Nord House renovated – The Independent Voice of Blythewood & Fairfield County

BLYTHEWOOD The house now known as the Langford-Nord House was built around 1904 for Luther and Carrie Langford. Like other homes from the same era, the house was built in the classic Folk Victorian style.

Through the years it was loved and lived in, rearranged, oldwalls removed and new ones added. A hundred years later, it had almost lost itsplace in the towns history. And it would have, eventually, but for its newowners, the Blythewood Historical Society, and a previous owner and nowbenefactor, Cindy Nord, who began, two years ago, to return the house as nearas possible to its glory days.

Today, the exterior has been restored to be morehistorically correct. Inside, it houses the towns historical society andmuseum. The Langford-Nord House is one of the few surviving historic homes intown. Through its exterior restoration, the Society can now tell the houseshistory and show how historic preservation helps a community retain its uniquecharm through architecture.

The House

The original house faced east, toward Main Street (Hwy 21),featuring a front yard, porch, a central front door with sidelights and atransom. It probably consisted of just the front section and a rear ell, whichhad a secondary entrance and a porch along its south side, facing McNultyStreet.

By 1920, the original owners had four daughters and Carrieswidowed mother living with the family, and they likely expanded the building tothe west to make more bedrooms. This new section almost matched the frontportion on Main Street, but is two feet shorter. Originally, the house had awood shingle roof. The metal roof may have been added when the west additionwas built, perhaps in the late 1910s.

By the 1940s, the Langford family started using the southentrance facing McNulty Street as the main entrance and screened in the frontporch. They added a back porch around the 1950s.

Luther Langford died in 1950, and his wife Carrie passed in1957, leaving the house to the four daughters. Caroline gained full interest inthe house from her three sisters and married into the Dangler family. She livedhere until she sold the house in 1988 to the Nord family.

A Dress Shop

The new owners turned the house into a dress shop with a morecommercial look. Some of the interior walls were removed and others added.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, major exterior changes tothe outside of the building included the removal of the front porch on MainStreet, the enclosure of the porch on McNulty Street and the installation ofdoubled doors with sidelights. The north side porch was enclosed, metal sidingwas added to the exterior and a large window on Main Street replaced a door andsidelights. The original windows were replaced with vinyl windows.

All of these changes made the building look much differentthan its 1904 appearance.

The Langford-Nord house was always well taken care of, butthe changes to the building and site left it looking more like a modernbuilding rather than a historic one.

Nord Donates House to BHS&M

In 2010, Cindy Nord donated the house to the newly-formedBlythewood Historical Society and Museum. Nine years later, the BHS&M boardcreated a plan to return the exterior to some of its original appearance,without losing any of the floor space created by the enclosure of the south andnorth porches. To achieve this goal, they would have to use restoration andreconstruction techniques as part of a two-year historic preservation project.

In 2020-2021, the BHS&M won a grant from the RichlandCounty Conservation Commission (RCCC) to remove the c.1970s blue metal siding.Community volunteers provided much of the labor to remove the siding. Thisrevealed the original German styled wood siding.

The German siding has a curved groove cut along the top edgeand was popular in Blythewood in the early 1900s. The original color appears tohave been white. Painters cleaned and scraped the old siding before adding newwhite paint.

In the spring of 2022, another RCCC grant helped the BHS&Mbuild a shallow front porch and add historic sidelights and a historic door tothe Main Street side of the building.

The grant also helped with the installation of screen and ascreen door on the McNulty Street side, to mimic the c.1940s era screen porch,and to apply new siding and panels on the north (back) porch, which gives theappearance of a screen porch with siding along the bottom.

Return to Historic Appearance

Combined, these changes helped return this historic buildingback to a residential appearance and as much as possible, to the way it was in1904.

Although the enclosed porches on the south (McNulty Street)side and north side are still enclosed, the exterior treatments of screen andpaint reference their historic appearances.

The restoration of the exterior of the Langford-Nord houseis an example of the Blythewood Historical Society and Museums goal ofeducating the community about its local history.

This project was funded in large part by the Richland County Conservation Commission, with a generous donation from Cindy Nord.

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Nord House renovated - The Independent Voice of Blythewood & Fairfield County