Follow along here on Instagram as we turn a 144 year old Chicago storefront into a place for creative endeavors, events, and quality time.
THAT SUMMER FEELING
Replete with historical and cultural significance, forged through passing generations, Camp Wandawega in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, still oozes a nostalgic all-American charm thanks to its current custodians...
All original elements have been dutifully preserved, while any new
structures added by Tereasa and David have been salvaged from
neighbouring farms, treehouses and lakeside cabins. The result is an assemblage of locally sourced, recycled lodgings.
Among these, one encounters the Hill House, a more contemporary lodge;
the Craft Cabin, a charming 1940s shack relocated from a nearby site;
and the latest addition, a girl scout cabin, its walls etched with a
century’s worth of adolescent doodles. ‘The camp arrived with all these
layers of design and textiles, particularly the hand-me-down furniture,
and the spaces embody the culmination of decades of histories and
people,’ observes Tereasa. Thanks to their sensitive restoration
efforts, the couple are ushering in a new chapter in the camp’s
chronicle.
Although
Prohibition comes to an end, the demand for ladies of the night,
gambling and bootleg liquor does not. The tavern (nicknamed Orphan
Annie’s after the madame herself) is a popular hangout for a cast of
characters including criminals on the run, local law enforcement, and
Chicagoans hankering for some debauchery. In 1942, Anna Beckford Peck is
finally sentenced and sent away to Taycheedah, the womens’ prison near
Fon du Lac.
2003
The Resurrection Begins
With
the Soviet Union dissolved, the Vatican instructs the Marian Fathers to
sell the retreat and return to Latvia. By purchasing it, David and
Tereasa keep the property in the extended family, so to speak, and
restoration begins — a labor of love that continues to this day.
Like the crooked man who lived in a crooked house, it was the characterful, not to say skew-whiff, nature of the house that first drew him there: ‘It works quite well with the higgledy-piggledy of my collecting.’
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