This stone was once a part of the ornamental facade of The Saybrook Apartments in Oakland at Craft Avenue and Kennett Square.
And this old architectural stone has a twin.
And the twins had been separated since April 1984 when The Saybrook Apartments were demolished.
One twin lived in a garden on Winthrop Street in Oakland.
The other twin lived in a garden on Parkman Avenue in Schenley Farms, Oakland.
Flash ahead to September 2016 and the twin stones were reunited once again in a garden on Lytton Avenue in Schenley Farms...thanks to the generosity of my nice neighbor Barbara B.
Funny how life is...and inanimate objects move around via humans.
I bet a lot of antiques have a strange little history like these twin stones.
For years I've been looking for a photo of The Saybrook (an old article from 1919 say it was formerly Buckingham Apartments,. I found newspaper ads that had it listed as Buckingham in 1907 and Saybrook by 1909 , but I have a vague memory of Saybrook in stone above the door...am I imagining that?)
The only photo I can find is this one, during one of the many fires that cursed this grand old apartment building.
So far fires in 1943, 1966 (two), 1979, 1980...but considering it had hundreds of people living in it and was around since at least 1903 and maybe earlier, not that unusual.
Some of the ornamental stones can be seen above the windows in this photo, which is the side of the building- not the front which would have had the most ornamentation.
source-
https://news.google.com/newspapers?sjid=jEwEAAAAIBAJ&nid=1144&dat=19430803&pg=4768%2C5609340&hl=en&id=1i8bAAAAIBAJ I was in The Saybrook once, it had to be the late 1970s because it had it's last fire November 13, 1980. Then demolished in 1984.
It had seen better days, and I was young and not looking for clues of it's once great beauty, just looking for a birthday party, that Marshall and I were invited to.
But one thing I do remember was it's super wide hallways, 15-18 feet wide and each apartment had a screen door to the hall.
Those features were grand yet quaint, because those kind of big homey architectural details in apartment living are long gone.