THE "DONE-AGE"; OR, LINCOLN GETS A FACELIFT: 1962--1964

In 1962, Boltie sold the house to Emery Doney, who lived only one block away on LaSalle Street. Doney was a tradesman, and we have a neighbor who still remembers him and the frequency with which he changed jobs. Doney worked as a painter for the CB&Q Railroad and as a maintenance man for the East Aurora schools, among other jobs.

Doney never intended to live at the house on South Lincoln. He found the home to be in poor repair, and he intended to fix it up and sell it. And fix it up, he did! Doney’s work represents the link between the old and the modern, the home that previous generations knew and the one we live in today. Without the help of contractors--and, incidentally, without securing a permit--Doney chopped out a portion of the kitchen and created a new basement stairwell. He moved the kitchen sink, previously in the pantry, to its present position under the window, and converted the pantry into a downstairs bathroom, installing a shower where the sink had been. He closed off the second staircase, which had led from the kitchen to the hall outside the upstairs back bedroom. In its place, he created two den closets where the downstairs entrance had been, and turned the upstairs entrance into bedroom and linen closets. Doney also created a hall closet outside the master bedroom.

After contacting another resident, we learned that the mismatched hardwood in the closet of our son, David, was actually the entrance to the closed-off staircase. Other clues were high baseboards, worn with scuff-marks, in closets where they didn’t belong, and “fake walls” put together with nails and thin wood in the backs of closets. If you look at the ceiling when descending the basement stairs, you will see an unnatural slant which is where the second staircase went up. My husband climbed a very tall ladder to see if any stairs were still intact, but he found that Doney had covered them with a sheet of Masonite. If they are still within the walls of the residence on South Lincoln, they will never be seen again. However, if you look carefully at the wall beside the basement stairs, you will see drywall seams which outline the door that used to lead from the den to the kitchen. Our son, Joe, has learned to look throughout the house for unnatural drywall seams, all evidence of Doney’s reconstructive surgery.

Doney is still alive today, at age 91, and we met him at his nursing home. He remembers little of the work he did, though he does remember that the house “hadn’t been taken care of” when he bought it. He also remembers the names of the five small children in the family sold it to, the Greenwood’s. He was firm in his recollection that he had closed off the second staircase before they moved in, which led me to wonder what was wrong with it. According to Will Schwickert, the staircase was very steep and curvy, which makes me think he closed it off to prevent accidental injury of the Greenwood children.

Doney rented the home to a man named Rauscher while he was doing the repair work. Rauscher ran a small machine shop in the garage during this time, which may explain why it has so many electric outlets. The Greenwood family moved in around 1964.