SAN DIEGO — In 1972, at age thirty-nine, I was filled with feelings of youth and immortality. This was changed forever by a 23-year-old nymph who was in a discussion group I was involved in. She defined me, for the first time within earshot, as an “older man,” thus creating an unclimbable wall in my psyche that separated me from my youth. She innocently forecast the clear path to my doom. I looked into the mirror and asked myself: “What have you done with your life? What are you going to do with the rest of your life?” This questioning helped shape a philosophy and a plan to move to a new location every five years.
Pop psychology publications describe these times as midlife crazies. Some men change jobs, others divorce. I chose to move. My obliging spouse, Suzi, agreed. We sold our house and packed our household furnishings into a rented 24-foot truck, The tools and machinery from my shop went into a 14-foot covered trailer hitched to the rear of the truck. Bruce, my 11-year-old son and I drove across country in seven days to the woods of Orefield, Pennsylvania, six miles from the city of Allentown, in the heart of traditional Pennsylvania Dutch country.
The first place we attempted to buy in this new locale was a farmhouse fixer-upper on eight acres. The enchantment of the house was a pair of marvelously old carved entry doors and interesting, interior door frame moldings. The house dripped with Victorian charm. Everything else about the house was a mess, including the barn and outbuildings. We were advised that the best place to get a loan for such a fixer-upper was a country bank in the area. They would appreciate such a property more than a city bank. We went to Neffs Bank, located in a tiny farm town near the property. I made an appointment with the President to see the house. As I waited to meet him outside the bank, a man in green work pants, muddy, high laced boots, and a green and black checked, heavy wool shirt got out of a well-used pick-up truck and walked toward me. He introduced himself as a Director of the bank. The President wore a suit. They both had heavy German accents, typical of country people in the area. Mind you, they are all descendants of families that settled this area during the 1600s.
While we were driving to the farm, the President and Director recalled stories about the previous owners and their parents and grandparents before them. We had walked the property for about 15 minutes when the president suddenly cornered me in the barn and asked me, while we were standing in the finest horse manure one could see or smell, how much of a loan I wanted. We had a discussion for about ten minutes. He pulled a small spiral pad from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and did all his calculations with a number two pencil that he wetted with his tongue. He calculated that a 50 percent down payment would be required, which killed the possibility of a deal.
After an exhausting search, we ultimately bought a house on five acres, with a brook, on a dirt road deep in the woods near the tiny community of Orefield. A short walk in one direction took us to a covered bridge built in 1854. An equal distance in the other direction was Leather Corner Post. This was not a town, but, rather, an intersection of two small roads. The story goes that it got its name in the 1700s when a thief, running to escape capture, threw a leather hide he had just stolen from a nearby tannery and it landed on a hitching post at the cross roads. The leather hide and the name stuck, but the thief got away.
At this intersection is the Leather Corner Post Hotel. It hasn’t been a hotel since 1956, but still operates as a bar and restaurant. It’s a family bar brightly lit during the day, with sunshine entering through the curtained windows. The local farmers and/or their spouses stop by for a beer and some local gossip in the afternoon after work or when they have a few minutes. California bars, by contrast, are all dark and sinister, and single women are fair game. The “hotel” had three or four “boom-bas” instruments hanging from Shaker pegs on the wall. They looked like pogo sticks, spring loaded on the bottom and fastened with a cowbell, tambourine, drum block, and two cymbals. Sleigh bells ran down one side. The idea was to put a coin in the corner juke box that played polkas, grab one of the boom-bas’ from the wall, dance around to a tune, and whack the instrument harmoniously with a drum stick. The more agile dancers perform a rhythmic cacophony similar to Chinese New Year celebrations.
Real estate in the Allentown area was cheap. $12,000-$20,000 could buy a brick row house in the city. My idea was to buy some of those houses and add wood carved doors, moldings, sand castings, and other interesting architectural details I had been fabricating on commission in California for the past ten years. When I finished redecorating a house, I intended to sell it for a profit; life would be good. To fabricate the products I needed a workshop. The grassy, open area beside the brook at my new home would make an ideal spot. A 1200-square foot shop would be ideal. If I built it myself, I could finish it within budget.
