Gatewood homes ready for guests
TOUR TRADITiONAL, MODERN BUILDINGS to be featured

BY TIM FALL Comments 0
Published: October 31, 2009

Jerry and Ann Fent expect several hundred visitors at their home in the Gatewood neighborhood this weekend.

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Gatewood Historic District Home & Garden Tour...
10/31/2009 The 13th annual Gatewood Historic District Home & Garden Tour will take place from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Gatewood is bounded on the north and south by...

Trick-or-treaters tonight, then visitors for the 13th annual Gatewood Historic District Home & Garden Tour on Sunday, will keep things hopping at the Fent home and others.

"Last year, I lost count at 900, but our neighbor got 1,200” on Halloween night, Jerry Fent said from the living room of the 1928 Colonial Revival brick home he and his wife bought in 1966. "Or was it 1,300?”

This year’s home tour will feature not only the traditional historic homes for which the Gatewood neighborhood is known, but two combination live-work spaces in historic buildings in the developing Plaza Arts District and a classic four-plex apartment building converted into a 4,000 square-foot, single-family home.

Advance tickets are $8 at 23rd Street Antique Mall, 3023 NW 23, and will be $10 at any tour home or garden during the tour from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

"Gatewood’s traditional historic homes are without question the backbone of … our neighborhood,” tour chairman Janet Seefeldt said. "But, we’ve come to realize that many people, especially younger professional couples, are looking for … the combination of modern functionality within a historic setting” that Gatewood has to offer, she said.

For the Fents, Gatewood always has been about family.

In 1966, Fent was a young attorney with a wife, two children and a third on the way.

"We were looking for a home in Gatewood when we got a call from my mother’s cousin,” Ann Fent recalled.

Bob Butcher and his wife, Eloise, had owned the home at 1830 NW 18 since 1952.

"We bought it, moved in, Jerry started a new job and we had our third child all in the span of about a week in October, 1966,” Anne Fent said.

Over the years, the Fents made few changes to the home, although they added a bedroom and bath upstairs when their three children were in high school.

The home is now a four-bedroom, three-bathroom plan of about 3,000 square feet. Its location, directly across from St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church and Rosary School, was always a perfect fit for the Fents, who are St. Francis parishioners.

"The kids just walked across the street to school,” said Jerry Fent, who retired from the city attorney’s office in 1998, although he remains involved in special projects for the office.

June Havorka, a 35-year Gatewood resident and tour committee member, said the tour raises much-needed funds for neighborhood projects, including the historic lighting that is being installed throughout Gatewood.

In addition to the Fent home at 1830 NW 18, other locations on the tour are a home at 1321 NW 16, residential-retail locations at 1738 NW 16 and 1701 NW 16, and gardens at 1919 NW 20 and 1928 NW 17.

For more information, call Seefeldt at 525-9441.