Historical Homes 3 & 4

Ladies Day Out in Superior continued:

As I was reading through the bios for the two homes on this post, I learned "somewhere between the 1980s and 1990s, artists and art lovers had discovered Superior. While much of the town was still in disrepair, the colony of artists began to grow and there was a small but steady movement to reclaim and rejuvenate individual houses." 


The "Little House" was built in 1927 by Paul Besich, a miner from Croatia. He and his wife built a number of houses in Superior as rental properties and this was one of them. But once the mine closed, like many other houses in Superior, it was abandoned as families left town to find work elsewhere.

In 2000, Leslie West, an actress, business woman and artist from California, bought the house for her art studio. At that time it was just a shell and ready for demolition. Bruce, her husband had the house restored in 2004. Leslie passed away from cancer in 2012 at the age of 67. Once again, the house was completely restored and is now the home of the Superior superintendent of schools. He and his wife had several of Leslie's paintings on display for the tour. It is a two-bedroom, one bathroom, and laundry room on the right and an open living room and kitchen on the left side of the house. I chose not to take photos as there were many people touring this home when we were there. It is a small house and there was not a lot of elbow room. I wish I had taken a photo as i am unable to find any of her paintings using google.

This is the "Big House' built by Paul Besich for his family about 100 years ago. The house is next door to the Little House and was in the Besich family until it was sold to Bruce and Leslie West in 1994. We did not tour this house.



The Recycled House, house #4, was also built by a member of the Besich family in the 1950s. Andy, son of Paul,  did not like to see things go to waste, nor did he like to spend money needlessly. The duplex apartments in what was once known as the Lizard Subdivision, were almost completely constructed from used materials Andy got from the mine.

We toured the home to the left. 

Like many other houses in Superior, the duplexes, there were at least two, also fell into disrepair once the mine closed in the 1980s. The duplexes, or at least this one, was bought by Sue Anderson who completely renovated it and now rents out the apartments. It was on the home tour because of it's interior decor. The current renter continues the theme established by Andy when he built the duplexes: Recycle and Reuse.

 The archway between the dining room and the kitchen: Valerie found the discolored, discarded iron work frame and saw potential. She cleaned and painted it and then continued the flowers around the sides of the doorway.

a close-up of the detail

This is a kneeler Valerie built. The two side posts are table legs. I have forgotten the original use of the base. Some of the kneeler parts came from the local Catholic Church when it was renovated.

 She goes to the dump ground/junk yard to find the bottles for her collection. This was a display on her dining room wall. Some of those bottles were about an inch in height.

 This shadow box of glass bottles was in her east kitchen window. The morning sun sets the room aglow.

 This is her living room window treatment. The large piece is a brown roll-up woven shade.

The triangular piece is a shawl she purchased from a goodwill store.

Homes 5 and 6 will be the next post. You can see that each home had an interesting history as well as a unique style and appearance.