I needed a set of plans. In the past, we had traded my wife’s paintings and my architectural sculpture for photography, medical, and dental bills. I searched for an architect who would trade. That’s how I found Noel Schaffer, a true design genius, but an absolute eccentric. The first time I met Noel, he and his 23-year-old disciple Brad a licensed architect, who was also his chauffeur, came to our home to see the site. Noel, at age 38, did not know how to drive. We discussed on the telephone the possibilities of a trade-our art work for his architectural plans.
When we met, the first thing I noticed about Noel was how profusely he sweated although he was quite trim. From our meeting I learned that he was an Allentown native, never finished high school, and was not a licensed architect. Brad signed his plans. Noel started his career in New York sweeping office floors for world famous architect Philip Johnson and eventually became chief designer for the firm. He left Philip Johnson’s employ when an opportunity arose to design a medical center for a physician in Allentown. The building, completed in 1971, is considered by some one of the ten best-designed buildings in the world.
In spite of the prestigious award, Noel had no follow-up commissions and was looking for a new showcase to display his talents. My site would be that location. At the second meeting, he brought a model of the building that would be my atelier. It was very exciting. A brilliant design-simple and yet unique. The best way I can describe it is, it was like a three pound cheese box you slice vertically on each side one-third of its length, and then gently push at each end of the box so that it forms a peak and a pitch of about 15-20 degrees in each direction. A five foot- diameter round window fit proportionally beneath the peak. There was one problem -the roofline pitched down so low at one end that the last ten feet was under six feet in height. Noel thought it would make great storage. At my insistence, and with great reluctance on his part, that was changed.
At the next meeting, he brought the plans so I could go ahead and apply for a building permit. The plans consisted of two free-hand informal sketches, one an elevation showing the side of the building, and the other a site plan. Both were drawn free-hand without a ruler, not to scale, but did have dimensions. I was shocked and questioned whether I could get a permit with such skimpy drawings. He assured me that if further sketches were necessary, he would draw them, but I should try for a permit non the less.
Reluctantly, I phoned the newly-formed township of Low Hill. The previous year, anything could be built without a permit, as there was no governing body for rural areas. A new state law mandated that a township be formed. The Board of Supervisors of the township were all Pennsylvania Dutch farmers. At the town hall meetings, they would speak among themselves in archaic Pennsylvania German. When asked to speak English, they replied, “Ven dere is someding dat concerns you ve speak English!”
I was given the phone number of the woman in charge of building permits and made an appointment to see her at nine the next morning at her home. She answered the door in her housecoat and ushered me into the kitchen. She pushed aside the breakfast dishes and I laid out Noel’s plans with great trepidation. She took a quick look, and remarked, “That’s nice, five dollars please.” I paid her the fee, and she pulled a 5″x5” pad titled “Building Permit” from the shelf next to the flour tin. She wrote the address, and stamped,“Approved to build a 1200 foot shop building” on the pad, She signed and dated it, tore off the page, and handed it to me “What about inspections?” She said, “There aren’t any.” Ah, at last a perfect government bureaucracy!
We were ready to build. Noel immediately talked me out of doing the work myself. “It will take you six months to build this yourself. I’ve got a crew of nine experienced construction people who will work within your budget and the job will be done in six to eight weeks.”
First the site needed to be graded. The sixty-year-old rawboned owner of the grading equipment worked 12 hours and had the site ready in one day. He only stepped off his rig once, to drink a cup of coffee. He remarked, “I drink a cup of coffee in the morning and neither drink or eat anything else the remainder of the day. When I get home about 9 in the evening I eat one meal and then go to bed.” I would have turned him into the board of health or a museum for stuffing, if I could find one.
The second day, someone who looked like a burly nine-foot tall world weight-lifting champion, came to set the block foundation. It paid to stay six feet away from him, in every direction. He got everyone’s attention with his cute rear end décolletage crack peeking out of the back of his jeans.
The next day, the crew arrived. It consisted of Noel, Brad, Noel’s spouse, their two preteen kids, and four members of a rock music group. Noel and Brad knew the musicians from the bar where they played nightly. They all drank there every night until the 2 a.m. closing time.
