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Popularly known as Termite Hall, the Greene-Marston House is located in Mobile, Alabama, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 for its architectural significance. It is unique in that three distinct styles are reflected in this house. The original 1 1/2 story cottage was built sometime in the mid-1800s by the Greene family. This cottage was retained and incorporated into the 2 1/2 story Victorian structure built by Martin Van Heuval in 1903. The cottage is now referred to as "the wing". In 1910, the house was further remodeled by William Syson.

The history of present occupants begins when Termite Hall was purchased by Mrs John Lawrence Rapier (Regina DeMouy Rapier) in 1919 to replace the DeMouy house lost by fire in 1917. Many of the Marston/Rapier/Demouy clan moved into the house when it was purchased - southern tradition dictated that "homeless kin" moved in with ones who had room. So each brought their "goods and chattel" and settled into Termite Hall, supposedly later haunting it as well. So many wardrobes were in the second floor hallway, at one time, that they were literally double-parked.

Termite Hall got its name when the Marston sisters (Adelaide Marston Trigg and Eleanor Marston Benz) were children sometime in the late 20s/early 30s. They were sitting on the wide porch rails that used to be on the left side of the house off of the parlor one evening when they were called into dinner. As they hopped off, the whole rail just disintegrated. It had been riddled by termites, which luckily never reached the main house. 

Mobile's own poet/gourmand Eugene Walter lived here several times and wrote the cookbook "Delectable Dishes from Termite Hall".

Future plans for the home include, besides restoring it, making it a literary center as it was during the heyday of the Marston sisters. From articles explaining its past: 

"...Mobile's legendary Termite Hall, the rambling 19th-century mansion and literary gathering place on Dauphin Street celebrated in novels, poems, plays and cookbooks by Eugene Walter, Katherine Clark, Tom Perez, Tom Atkins and others." [Frank Dougherty]

"Over the course of [the Marston sisters] full and rich lives, they have hosted dozens of artists, writers and intellectuals and have fostered local culture through their involvement with The Haunted Book Shop and the McGill Institute library. Sue Walker, Alabama's poet laureate, calls them 'an institution' and declares, 'The city wouldn't be what it is, and literature wouldn't be what it is, without them.'" [John Sledge]

It's Copper, Who Knew?!

In the last 5% of things left to do before I can paint (which always takes 95% of the time), I'm prepping the trim in Grandy's Room. Yesterday I started washing them down, including the doors and windows, baseboards, etc. Today I continued that upper-arm-toning exercise and had reached the door that opens into the main hall which contains a transom window. Since this house has no CH/A, I want to utilize all the old methods of keeping a house cool in the South and so wanted to get my transom window working again.

Beating Back the Jungle

Before

After

Oh Plaster Where Art Thou?

I've now moved on to the western wall of Grandy's Room and have removed all the paneling off of it and discovered several interesting things. One - there's some stenciling on a portion of the wall, and Two - about half of the wall is covered in a rough kind of surface that doesn't feel like plaster! And the stenciling is on part of it, and beneath the wallpaper. The rough part actually feels like cement, and seems a lot stronger than the plaster.

Grandy's Room: An Update

Been back in Mobile since Feb 2, and have been working on the room in the afternoons. Basically it's a lot of caulking, scraping, and mudding! I'm really struggling with not getting distracted, or discouraged. One trick I've been using for that is just focusing on one wall at a time and just getting really into it and doing whatever needs to be done to get that wall paint-ready.

Biggest Damn Democrat in Mobile

There's a lot of family history here, and one of my fondest memories as a kid was listening to the stories my great-grandmother, known as "Grandy", told us! She lived to the venerable age of 94, sharp as a tack. It was her mother that had bought Termite Hall back in 1919, and Grandy was a suffragette when she was young, and according to my grandmother, she never missed an election. My family has always been Democratic, but unlike many Southerners, they never went the Dixiecrat route-- they were FDR fans, and then huge JFK fans. My aunts remember volunteering for Johnson. Progressive politics is always the main topic of conversation at the dinner table, and I loved hearing my grandmother (Ma-Ma) rant about what a "damn fool" W was. I thought it only fitting to recount here a transcription of a story Grandy used to tell. I've told it since to friends, but this is an actual transcription from a tape recording made by my cousin Pascal Rapier in 1973.

Pascal: Uh, Aunt Gina, could you tell us again about the little boy, uh, the Demouy boy that was lost and that all he knew was that he was a Democrat?
Grandy: uh huh. Said tell you again?
Pascal: Yeah.
Grandy: Why?
Pascal: Uh, for the tape recorder.
Grandy: Oh, you want to hear on the...
Pascal: Yeah, I want to get it on tape.
Grandy: Well, there was this boy and his name was Demouy
Female voice: Who was it? Who was it that was lost?
Grandy: It was Mama's brother
Ma-Ma: Augustus Demouy?
Grandy: His name was Gus, Uncle Gus. And he was, uh, have you got the thing on? [the tape recorder]
Pascal: Yeah. It's on.
Grandy: And he was playin' out in the yard. He was jus' 'bout two years old, well, maybe not, well he was two. And somebody came through an' left the gate open. And he walked out of it and walked on down the street. And then after he'd walked some distance, he wanted to go back home, an' he didn't know how to get home. So he started cryin'. And a policeman heard and came up there and says "What's the matter little boy?" An' he says, "Lost." And the policeman says, "Well, that's nothin' to cry about, I'll take ya home. You tell me where you live." He says, "What's your name?" An' Uncle Gus says, "Democrat". He said, "I didn't ask you what you ... uh, [laughter] what you were, I asked you what your name was." An' he says, "Democrat". And so the policeman says, "Well, where do ya live?" An' Uncle Gus says, "Democrat". An' so that's all the policeman could get out of him. An' so he took him down to the guard house where there were other policemen thinking that maybe some of them could get somethin' out of the boy. Well, the same thing happened, they asked him all sorts of questions an' everythin' they asked him, he said, "Democrat". [Laughter] So then they, one of 'em said, "Well, I bet he's old man Demouy's son because he's the biggest damn Democrat in Mobile!" And so, uh, on the chance, they took him down to Grandfather's store an' Grandfather asked the policeman, "What's all this? What's happenin'?" So the policeman told him the whole story.