hard to make and its quality was far from what we see today. Paint is comprised of two main ingredients: (1) a pigment (for color) and (2) in the late 1800s, a binder (frequently boiled linseed) with some thinners to make it spread better. Boiled linseed oil dries faster than raw or unboiled linseed oil and makes a good base for paint. In the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s and most of the 1800s, paint dies were agriculturally grown (plant-based) vs. being manufactured chemical composition. Some organic plant-based dyes include: indigo (for the color blue), Cochineal (red), Lady’s Bedstraw (vermillion red), Puccon roots (red). Powdered malachite can be used as green pigment. Lambsquarter and pond algae can be used for greens. Yellows can be obtained from curly dock root and sumac root. Winged dock is a nice yellow orange pigment. Walnut hulls, boiled or soaked in water, produce a dark brown stain and pecan hulls, processed the same way, produce a lighter golden brown stain. Many other organic dyes (both domestic and imported) were used as pigments. In the late 1800s, Central America, especially, was coming up with newer and brighter colors that were as yet unavailable in the U.S. and initially were quite popular. Ships plied the waters from South America up to New Orleans bringing boat loads of colorful organic dyes which ended up in linseed oil-based paints.
To make paint, pigments were then added to oils or glues or glue-like substances such as gum from the acacia tree (gum Arabic). Around 1850, synthetic dies were discovered (zinc oxides). Zinc oxide pigments were less expensive to incorporate in paint than the imported organic pigments and quickly went into mass production. In the 1860s and 1870 paints continued to improve in quality. Linseed oil was being mass produced and was one of the basic ingredients of paint at the time (1860s – 1870s). In 1870, Henry Sherwin and Edward Williams formed the Sherwin-Williams company and spent ten years trying to perfect a paint formula where fine paint particles would stay suspended in Linseed oil. In 1880 they succeeded in developing a formula that was sold as “ready-mixed” and far exceeded the quality of all paints available at the time. It was then that emulsions based on similar formulae, were produced and marketed as ‘oil-bound distempers’. A “distemper” is the name used for a glue-based paint, so these emulsions, marketed as "oil-bound distempers", were really a hybrid of an oil-based paint and a glue-based paint. In 1880 the new Sherwin-Williams paints were readily available in tins throughout the country including Wichita and they were available in a wide range of colors. They were available at the local hardware store and came to Wichita by rail road. Within 10 years of beginning production, Sherwin Williams paints were being exported all over the world. Wouldn’t it be grand to see this Hacker residence in its original paint colors!!
Your thoughts, ideas, comments and/or additional information as welcomed and appreciated!
This photo is courtesy of the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, (www.WichitaHistory.org).
