One New Thing #2 House Story

One New Thing #: 2
What: House Story
Where: Richmond, VA
Cost: Free (reserve your ticket via their FB page)
Fave thing: The 9ft Diana statue in the living room that is based on DiPasquale’s wife, a dancer

 For this week’s One New Thing, I had been anxiously waiting over a month to get my free tickets via their Facebook page. I first heard about House Story in the December issue of Style Weekly - in short: House Story is a free, monthly event run by three women that takes you inside the homes of some of Richmond’s most interesting citizens - chock full of interesting things and their homes full of even more interesting stories.

Personally, I love nothing more than seeing the inside of someone else’s home. How they live, decorate, and what they surround themselves with is endlessly fascinating to me. I also love picking up little tidbits to integrate into my own home. 

For this month’s House Story, the free tickets were all claimed within 90 minutes. I set an alarm in my calendar and hit refresh on the Facebook page until they went live and immediately snagged two tickets. Even though the event is free, the homeowners are graciously opening up their homes to complete strangers - and some homes can only hold so many - hence a limited number of tickets per event.

House Story locations change each month and this time we were at the home of Paul DiPasquale, an American sculptor living and working in Richmond, Virginia. RVAers will know him as the artist behind Connecticut, the literal larger than life Native American sculpture that graced the top of the Richmond Braves stadium and later the Lucky Strike building. He is also known for creating the Arthur Ashe statue on Monument Avenue and the King Neptune statue in Virginia Beach at the entrance to the boardwalk. 

Thanks to the graciousness of the hosts, we had free rein to talk around and take in the home and the outside barn studio. The first thing that you notice when you enter the living room is a 9ft statue of a ballerina with a javalin as her bar.  Her skin was blue and the size impressive - almost Shrek like. From there, it was easy and fun to spot sculptural details like duck feet protruding from the ceiling, as if we were underwater and they were above us. A fish with a line attached, vidily painted rooms, and of course, Hernando - the life-size man in the bathtub  in the upstairs hall. 

And of course, there was the story of the home itself. While no one knows who built it, the project was started in 1863 and didn’t finish until 1869 - the Civil War causing a bit of a delay in the middle.  It was originally a Federal Style home - four square rooms on the first and second floor with a hallway running through the center. Over the years and through 3 previous owners, the home had changed a bit with a few added bathrooms and extended living areas. 

One of my favorite stories was how a previous owner had removed some beautiful original pieces like brass doorknobs, crown molding, and shutters in the name of “modernizing” the home. The DiPasquale’s found some of these original items in the shed / basement and later restored them. 

The barn outside that serves as Paul’s studio was built by himself, their 75 year old neighbor and a student - it was constructed using the train trestles from the railroad underneath Churchill and funded by the sale of Connecticut - full story and very Richmond.

While there, I ran into a friend and told her that this was my first House Story event as a part of One New Thing. Her remark: there’s never a lack of anything to do in Richmond - and I couldn’t agree more - often times you just have to look and be open to doing something different, and new.