As it moves within two years of its 100th birthday, the historic Fielder House is showing its age.
Where the exterior wood isn't yet rotting, the paint is chipping and peeling off. Window glass needs replacing. Wall and door crevices need caulking.To help get the long-ago home of James Park Fielder and his wife, the former Mattie Barnes, looking respectable again, the Arlington City Council has approved $280,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds to carry out the project. The next step is to finalize the scope of work needed.Truth be told, said Geraldine Mills, the property's longtime overseer as director of the Arlington Historical Society, many of the improvements have been a long time in coming."We're excited to get this done," she said last week. "It's been needed for 30 years."Through the decades since James Fielder died in 1948 and his wife two years later, a succession of owners acquired the house and use it as rental property, even dividing it into apartments."It's changed a lot from its original condition," Mills said.Fireplaces were walled over. Skylights were added to the roof overhang about the second-story veranda. Carpet was laid over the wood floors.Although the CBDG fund will address exterior needs, the historical society is also applying for a grant from the Arlington Tomorrow Foundation to bring the inside back to more resemble the home's original state.Such improvements would include restoring wood floors, fireplaces and lighting to as near as practical to what they were in the original home and to making electrical upgrades.The house, at 1616 W. Abram St., serves as a museum holding Arlington artifacts and provides meeting space for civic groups.Mills said plenty of people come to visit, whether to catch a glimpse of history or to participate in a meeting."A lot of visitors are people from out of town who might be here for a conference and are looking for something to do," she said.The two-story Fielder House was built in 1914 on a corner of the Fielders' farm. Their land originally stretched from present-day Abram Street to Park Row Drive, and from Fielder Road to Davis Drive.By the late 1970s, the house's existence was threatened when an overpass was planned for lifting Fielder Road over the railroad tracks at Abram and Division streets. It would come very close to the old house, which was then in poor condition, Mills said.A group of concerned residents stepped in and raised money to buy the house and save it from the wrecking ball.Today the Fielder Road overpass, the nearby railroad tracks and other urban traffic create only a muted hum inside the thick brick walls of Fielder House, which bears the earmarks of various decades of interior remodeling.Mills and city officials hope that the "House on the Hill" takes on a new shine soon.Patrick M. Walker,682-232-4674Twitter: @patrickmwalker1Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
