Patience is a virtue. A saying long used by our elders in a vain effort to teach the younger generation that good things come to those who wait. I wonder if these sayings will continue to be used by my generation as we raise our children Wait? Why wait? Wait through the commercials to watch a whole television show? Order it on Apple TV. Wait for the newspaper? Go on Twitter. Slowly furnish a home over time to allow it to have that collected and curated look we all crave? Go online and order it all over the course of a weekend.

I know, I know, it’s hilarious that I say this as a blogger; but as a preservationist we are an inherently patient people. We respect time, and the passage of time, and the time it took for things to age and develop the patina and history that we obsess over and admire. So it has been with film director James Ivory and his c. 1805 home in NY’s Hudson Valley. The 6,000 square foot c. 1805 home has twelve foot ceilings throughout, and was built on an octagonal plan, with two octagonal rooms on each side stacked on top of each other. Ivory purchased the home in the summer of 1975 … for $105,000.

Ivory’s home, complete with stacks and stacks of books and miles of memorabilia and objets, looks as if it has been lived in, and loved, for forty years. And yet, the owner feels it is only 95% done. Patience, a virtue? In this case, I believe so. 

Photos via T Magazine