The first day, they all showed up early. Noel had drawn a sketch of the days framing. Things went well. The second day, they showed up an hour later. The two kids were no longer with them. The third day, they showed up another hour later than the day before. Noel’s spouse was gone. The fourth day, they arrived at 11a.m., the fifth day at noon, and the sixth day at one p.m. The band only had one vehicle, a beat-up Volkswagen bus that ran intermittently.
Soon, the routine became that I go into town at 7:30 every morning tp drive from house to house rousting them out of bed and heave them into the back of my pickup truck. By the time I had them all in the truck ready to work, it was near noon. Noel and Brad came separately, if they showed up at all. One day, they arrived laughing hysterically. The previous night, leaving the bar at closing time, they phoned Ken Venturi, a world famous architect in Philadelphia, woke him up, told him what lousy architect he was, and had an hour-long intense discussion with him on the merits of his work.
After a month of this nonsense, with very little progress having been made, I was getting increasingly frustrated. Finally, one day it happened. Around noon, the crew had barely begun work when I spotted two teenage girls hiding behind my truck. “Girls, what are you doing here?” I inquired. “Sh! Sh! We’re hiding from the guys,” they replied, “we’ll only be a short while.” About twenty minutes later, I said to Noel, “Hey this is no playground, the crew is on the clock, how about getting back to work.” Noel replied indignantly, “These are our friends! Men, pick up your tools, we’re leaving!” Incredulously, they did. For several days, there was no word, then Brad called and, after tender negotiations, agreed to have the band come back and finish the job. However there was no Noel or Brad. Noel had landed a job teaching a class in architectural design at nearby Lehigh University. Naturally, Brad had to drive and assist him. I never again saw or talked to Noel or Brad. The crew, now a trio, the sax, guitar and bass player, finished the outside of the building. They worked seven days a week for two months, never putting in a 40-hour week. The interior was never finished.
After five months I grew disenchanted with the whole experience and, with my wife’s agreement, we made plans to move back to San Diego. I was running short of cash and wanted to take out a $5000 loan until I returned to California. I didn’t think I would have a problem, as there was plenty of equity in the house and the new building. However, the Allentown banks would not lend on the real estate and wanted other collateral. A good friend of mine pledged $5000 in triple A municipal bonds. The bank said no, they wanted $10,000. My friend pledged that amount. The bank then decided that they didn’t want to lend me the money anyway. So much for Allentown banks. I returned to San Diego on financial fumes, and moved next door to a Wells Fargo Bank branch manager. Three days later, he gave me a $10,000 unsecured loan with just my signature.
With some difficulty I rented the Orefield house to a couple with a young child. Two months, later I got a call from a neighbor. The state police had raided the place at 6 a.m., taking away the tenant in chains. He was a drug dealer. An arsenal of guns and ammunition was found inside the house. I sold the property two years later.
A few years after that I returned for a nostalgic visit and was dismayed at the insensitivity of the people who had bought the place. They never realized what they had. It was a marvelous, unique structure they only saw as a barn. Noel never designed another building again. He died of an apparent drug overdose at the age of 42, four years after the workshop building was completed. In the summer of 1996, after an absence of twenty years I returned to see friends in the Allentown area. I visited the medical center Noel designed and for which he had won a prestigious international award. The nurse invited me inside. It was incredible. I was in awe of the creative genius of his design. After 25 years, I felt the space and the colors were not at all dated. They seemed timeless. I was not aware that he also designed the furniture in the building, including the doctor’s desk. This, too, has withstood the test of time.
Doctor Kraynick, the owner, still had his medical practice in the building. (He has since retired.) The doctor was very busy, but we had a brief chat. We both had reached the same conclusion from our experience with Noel. He was a true genius, but a self-destructive undisciplined lunatic.
I came back the next day to finish photographing the building. A man going inside stopped me. He was the curator of the art museum at the University and felt the story of Noel and his genius should be told. This story is my contribution to that effort.
Epilogue: From what I have heard, the building was vacant for years after Dr. Kraynick retired. Apparently, it was too unconventional and was misunderstood by the very traditional community. It was sold within the past few years and is now a real estate office.
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Ira Spector is a freelance writer based in San Diego.
Appreciate your interesting and well- told experiences. Photos of the house? Thanks