Bob Vila
Robert J. "Bob" Vila (born June 20, 1946) is an American home improvement television show host known for This Old House (1979–1989), Bob Vila's Home Again (1990–2005) and Bob Vila (2005–2007).
Biography
Early life
Vila, a Cuban American native of Miami, Florida, received a Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from the University of Florida in 1969. After graduating, he served as a volunteer in the United States Peace Corps, working in Panama from 1971 to 1973.
Career
Vila was hired as the host of This Old House after receiving the "Heritage House of 1978" award by Better Homes and Gardens for his restoration of a Victorian Italianate house in Newton, Massachusetts. On This Old House, Vila appeared with master carpenter Norm Abram as they, and others, renovated houses. In 1989 he left the show, apparently due to a series of conflicts with This Old House executive producer Russell Morash arising from his involvement with outside commercial endorsements. He was replaced by Steve Thomas.
After leaving This Old House, Vila became a commercial spokesman for Sears and hosted the television program Bob Vila's Home Again which was renamed Bob Vila in 2005. He has written ten books, including a five-book series titled Bob Vila's Guide to Historic Homes of America. As of 2006, he still appears regularly on television. Vila has also appeared on various episodes of Tool Time, the fictional handyman cable TV show within the situation comedy, Home Improvement. Tool Time's host Tim Taylor (played by Tim Allen) sees him as a rival and periodically tries to best him in various activities, never succeeding in doing so. Vila also made a cameo in the 1993 comedy spoof Hot Shots! Part Deux.
Vila can also be seen on the Home Shopping Network, selling a range of tools under his own brand.
Other productions
Bob Vila's less widely known productions include Guide to Historic Homes of America and In Search of Palladio, for A&E, and Restore America for HGTV.
Historic Homes of America
Guide to Historic Homes of America[1] included two-hour segments on each of four major regions of the United States: the Northeast, including New England and the Mid-Atlantic States,[2] the South, the Midwest and the West.
- The Northeast
- Morris-Jumel Mansion overlooking Yankee Stadium in Washington Heights, Manhattan
- Dyckman House on Broadway in Upper Manhattan
- Hancock Shaker Village in western Massachusetts.
- Strawbery Banke restoration in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
- Olana - "a palatial amalgam of Middle-Eastern and European influences."[1]
- The Mid-Atlantic States
- Chesapeake Bay and Annapolis, Maryland - William Paca House and Hammond-Harwood House
- New Castle, Delaware - George Read II House, built by the son of George Read
- Baltimore, Maryland - Homewood House on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus
- Washington, D.C. - Decatur House on President's Park and Tudor Place in Georgetown
- The South
- University of Virginia - ten residential pavilions surround the great, terraced Lawn.
- Ash Lawn-Highland
- Poplar Forest - octagonal house filmed while undergoing complete restoration
- Monticello - includes Dome Room at top of building (not open to the public) and Honeymoon Cottage.
- House on Endicott Hill - early trader's house
- Rosalie - Federal architecture mansion[3] with John Henry Belter[4] furniture and a panoramic view of Mississippi River.
- Stanton Hall - "perhaps the grandest Greek Revival house anywhere."[1] Designed by Captain Thomas Rose.[5]
- Longwood - begun in 1860 by Samuel Sloan. Never finished: construction halted in April 1861.[6]
- Texarkana, Texas - the Ace of Clubs House.[7]
- The Midwest and West
- Ellwood House - built by barbed wire entrepreneur Isaac L. Ellwood in DeKalb, Illinois.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois. "It's richer in detail than any other Wright home."[1]
- Fallingwater in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains.
- Cooper-Molera Adobe - early Spanish Colonial owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Monterey State Historic Park.
- Filoli - Woodside, California in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Designed by Willis Polk.
- Tor House[8] - stone house and tower overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, built by Robinson Jeffers.
In Search of Palladio
In Search of Palladio[9] is a three-part six-hour study of the work and lasting influence[10] of the great Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio.
- I. Villas of the Veneto
- See also: Palladian Villas of the Veneto
- Villa Giustinian - "the context for Palladio's innovative thinking"[9] - pre-Palladian gothic battlements, portcullis and stone walls concealing a Renaissance palace and farm buildings.
- Villa Pisani[11] in Montagnana - Public not admitted: a descendent of the original owners served as Vila's guide.
- Villa Cornaro - A suburban villa on a town street, a palatial residence which was also an on-site place of business for running a large farming enterprise.
- Villa Barbaro.
- Villa Emo - "perhaps the most dramatic farmhouse ever built."[9]
- La Rocca Pisana - spectacular hilltop belvedere by Palladio's pupil Vincenzo Scamozzi.
- II. The Palladians in England and Ireland
- London: Chiswick House, Marble Hill House and Stourhead.
- Bath, Somerset: Queen Square,[12] The Circus and the Royal Crescent.
- Eire: Casino at Marino - "the architectural equivalent of a Fabergé egg."[9]
- Northern Ireland: Castle Ward - overlooking Strangford Lough with both Palladian and Gothic facades and interiors.
- III. The Palladian Legacy in America
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Mount Pleasant, built in what was then the countryside outside of the city by a privateer.[13] It is now an off-premise gallery of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Fairmount Park.[14]
- Marblehead and Waltham, Massachusetts: Jeremiah Lee Mansion and Gore Place
- Hudson Valley, New York: Boscobel House Museum - purchased in 1955 for thirty-five dollars. Meticulously restored, situated on a bluff on the east bank of the Hudson River opposite the United States Military Academy at West Point.[15]
- Hartford, Connecticut: Austin House - built for Wadsworth Atheneum director Arthur Everett Austin, Jr.
