Barkitecture

Recently, Hamlet and I visited Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens to view the creative exhibit of specially designed dog houses, dubbed "Barkitecture." On Sundays throughout the summer and on thru October 31st, dogs (on leashes) are welcome to accompany their humans for a stroll round the grounds. Admission: Humans $8 and Canines $5. This was well worth the price of admission and is turning out to be quite a nice money-maker for the non-profit museum of life in a rubber baron's mansion. The day we visited, beautiful weather and lots of dogs and people strutting about the place as if we owned it!
























My favorite stop was the Frank Lloyd Bite house. Hamlet liked the Not Your Average Joe house, with its dog fountain and cooling design features. The Upside Down house is really clever too. There are many more to explore with your dog pal, so check it out!









































Hamlet admires the natural stone work on the Frank Lloyd Bite House, with its green roof helping to keep the interior cool.

The Not Your Average Joe House has a canine accessible fountain with pool and is built to capture cooling breezes plus it provides your dog some agility style training with its ramp up to the top. The shape of the house is that of an abstract sitting dog.

Hamlet at Stan Hywet

You've got one weekend left to see a really rip roaring good Hamlet performed by the Ohio Shakespeare Festival at Stan Hywet Hall here in Akron. (Tickets for July 31, Aug 1 & 2 can be ordered online here.) Last night was a perfect summer night for contemplating once more the tragedy and comedy of the prince of existential thought, Hamlet of Denmark. We enjoyed the pleasant temperatures, the scenic views of Stan Hywet grounds and the bullfrog chorus from the nearby lagoon. Unlike the prior night, the actors did not have to contend with sudden downpours in the midst of their outdoor performance.

There weren't any program notes to inform us, but it seemed to me that this was a mostly complete version of the text, with characters who usually get cut like Reynaldo and the second grave digger strutting on stage to show us exactly why Shakespeare included them in the first place.

Director Terry Burgler knows his latest Shakespeare-in-performance research and puts it into play in delightful ways. The characters speak to us and include us in the story, and let us in on the amazing comedy that weaves its way throughout the tragic Danish landscape. How else to deal with the horrors of death, than to indulge in graveyard humor?

Andrew Cruse as Hamlet is excellent, certainly up to Barrymore standards (see above image), which I say having never seen Barrymore because his performance never made it to film. However, it remains the legendary performance I can only wish that I'd seen. Cruse's Hamlet does not mope about in slow motion angst, rather he fills the stage with an energy that will not relent until some sort of resolution is reached. We watch in total absorption, even though the ending is etched in our permanent memories. The greatness of the play is that it never matters how many times one has seen it or read it, it is impossible not to get caught up in it all over again.

Noteworthy performances in abundance in this production, enough so that everybody will have plenty of favorites to rave over afterwards. I particularly enjoyed Horatio, Polonius and Osric. The only discordant note was the appearance of a plastic crown, a plastic helmet and plastic body armor. If everybody is clearly dressed in Elizabethan costuming, plastic pieces have to be distressed in some way to disguise the plastic when it appears under the lights.

A landscape is the marriage of nature and culture

That was what I learned today at Stan Hywett in workshop 3 of a four part series for restoring your old house. Sponsored by the Cleveland Restoration Society, Stan Hywet Hall and Progress for Preservation, these Saturday morning workshops have been invaluable as well as a lot of fascinating fun as we end up each session by taking an in depth tour of the house and today -- the garden at last!

I took some photos of landscapes within landscapes on Stan Hywett's five acres. Above is the great meadow, viewed from in front of the house. All five acres of the estate grounds were landcaped by Warren Manning. You can find more details about the gardens here.

Here we are looking at the Lagoon, which was created on top of the old stone quarry from which the estate derived its name.


We learned about the differences between rehabilitating and restoring a historic garden. If you want to keep any of the original plantings now grown large, then you are rehabilitating. But to restore a garden to its original state, you have to remove all the overgrown trees and shrubs and re-plant everything according to the original garden plan.

At Stan Hywet, they have a wealth of original drawings as well as photographs stretching back to the years the house and gardens were constructed. Many of the photos were taken, developed and printed in a dark room set up in the house by one of the Seiberling sons. They have become essential primary sources for how anything looked when the Seiberlings resided there.















This the Japanese garden that is languishing while plans are made to either restore or rehabilitate. I really liked the overgrown aspect to it -- it would make a neat outdoor performance space. However, it is not nearly as accessible as the lagoon, which is home to the Ohio Shakespeare Company.


In the stand alone conservatory, a butterfly room has been added. Huge exotic blue butterflies grabbed the eye immediately, but there were many others to be found tucked in here and there among the tripical plantings and the plates full of fruit drenched with gatorade.

To maintain such a house with so many gardens one had to be one rich guy, as was Seiberling, to be able to afford all the servants and workers who certainly put in full days on this job. Here are some garden tools from earlier times.




















I arrived home to my tiny urban lot with renewed visions for garden improvements! At least I now know more about landscape styles and influences as I made my garden choices.