Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Cape Cod houses, candy-coloured Cape Cod houses

Cape Cod houses represent a style that originated in New England in the late 17th century. These small, economical, one-and-a-half story homes were built all across North America during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

So it is not surprising that we find them in dollhouse size for the post-world-war-two children who may have grown up in such a house.


Keystone Manufacturing Company of Boston produced a wonderful Cape Code dollhouse in the early 1950's and used the same plans until at least the late 1960's. Various exterior designs were used. Some had four rooms, and others, like my beautiful field stone model shown here, had an extension for the kitchen and bathroom.



The house shown here was sold at FAO Schwarz during the 1960's. It has an FAO sticker just inside the dining room at the back. I have shown it furnished in this post Decorating Challenge. And in this post Different Strokes for Different Folks.

I love this house so much that when I saw another variety on eBay I just had to have it.



 I bought this house from the original owner. It doesn't have the kitchen extension, but at some point during the life of the house someone has divided the upper floor into three sections so there can be a small bathroom up there.


Unfortunately, someone also redecorated the interior of the house with 1980's-style wallpaper, covering over the lovely late 1950's original decor.




I don't like to mess with original, but out-of-scale disco-era wallpaper holds no such taboo for me. I have taken the interior of the house down to the bare walls and am researching the essence of post war decorating to replace it with. You will get to see the before and after in a future post.


So why did I need a third Keystone Cape Code.


That's easy to answer. Just look at it! It's Yellow and Pink!!



It was love at first sight.

And that's not all. It was packed pristinely in it's original shipping box. The original wallpaper was perfect, and both the upstairs wall and the small divider for the downstairs were there.








This is a picture of the end tab of the box.










Tomorrow our lovely appropriately dressed hostess will take us on a tour of the inside.




Tata for now.


Hugs,
Susan

2 comments:

  1. Really handsome! Love the background stories! TTFN CM

    ReplyDelete
  2. La CAS es Una preciosidad .
    Gracias Por El Recorrido de la Historia de ESTAS casas .
    Esperare Con impaciencia la visita del interior.
    Besitos de mayo

    ReplyDelete