Living in a gingerbread house

Home Features Living in a gingerbread house
Living in a gingerbread house

Art professor Sam Knecht did a painting of  a white house with a red roof in the mid-1980s.

Now, Sam and Melissa Knecht – associate professor of music – live in that house on Union Street with their 10-year-old twin daughters Lydia and Katherine. Sam Knecht completed the painting almost 20 years before he bought the house with Melissa Knecht.

“I personally was enchanted by the house long ago,” he said. “I like to call it capricious or whimsical.”

The now green with red and yellow trim house looks remarkably like a gingerbread house, with its gables, ornate trim, arched window frames, and columns.

“People in the town hall have remarked that it’s the oddest, most interesting house in the city,” Sam Knecht said.

The couple purchased the home in 1998 after they were married. To the best of their knowledge, the house was built in approximately 1867.

“It’s been owned by four families,” Melissa Knecht said.

“But by a series of MacRitchies, not just one,” Sam Knecht said.

After only a few years in the home, the original owner decided to move south for health reasons. On the train, the owner met a member of the MacRitchie family. The men struck up a deal on the train and traded houses on the spot.

“And that’s how the MacRitchies came up from Georgia,” Melissa Knecht said.

“Or so we’ve been told,” Sam Knecht said.

A few siblings were the last of the MacRitchie “dynasty” to live in the house. The Knechts said the siblings divided the house amongst themselves and turned most of the closets into bathrooms to keep their “zones” divided.

The Wallace family moved into the house after the MacRitchies moved out in the mid-1980s. Melissa said that the family “took back” the ceilings the MacRitchie siblings lowered and added wood floors. After the Wallaces, two men turned the house into a bed and breakfast briefly during the 1990s.

By the time the Knechts acquired the house, Melissa Knecht said, most rooms were pink: bright pink, purple pink, orange pink, etc.

“The master bathroom had a heart-shaped tub with mirrors on the walls,” Sam Knecht said.

Sam Knecht, as an artist and a handyman, took the home to a new level with renovation and restoration, Melissa Knecht said.

Inside the house, the Knechts replaced the gaudy paint from previous owners with less obtrusive colors that now accent the hardwood floors and original wood doors.

Using his skills as a painter, Sam Knecht simulated many materials through various faux finishes. On the wooden doors, for example, he simulated the original burl wood veneers. Underneath the living room mantle and in one of the bathrooms, he imitated the look of marble with his painting techniques.

“The faux marble in the bathroom  probably took 40 hours,” Sam Knecht said.

The plaster moulding in the music room is one of the features that distinguishes the house as part of the Victorian Gothic architecture movement. The movement had its “hay day” from approximately 1820 to 1850.

“It took a while for an East coast trend to make its way into the boonies in Michigan,” Sam Knecht said.

The house typifies many traits of the architectural movement. The steep gables, for example, echo elements of gothic architecture from the Middle Ages.

In 2006, the Knechts added an art studio for Sam Knecht’s work. When building it, they attempted to mimic the style of the original building.

“The major natural light source has an arched top that echoes the windows in the main house,” Sam Knecht said.

The fireplace across from the main window – not just the many paintings in the room – shows Sam Knecht’s careful handiwork.

“He built the fireplace from rocks he collected in Hillsdale County,” Melissa Knecht said.

The outside of the house required close detailing and a tremendous amount of work  in order to restore the brick, porch, moulding, and so on. It took Sam Knecht an entire summer to repaint and redo each side of the house.

snelson1@hillsdale.edu