Dan Kois asked Caryn Wagner, as recounted in "A Q&A With the Woman Who Installed These 2-Foot-Tall Address Numbers on Her House/'The overall look is "the circus came to town"'" (Slate).
From Wagner's side of the interview:
It all started when we first moved in.... we added a bay window to the master bedroom. That’s the window over the garage... but it didn’t have anything on the bottom to balance it out.... They maybe didn’t quite have to be that big... The four digits will go across the garage, and they’ll give the house a little bit of a quirky punch, and then I won’t have to tell the Uber driver where my house is.... People take pictures, people stop and talk to me. I’ve become a kind of mini-celebrity on Yorktown Boulevard.... But you know what, these houses on Yorktown, they’re great houses, I love them, but there’s not a lot of curb appeal. I was looking for a way to give it a little personality. I go in and out of my house every day, and I see my great big numbers, and that makes me happy.
Yeah, there's a house in my neighborhood where the numbers are extra-large. Maybe every neighborhood has a house like that. Maybe in your neighborhood, it's your house. What's the big idea?
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7 comments:
Don't underestimate the explanatory power of amateur half-assery.
When people choose stuff for their own house, they often end up with something that doesn't quite work but is charming. I think that is what happened here. Everything about the numbers is a bit off. They are too big, in the wrong place, and the color is a bit off. Definitely not done by a pro. Most intriguingly of all, the digits don't seem to match each other -- they appear to be from different fonts. I wouldn't know how to do that if I tried.
Things today are too perfect. Everything we see is perfectly typeset because of computers, so it is nice to see something that doesn't quite work typographically. That is what makes children's handwriting adorable.
I like stuff like this. It tells me that real people live here, and that time is finite and we can't make everything perfect.
Anyone unfamiliar with the neighborhood, who needs to find that house (meals on wheels, delivery truck, hospice nurse) will find those big numbers a great help.
I think they are beautiful and joyful! So sue me!5
1) I concur with 'Chris' about the delivery-friendly numerals, which I think the police and fire department would also endorse.
2) My instinctive reaction to 'large house number' is 'Did the address have 6 or even 7 digits?'
I can't even squash a mosquito on our garage door without getting prior approval from the Architecture and Design committee of our HOA.
As a former pizza guy every new street requires confirmation of what number one is near compared to what the destination is. On truly unfamiliar streets you’ll need a heads up for which are odd and which are even. I always appreciate clarity when address searching and this house sounds easy to read.
Love the bigger numbers, but I'm surprised that people found them to be so extraordinary. Also surprised that the homeowner, a woman who is very interested in design appeal, made the mistake of painting her trim in "Frank Lloyd Wright" colors and missed the fact that the blue is an artificial electric blue color.
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