- South Bend, Indiana - University of Notre Dame architectural school "where Palladio and classical architecture are taken seriously indeed."[9] Vitruvian House[16] and Villa Indiana.[17]
Restore America
Restore America [18] consists of fifty one-hour segments which explore historic preservation and building restoration in each of the fifty U.S. states. Anticipating the turn of the 3rd millennium, it was first broadcast on HGTV between July 4 1999 and July 4 2000.
Bibliography
Bob Vila has written two dozen or more books, which include:
- 1980: This Old House: Restoring, Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-31617-704-0.
- 1990: Bob Vila's Guide to Buying Your Dream House. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-31690-291-8.
- 1993-1994: Bob Vila's Guides to Historic Homes of America. New York: Quill (HarperCollins imprint).
- Historic Homes of New England. ISBN 0-68812-493-3.
- Historic Homes of the South. ISBN 0-68812-492-5.
- Historic Homes of the Midwest and Great Plains. ISBN 0-68812-495-X.
- Historic Homes of the West. ISBN 0-68812-496-8.
- Historic Homes of the Mid-Atlantic. ISBN 0-68812-494-1.
References
- ^ a b c d Bob Vila (1996). ""Bob Vila's Guide to Historic Homes of America."" (html). A&E Network.
- ^ Bob Vila. ""Bob Vila's Guide to Historic Homes of the Mid-Atlantic."" (html). A&E Network.
…some of the most magnificent architectural treasures in the original colonies of Maryland, Delaware, and Washington D.C.
- ^ Tylers' Travels (photograph). "Rosalie, Natchez, Mississippi" (html).
The white picket fence is of unusual construction, in that no nails exist in its entire structure. Rosalie is now the State Shrine of the Mississippi DAR.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Old And Sold Antiques Auction and Marketplace. ""John Henry Belter and His Rosewood Furniture."" (html).
- ^ Natchez City Cemetery. ""Builders of antebellum mansions."" (html).
From England came Captain Thomas Rose who gained Natchez experience to design and build Stanton Hall in 1857.
- ^ StantonHall.com. "Stanton Hall & Longwood" (html).
Built for Frederick Stanton, wealthy cotton commission broker, Stanton Hall was completed in 1857 to the designs of Natchez architect Thomas Rose. Longwood, the largest octagonal house remaining in America, is a superb example of the mid-nineteenth century "villa in the oriental style."
- ^ Texarkana Museums. "Ace of Clubs House" (html).
According to local legend, money to build the Ace of Clubs House came from the winnings of a poker game won with the draw of the ace of clubs.
- ^ Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation. ""Tor House: The Story Behind Granite Walls."" (html).
- ^ a b c d e Bob Vila. ""Guide to Historic Homes: In Search of Palladio."" (html). A&E Network.
Palladio, the son of a humble miller, apprenticed as a stone cutter at thirteen. Later a client recognized great promise in the young stone mason and took him to Rome. Palladio went on to become a conduit for the ideas of antiquity. He researched and reworked them in his designs and in his profoundly influential publication, The Four Books of Architecture (1570).
- ^ Carl I. Gable. ""The Secrets of Palladio's Villas."" (html). boglewood.com.
About 500 years ago, in the twilight of the period we call the Renaissance, there began to appear near the coast of the Northern Adriatic around the present city of Venice, Italy, a group of country houses unlike any homes ever seen before. They were all within a radius of about 50 miles, and they were all the work of a single architect.
- ^ Centro Internatzionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio. "Villa Pisani - Montagnana" (html).
Francesco Pisani, powerful and influential Venetian patrician, was the patron and friend of artists and letterati, from Paolo Veronese to Giambattista Maganza, from Alessandro Vittoria to Palladio himself … a villa on two floors: the upper floor for the seigniorial apartments; the lower for everyday life, where business is conducted [with] the tenant farmers (both city palace and country villa)
- ^ "Queen Square" (html). The Bath Net.
Queen Square was the first of John Wood's urban set-pieces, laid out following his return to his native city in 1727 and the first significant expansion beyond the medieval walls. Pevsner declared the north terrace to be one of the finest Palladian compositions in England before 1730.
- ^ "Mount Pleasant" (html). Independence Hall Association.
It was built in 1761-62 by Captain John Macpherson, a privateer who had had "an arm twice shot off" according to John Adams. The pirate called the house "Clunie" after the seat of his family's ancient clan in Scotland.
- ^ Philadelphia Museum of Art. ""Fairmount Park Houses: Mount Pleasant."" (html).
Scottish ship captain John Macpherson (1726–1792) and his first wife, Margaret, built their grand country estate on this site—high atop cliffs overlooking the Schuylkill River—between 1762 and 1765. They employed as their builder-architect Thomas Nevell (1721–1797), an apprentice of Edmund Woolley, the builder of Independence Hall.
- ^ Charles T. Lyle. ""A Brief History of Boscobel: A House Museum of the Federal Period."" (html). boscobel.org.
- ^ Thomas Gordon Smith. "Vitruvian House" (html).
- ^ Duncan G. Stroik. "Villa Indiana" (html).
In his innovative designs Palladio created a new type by combining the summer house or castello with vernacular farm buildings and by wedding them architecturally to the agricultural landscape.
- ^ Bob Vila (July 4 1999 through July 4 2000). ""Restore America With Bob Vila."" (html). HGTV (includes detailed descriptions of one-hour segments for each of the fifty U.S. states).
In celebration of the millennium, Bob Vila led viewers on an enlightening, year long, 50-state tour of hundreds of historic homes, public buildings, gardens and neighborhoods across America. Vila explored the nation's flourishing restoration boom, celebrating the people working to preserve the best of this country's rich culture, heritage and history as host of HGTV's "Restore America." HGTV periodically rebroadcasts this programming.
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