23 Barker St., Picton (Photo: Supplied)
Bongard and Barker are County names of long standing.
Long ago, before this newspaper existed, the Barker family owned 600 acres of farmland in Picton. From 1848 to 1872, David Barker was the Picton Postmaster, working from his house on Main Street.
Now known as Benson Hall, the beautiful old structure was relocated to King Street in the 1890s.
At roughly the same time, another postmaster, John Bongard, operated another local post office, this one from the family home at Bongard Corners, where County Road 7 meets Bongards Crossroad.
In 1900, David Barker Jr., son of the Picton postmaster, sold a double lot at 23 Barker Street to David Bongard, son of the North Marysburgh postmaster. David would serve as the County Treasurer for 36 years.
David and his wife Emily had been living on King Street since 1883. They decided to build an estate in 1903, in the Arts and Crafts style then appearing around town. They enjoyed their old age at 23 Barker, along with long-term servant Janet Thompson, who eventually inherited the home. She, in turn, passed it on to her niece, Clara Croft, in 1938.
In subsequent years, the property was owned by several families, some also well-known names, one a mayor of Picton.
And now, current owners Jeff and Traci DiBattista have started a major restoration, one that promises to extend the life of the house, both into the current community — and into the future.
“The idea of renovating an old home has been something that we’ve wanted to do our whole lives,” say the DiBattistas—almost in sync; they tend to complete or echo each other’s sentences.
The DiBattistas returned to Ontario after 30 years in Alberta, and found that they distinctly did not like living in Toronto. Jeff says, “I’m just not interested in a big urban center and traffic.” For Traci, life in a small town feels like coming home.
“I grew up in a rural setting. So for me, it’s lovely to be back and have neighbors who check in on you and that kind of feel.
“I grew up right next to my grandparents’ farmhouse. It was always my dream to get in there someday and fix that up.”
Even if Bongard House is very much of its moment, the couple note that a house is a far more permanent thing than a mere fashion. “What’s really interesting, as a historical story, is the continuity,” notes Jeff. The act of restoration brings history with it. “We have a pile of stuff from inside the walls,” says Jeff: a playing card of King Edward VII, crocheting, a washboard, newspapers from World War II.
“We’re renovating this, but it’s not for us, right?” says Jeff. “It’s for the next four generations that are going to live in the house. That’s how we think of it: in one-hundred-year blocks. So we want to do it properly.”
Restoration and renovation work together. Traci says, “the part of the house that can be restored, we’re restoring: the main floor at the front, what would have been David Bongard’s office, and the living room were in decent shape. The main staircase is just a classic Arts and Crafts example. So we’re trying to get that back to its natural state.”
Over the years, all the old woodwork was covered with paint and carpets. To salvage the floors and trim, Jeff carefully numbered each piece temporarily removed for structural work.
It is not only the house that garners their attention. The surrounding land also has historical and social meaning.
Landscape architect Victoria Taylor brings a holistic vision to the project; she does not separate the architecture from the landscape. “The land is part of whatever structures are there. And when you think about it,” she says, “land comes first.”
Her approach is characterized by what she calls “slow landscape”: “How do humans and nature come together, which is what we all want to do? If we want to be more connected to nature, we have to slow down to the pace of nature. The other way around isn’t going to work.”
Just as the DiBattista’s envision generations of inhabitants, Ms. Taylor identifies her work as more cyclical than linear. For example, the soils, stone and hard materials disturbed in the restoration will remain on site and be redeployed. This is both environmentally sound, but also in keeping with the Arts and Crafts movement’s emphasis on hand-craftsmanship.
The integration of elements is a key theme of the project. Architecture and nature, past and present, cross over. This “decolonizing” approach to the land also has a social aspect. It has made for an integrated team of local tradespeople working together from day one, influencing and informing each other rather than called in to do a single job. It is about community.
The DiBattistas are “trying to float as many boats as we can with this project,” as Jeff puts it. “Shop local” is definitely one of their principles. Jeff has just joined the board of the Hospital foundation. “We’re here now and we want to be contributing to the community.”
Their sense of commitment is palpable. It extends to the whole neighbourhood. As Traci puts it, “we love sharing the story. We have so many people, as they’re walking by, and we’re outside and they’ll stop. And they’re curious. … Oh my gosh, the hours we spent out there on the front porch, especially during the pandemic, every day, just chatting with people.”
The porch has come to symbolize this highly collaborative project. It will be reconstructed without a railing: nothing will get in the way of conversations and community. Likewise, the landscaped approach to the house will be open and welcoming, just as its many histories are carefully restored for those yet to come.
Meanwhile, the DiBattiasta’s kids wonder if they should put together a time capsule and place it in a wall.
The Arts and Crafts movement of 1880-1920 was a British design response to nineteenth-century industrialization.
Like the contemporary turn to authenticity in response to the incursions of Artificial Intelligence, often experienced as fake, false, and fraudulent, the artists behind the Arts and Crafts movement saw in the beginnings of factory production the inevitability of mass-produced, dislocated junk.
They stressed that things made by hand, slowly, with a focus on craft, technique, and materials, were at the center of human flourishing. Arts and Crafts dismisses the separation of artistry from craftwork, intellect and manual labour as an ideology rooted in class, status and gender politics. It stresses that all dignified human endeavour combines craft and thought.
The big names of arts and crafts are Thomas Carlyle, a historian; art critic John Ruskin; designer William Morris, and writer Viollet le Duc. They argued against abstraction, the separation of design from making things. In his workshops Morris insisted makers develop techniques by working directly with their materials, the way a cook does with fresh produce, a seamstress or tailor with fabrics, a carpenter with wood, a gardener with soil and plants.
“The Nature of Gothic,” a chapter in John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, offers inspired further reading.
The approach is particularly resonant today, as virtual technology abstracts us from human life and community.
The arts of craft are alive and well in Prince Edward County, and the foundation of its sense of community.
Picton was a flourishing trading town in the late nineteenth century. There are many fine examples of Arts and Crafts design and architecture in the fine brick homes that line the winding streets of its older neighbourhoods. A turn to nature for designs, patterns, colours and materials marks Arts and Crafts homes. Lavish interior woodwork, leaded and stained-glass windows, fireplaces with decorative mantels. Arts and Crafts homes feature an artistry and care that goes well beyond essentials, to the things that make life beautiful. —Karen Valihora
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