Bide-a-wee house in Arden

The Bide-a-wee
by Russ McKinney (written in 1997)

Although facing the largest public space in a nationally known historic village, the Bide-a-wee is a hide-away within a hide-a-away. Its name is Shakespeare for "stay a while." Even a quick glance, and no explanation seems necessary why. A row of mature Sweet Gum trees surrounded by a sea of Spring Beauties line the lane along the edge of the Green. Despite the sylvan splendor of the Bide-a-wee's location, there is more than meets the idea to this 80-year-old home and the unique community around it.

Secluded behind trees and shrubs lining a large semi-circular driveway, the Bide-a-wee is a spacious two domicile cottage situated on a double size lot.

"Being set back from the road gives the house an unusual amount of privacy," says the current owner, the artist and designer David Burslem, but what makes the property so livable is the sheer beauty and the diversity of its mature plantings.

"We had fruit trees, berries, all kind of vegetables," says Peggy Aumack. The Bide-a-wee was built around 1916. Peggy Aumack, the younger daughter of the home's first owner lives on other side of the Greeen. Her father, Don Stephens, was a furniture maker and the son of Frank Stephens, one of Arden's founding fathers. Peggy Aumack lived there with her sister Hope, her father, Don, and her mother, Inkie.

Most of the fruit trees are gone, but Burslem is an avid gardener. The vegetable garden is generously sized, and he is able to grow a wide variety of vegetables. While the community was founded on a clear cut farm, it is now largely recovered with mature hardwoods and enough sun for a vegetable garden is highly prized.

The mature plantings on the property include a rare Dawn Redwood, which Burslem himself planted when he and his family first moved to the Bide-a-wee 35 years ago. It already looks like it has been there since the Jurassic.

"I just picked my own morel," says Burslem, pleased to have found a rare woodland mushroom on his own property. Pointing that "my favorite view is from the roof," he adds that "the real value of the property is in the land."

The Bide-a-wee is one of twenty or so homes located on what was once the commercial center of Delaware's 97-year-old "Arts and Crafts" Village of Arden. The Rest Cottage to the right was once an inn, and the Vista to the left was once the Blue Bird Tea Room. The Monastery behind it never was one. It has stained glass windows featuring monks. The eateries and the inns are all residences now, but the sheer amount, as well as, the level of artistic activity here is still extraordinary. The surprise is that little of it shows.

The two whole blocks of open space stretching out in front of the Bide-a-wee is used for everything from community camp outs and bon fires to Easter egg hunts and Fourth of July games. The Open Air Theatre across the Green is used for children's plays, Shakespeare productions, concerts and weddings. For the annual Arden Fair, which is always held on the first Saturday in September, the Green is, for one day, transformed into a huge parking lot. Despite all of this mostly entertaining public use, the Green is usually as peaceful and pastoral as a deserted meadow.

THE HOUSE ITSELF

The south-facing main residence is entered up several flagstone steps, and through a brick-paved mudroom flooded with sunlight.

"It's a circular thing," says Peggy Aumack. The house was built around the fireplace and a stairway to the second floor. The L-shaped main room leads left to the kitchen. To the right there is a bedroom or home office, and the master bedroom at the back of the house÷and a hallway to the back of the kitchen. There used to be swinging doors on either side of the kitchen. They are gone, but the circular design is still there.

A Florida room off the master bedroom looks out over a four ft. stone wall and five ft. wide steps down to a sunken garden÷a serene refuge from the world. The view of neighboring homes is obscured by a dense stand of bamboo.

Burslem added the Florida room, because "there was no access to the sunken garden directly from the house." Peggy remembers playing in it with the help of her neighbor "Jimi" Ware.

"I can remember, as kids, she would help us each make fish pond gardens." She also helped to teach Peggy and her sister sewing.

One of the things that sets the Bide-a-wee apart from other Arden homes is the quality of the original building materials.

"It's different from many of the homes here that were built as summer cottages.," says Burslem. Many of the summer homes have had to be extensively remodeled. Some, including a building up the lane, which served as the original Arden Inn, have had to be torn down. Several have burned down.

"It's built on a real foundation, and it has a basement. Actually, it's built around a huge boulder," says Burslem. The first floor of the house is stucco÷inside and out. The living room walls are plastered. The result, says Burslem, is that "it's very cool in the summer." Another is that the home is impervious to the legions of carpenter ants, capenter bees and termites that reduced so many of Arden's less well-built homes to sawdust.

The building materials are unusual in several ways. To begin, portions of the home were built with terra cotta building blocks that measure 3" x 10" x 12".

"I have samples of them," says Burslem. It is also one of the few houses with extensive use of local materials. The fireplace is made of Brandywine granite quarried from the bountiful supplies of it along Naaman's Creek. The ceiling beams were milled from locally felled oaks.

