#architcture

The new house that Valancy admires is itself a little trope about housekeeping: the smaller, servantless house with modern conveniences in a quaint package. Its presence does nothing to resolve the debate between @wildhoneyvalancy's preference for TBC being set in 1913 and mine for 1922, as this kind of house is touted in women's magazines from quite early in the 1900s.

These are photos from the Aladdin kit homes catalogs of 1914 (left, Hathi Trust) and 1928 (right, Internet Archive) -- a little late because catalog kit homes lagged building styles by a few years, but I needed a convenient source of pics.

The righthand house is an incredibly common "worker cottage" style in old North American cities. They appear in the 1870s and keep going into the early 1920s. The lefthand house is an example of the Storybook Cottage style that started in Los Angeles after WWI and quickly became a huge trend.

I was going to skip bungalows -- which also fit either period -- because they usually have shallower roofs than you want in Canada. Then I went to do a quick Wikipedia link and discovered that the bungalow shown there is perfect for the house Valancy sees, if it still had its original leaded glass in the front window. Is it not adorable?

As for the Stirling family home, tall and ugly with its turret... it's late Victorian, which (again) equaled "stuffy, outdated, and ugly" for the entire period under consideration and a few decades after. I keep going back to this Charles "Teenie" Harris photo from Pittsburgh for what it might have looked like.

thuin // wallonia

as much as charleroi is characterised by industry, the city's surroundings are all the greener. located just upstream and easily accessible on foot via the river through the green valley lies the city, which is over a thousand years old. hanging gardens, quiet alleys, a belfry, small cafés and the sambre at the foot of the city. and, of course, a touch of modernity, spanning the 20th century.