The story of the American home is the story of the American Dream, and each home tells a story, stories being filmed for a five-episode television pilot whose sizzle-reel (the long, inside industry commercial) will be seen here, and many other places, soon.
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“Home” is a big story, a story told in part in THE BEAUTIFUL HOME, the ezine now being constructed, now delayed by extra work and extra expense needed in foundation. Why? Because, it seems, with more on top, “HOME: A HISTORY”, the ezine’s foundation needs be broader, thicker, stronger.
What might we expect of the telescreen, HOME: A HISTORY.
Well, of the pilot, a scan of American homes, families, traditions, the fashions of four-hundred years. Pilot episodes include
the Georgian, Fawcett House, 1772;
the Federal, Adams House, 1804;
the Greek Revival, Lyceum, 1838;
the Mid-Century Modern, Alcoa House, 1957;
the Classive Palladian, Adams’ House, 2001,
and many other homes of Alexandria, Virginia, George Washington’s hometown. You might be interested to know that George, when yet a boy, surveyed the shore along the wooded Potomack River and drew a plan for streets, Alexandria’s first map. Later, a boundary-stone of Washington, The District of Columbia, was laid just off George’s map at Alexandria’s edge. Yes, Alexandria was once a part of the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
Likely, you know that many of the nation’s great architects have worked and lived in Alexandria. Many other famous people have called Alexandria, “home”: Geo. Washington, as mentioned, Robert E. Lee, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, Willard Scott, Mama Cass, John Phillips, Jim Morrison, and more US representatives, senators and well, Roberta Flack, I mean to say, “more choices of homes and interesting stories than the five, sixty-minute episodes allow”.
So much more to tell of “Home”: the staged tableaus, the tours, the interviews with architects, builders, craftsmen, philosophers, historians, theologians, ladies, and fathers and children, all those of families in nearby houses, your neighbors’ homes.
We Americans are a richly diverse people, a people of hopes, of skills, of ways of being, of crafts and arts and games and songs from many places around the world, a world distilled here, in states united by Liberty, bound by Constitutional conduct, formed by the Declaration’s philosophical principle, “all men are created equal, endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which, life, liberty, and arete, that excellence which allows humane flourishing, ‘happiness’”.
Filming of first episodes is nearly complete, then, post-production, then, opening the door to all which is HOME: A HISTORY. We look forward to seeing you, at “HOME”.
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For more information about THE BEAUTIFUL HOME, you might visit our sister sites, THE STUDIO BOOKS and THE CLASSICAL ARTIST.
The September Issue of THE BEAUTIFUL HOME will feature Jeffersonian architecture, Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, Charlottesville, and The University of Virginia; there will be articles of leisure, entertainment, how-to, house-plans, histories and stories of America, the stories of our home.
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Perhaps You Knew:
John Ruskin opined, “When we build, let us think that we build forever.”
