3260 Euclid Heights Boulevard (1982, 1986)

 

In a letter to Mr. & Mrs. Norman Swirsky, subsequent and passionately devoted owners of the house at 3260 Euclid Heights Boulevard, Frederick F. Crouse, the original owner, described it as "a little showplace, housing our collection of art and antiques, some of which are now in museums." Designed by the Crouses as a European cottage with an elegant, formal ambience, the house was built in 1910 by the William Dunbar Company. Their work was impeccable, and even today a visitor will appreciate the solid oak beams, cut out by hand by an old Scottish ship builder. The original interior work was done by the Sterling and Welch Company.

 

The second owner, a European nobleman and entrepreneur of rakish reputation, removed many of the elegant touches and gave the house the more casual, lodge-like atmosphere apparent today. Shrubbery and trees were allowed to grow at will and soon hid the house from view, enhancing its English cottage feeling, The third owner was the daughter of Levi Scofield, sculptor for the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Public Square. Mrs. Jean Scofield Thompson was a genuine eccentric who, though trained as an attorney and a geologist, preferred to live an utterly reclusive life in the house she lovingly referred to as "her secret." The Swirskys purchased the house from Mrs. Thompson and reclaimed it from seventeen years of benevolent neglect. Three more families lived here before its purchase by the current owners.

 

Of note in the house is the living room, literally and optically spacious because of its two-story height and reminiscent of the halls found in true English Tudor houses. A large, rounded window on the west side uses this height to advantage as does the fireplace whose keystone is a piece of petrified wood. The brick fireplace is covered with stone and has a warming oven as well as room for storing wood. The mantel is a massive, single block of oak. The fireplace is flanked by two deep archways, one leading to a studio-garden room which in its earliest years had walls covered with gold and silver leaf. The other archway leads to the dining room where one sees the hand-hewn beams. Photographs of the house in its early days are displayed in the front hall. Barren of trees at that time, the house appears to be quite different from the hidden treasure it is now.