Existing comment:
Preserving the Riley-Bolten House
"When you came out of the kitchen, or the log cabin, then you went up some steps on to a porch … into the sitting room."
-- Frances Mace Hansbrough, 2007
When developer Morton Luchs purchased land to build the surrounding Luxmanor subdivision in the early 1930s, he intentionally let the Riley House stand. In the midst of new brick homes on half-acre lots, the 1800s farm house became a focal point. William and Levina Bolten bought the property and made renovations to update the house in the Colonial Revival style. In 2011, Montgomery Parks nominated the Riley-Bolten House to the National Register of Historic Places.
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In 1919, the property included "a quaint home, with mossy shingles, log kitchen, rough, stout chimneys and a very old-fashioned air. It sits far back from the west side of the road."
The appearance of the house today is largely due to Lorenzo Winslow. Despite his credentials as President Franklin Roosevelt's White House architect, Winslow took on smaller residential projects like this one, modernizing and adding to the historic house |