THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 21, 1995 TAG: 9505190076
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL RUEHLMANN, SPECIAL TO HOME & GARDEN
LENGTH: Long : 155 lines
THE BAY WINDOW beside the foyer of the august, beautifully appointed Queen Anne mansion glows gold in the gathering dusk, a tan brick curve without, an immaculate oak-trimmed alcove within, elegant above the lamplit street.
In the perfect chair at the antique writing desk just beyond the glass sits a large brown bear, staring and smiling.
The bear is stuffed.
He wears a ball cap.
The ball cap is emblazoned with an advertisement for Goldberg's New York Pizzeria.
``I like bears,'' shrugs John A. Parker Jr., resident, city librarian, Vietnam vet and collector of great quantities of stuff.
He also likes pizza.
His is an edifice in Norfolk's stately Ghent section that embodies at once a sense of dignity and whimsy, stateliness and play. Conceive, if you will, of Agatha Christie in white organdy - winking.
``This home is a monument to stuff,'' admits Parker, 51,
First, the home: In the 20 years they have owned it, John and his wife, Rose Marie, also a librarian, have invested more than $100,000 in bringing back the original grandeur to this regal, three-story, pillared 1897 pile with 70 windows, five chimneys, 12 fireplaces and an assortment of cherub-headed Victorian radiators. Eight bedrooms, 11-foot ceilings, Herman Munster-sized halls. Transoms, newel posts, massy pendant chandeliers like hovering mother ships.
Now, the stuff - 5,000 square feet of it: Books, bears, comics; baseball cards, books, busts; old radio plays, vintage films, books.
Leather-bound sets of George Eliot, George Gissing, Sir Walter Scott. First editions of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Hardcover compilations of the Magazine of Horror, Donald Duck and Little Lulu.
A plaster sculpture of bedspring-bearded Charles Dickens broods down upon icons of the Phantom, Winnie the Pooh and the late Phil Silvers as Sgt. Bilko.
There are 848 crisply framed images of all sizes hung squarely on these walls, ranging from a John Singer Sargent portrait of a mother and daughter to a formal photo of Parker's somber Aunt Vera to leggy 1949 calendar cheesecake from Brock's Gas Service of Broadway, Va.
``They add texture,'' says John.
``Also clutter,'' says Rose Marie.
Their scrupulously kept establishment takes on the proportions of a hip museum. But it is not a quiet space. They share it with an 18-pound bichon frise purebred named Henry and eight heavily indulged cats.
All well-behaved, more or less.
Each one dines twice daily at his or her appointed station in a kitchen large enough to skate through. The enormous room customarily rings with the rattle of food dishes and blast-from-the-past 1940s broadcasts like ``The Great Gildersleeve'' (``brought to you by Velveeta, the cheese food of Kraft quality'') and ``Our Miss Brooks'' (``from Palmolive Soap, your beauty hope, and Luster Cream Shampoo, for soft, glamorous, dream-girl hair'').
``Stuff,'' says John, arms wide, ``stuff, stuff.''
``I just live here and take care of it,'' says Rose Marie.
He is the silver-sideburned head of general reference at Kirn Memorial Library in Norfolk. She is government document librarian there. They have been married 25 years.
The Parkers had been living on lower ground in Norfolk two decades back when they sought out that rarity in the area, a house that did not acquire standing water after rainstorms. They also wanted a place they could walk to from work for lunch. When they encountered the great verandaed residence with the green slate roof, it was love at first sight.
``It was an incredible house,'' says John. ``We came in out of the July heat into a cool place with dark oak paneling. The sheer space of it!
``It was out of another time, a world unto itself. I noted a wisteria vine coming through a window that might have indicated a heating problem, but at that moment I didn't see the maintenance. It needed a lot of painting and papering and wiring and plumbing.''
The sizable domicile on Warren Crescent had been built by Norfolk grocer L.P. Roberts, who had a store on Commercial Place and served on the board of directors of the National Bank of Commerce. He lived there until the late 1930s, when his son moved in; by World War II it had become ``a big Victorian white elephant'' transformed into a rooming house.
The wood floors were covered over with linoleum. The brass door handles were painted. Partitions were added.
But the speaking tube, connecting a bathroom to the kitchen, remained.
``If I had been aware of the enormity of the restoration we were about to undertake, we wouldn't have embarked upon it,'' John admits.
They brought the house back to the way it used to be. Out came the window air conditioning units; installed were 10 ceiling fans. New walls and stairwells came down to expose elegant old surfaces. The foyer is bigger than most bedrooms built today.
``Do you have any idea what it takes to put up storm windows in a place like this?'' inquires John. ``You spend your time replacing lightbulbs and filling cracks.''
L.P. Roberts would undoubtedly have applauded the result. Inveterate researchers that the Parkers are, they keep a scrapbook on Roberts, who died at 87 on Dec. 11, 1939. They retain a local editorial written after his death that reads in part: ``In business, in banking affairs, in the conduct of his church and its beneficences, he helped and bettered what he touched.''
They also have ads that testify to the grocer's daily system of home delivery by horse-drawn wagon - and some of the prices that prevailed in 1914: ``Fern Brand Milk, four cans for 25 cents; Baltimore sugar-cured ham, 11 cents a pound; almonds, 15 cents a pound.''
L.P. Roberts & Co., Wholesale and Retail Grocers, featured that ``novel and delicious palate tickler, the Chicken Tamale.''
Mr. and Mrs. Roberts had 12 children, seven of whom survived childhood.
In 1911, their house and grounds were assessed at $18,950. That sum has appreciated with time and the attention of the Parkers. One wonders what L.P. would have thought of the new contents of his old digs.
Fiction from Doyle to De Maupassant, Stevenson to Damon Runyon. Portraits of Betty Page and Louise Brooks, Lou Gehrig and the Marx Brothers. Boxed video renditions of Republic serials, ``The Mummy's Tomb'' and ``Zorro's Black Whip.''
``I was a late bloomer,'' says John, raised in Commodore Park, the only child of an ammunition depot worker and an Avon representative.
As a boy he read, played ball, attended Ocean View Elementary, Northside Junior High and Granby High School. John had a master's degree in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when he was drafted in the Army in 1966. He has a clipping of himself and others boarding the bus to boot camp here.
``I read a lot of books in Long Binh, too,'' says John, who served as a clerk in a headquarters company. ``I had the biggest comic collection in Vietnam. Otherwise, it was a sad time.''
He came back, married Rose Marie and went to work at Kirn.
``People who are attracted to library work have a high tolerance for all sorts of behaviors,'' he says. ``They also learn to tolerate interruptions. It has less to do with books than wanting to help people.''
Librarians conserve things.
That may account in part for the cornucopia of popular culture that is contained within the Parker homestead walls. But there is something else as well. One of the many framed items in the house is a reconstructed Dick Tracy puzzle by cartoonist Chester Gould; it is incomplete, but there are familiar fragments there of Junior, Tess, Gravel Gertie, Vitamin Flintheart and others.
``It's a puzzle from my childhood with some of the pieces missing,'' says John.
``You might say that's what I've been trying to do. Collect the missing pieces.'' ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN/Staff color photos
This 1897 home on Warren Crescent has 70 windows, 12 fireplaces and
eight bedrooms.
Restored woodwork, 11-foot ceilings and massive chandeliers make an
elegant backdrop for John Parker's collections.
Two gas lamps wired for electricity and numerous framed works line
the second-floor hallway leading to John Parker's study, off the
master bedroom.
by CNB