"Everything was of the first quality. The latches on the windows were all solid brass, and so are the cover plates," says Burslem. Having an appreciation for "the beauty of the materials," Burslem has lovingly preserved the original hardware.

The kitchen has an eat-in area, a generous walk-in pantry, and more historic hardware. The cabinet fixtures are original products of the Arden Forge, operated by the town's founder, Frank Stephens. It was located up Cherry Lane in the Craftshop.

"It's a hand-crafted house," says Burslem, pointing out that, "the cabinets and bookselves were built-in, several so they are accessable from both sides of the wall.

"So you can get to things," says Aumach, "my Dad made a lot of box-like things, like the ice box, accessable from both sides." Back then ice didn't come from a dispenser. It came on a truck in 50 and 100 pound blocks. The deliveryman slid it from outside. The family opened the box in the kitchen, and no one had to lug it around to the door.

Beyond the kitchen and the laundry area, Burslem has built a sauna.

An apartment upstairs now consists of porch, a kitchen and dining area, a living room area, an office alcove and several small bedrooms. There are interior steps leading down to the first floor, and an exterior enterance that Burslem renovated several years ago. The apartment's deck entrance has a superb view of the Green.

"The upstairs interior is totally different," says Burslem. It t represented a later renovation long after the Stephens family had grown up and despersed around the globe.

"They slept under the stars," says Burslem. A fact that Peggy confirms. Her father used the upstairs for his photography work. Somewhat like the two-sided drawers downstairs, there was a novel sort of kid's room upstairs with a "Hollywood" bed (on rollers).

"If it rained, you just pushed it back under the roof," says Peggy.

STUDIO

The Bide-a-wee is also typical of Arden's arts and crafts tradition. There is a garage studio, to the left of the house. The house has a stucco exterior that provides good exhibition space for the dramatic large-scale, almost Zen-like abstract creations of its owner, the artist David Burslem. Sculptor on view. Exhibited extensively. Carries on arts and crafts tradition and a strain of long residence.

"I think of landscaping and building walls as artspace. I always imagine the whole property as a show," says Burslem.

When Don was jailed in 1917 for nine months for conscious objection, the family moved to the Craftshop at the other end of Cherry Lane. When he came home from this brief stint in prison, his father presented him with a monumental scale bust of himself. It pictured him with his arms folded across his chest, the way he was told to hold them when the authorities had marched him away. Beneath that were the words, "for peace."

Again, despite the sylvan setting, Arden's history is very much of controversial ideas, and not ones of obscure people, but major players. Upton Sinclair lived across the Green, and "Ma" Bloor, the founder of the Communist Party of America, lived next door. Burslem's father a well-known WWII vintage journalist and author.

Not that the surrounding homes aren't worth looking at. Quite the contrary. The homes on either side of the Bide-a-wee have equally rich histories. To the right, the Vista is a two-story stucco home with weathered, wisteria-entwined cedar trunks for porch posts. It was once used as a cafe called the Blue Bird Tea Room. To the left is the Rest Cottage, a half-stone and half-timbered touch of Merry Old England. Like many homes in Arden, it has been renovated and expanded in recent years. Fortunately, in this case, the owner, Ed Rohbach is an architect and a painter. He designed the addition at the rear of the house so it continues the themes and lines established by the original structure. It too has a studio.

The Rest Cottage was one of several inns along the Cherry Lane side of the Green. The lane is also the site of another rarity, Arden's newest house. The original Arden Inn had been built on an improvisational foundation. The current owner had to tear it down. He replaced it with a Nanticoke home. The day it was lifted by crane onto the new foundation attracted a small crowd of neighbors. Someone brought champagne. Someone suggested calling it "the Arden Drop Inn."

All of Arden's houses are unique. There are gems designed by the well-known Arts and Crafts architect Will Price, after the town's initial backer complained that the houses in the new community were on the crude side. Several concrete prefabricated houses of WWII vintage were barged over the Delware River from New Jersey.

A walk around the Green ... Upton Sinclair, etc.

"Restoring an old house is demanding, but if you can use your creativity and work with the space you can preserve the historical elements that are worth preserving and you can add something original to the history," says Burselm.

"My paintings are sculptural landscapes. My painting style is abstract expression, but I use a lot of textures to build a sculptural surface for the paint. I also try to create a sculptural background." Some of his work are shaped canvases over wood.

"They have a kite or wing-like feeling.

Latest experiments are with bending long aluminum sheets, which Burslem describes as "a flexible canvas."

[Photos by Danny Schweers, July 6, 2004. Wood carving at top by David Burslem.]