An Interview with Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett, owner of the 1883 home reconstructed and documented in the film, From The Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall shares his thoughts with APT ...
Q: Mr. Cavett, you lived in Tick Hall for 30 years before it was demolished by an accidental fire. What kind of sentimental value did your house hold for you?
A: The loss is unbearable. And you don't realize the value it had for you until it's gone, particularly when the house is a majestic, historic Stanford White house like Tick Hall. You go around helplessly muttering, "It can't be gone."
Q: Why did you feel obligated to rebuild Tick Hall after the fire?
A: I didn't. I never dreamed of putting it back or that it was possible. My wife said, "This house was a historic and artistic treasure and it simply has to be restored" I couldn't conceive of a restoration of any kind, let alone one so miraculous that people who knew the old place before cannot, as they say, detect the cheat.
Q: How much were you responsible for the completed work?
A: None at all. I continued to be pessimistic. But the pessimism began to lift when the miraculously talented architects and craftsmen my wife found began to do astonishing things. A stained glass window with the mythological heads of the four winds, surviving only in a friend's snapshot, was magically redone to perfection.
Q: You began to be impressed?
A: And continued to be when, for example, certain ornate fireplace tiles were found, still made by the company in England that made the originals in the 1880s. By then I was past my neurotic feelings that trying to replace Tick Hall was sort of an insult to it. Luckily, I was not the one listened to. And gradually it began to take shape and even look familiar.
Q: Did any of the people working on it feel that they were, um, simply copying?
A: Luckily, no. The architect and the people who worked on it really loved the job and didn't feel they were just making a dupe, so to speak, of a preexisting house. A master of woodwork brought back the characteristic McKim, Mead, and White staircase to perfection. He even put back the creak in the stairs! Part of the challenge was that there were no surviving plans. Everything was from memory and snapshots.
Q: Were there any setbacks?
A: Just one. I came out, early one morning, on the porch of the house next door, looked over, and the nearly complete Tick Hall was gone. The whole world spun. Panic. "They've taken it down" I moaned in disbelief. What the locals call a "trick fog" had hidden the place momentarily. I 'm sure I lost a few pounds.
Q: How about one more memory.
A: I have a good one. Sitting on the porch of the old place with Mr. Tennessee Williams, paying a surprise drop-in. It was the magical, quiet early evening time and the great writer broke the silence with, "I just love sitting here on your gallery..with the fireflies..and that exquisite little slipper of a moon."
*This interview is available for use in the marketing and/or promotion of From The Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall(program guides and/or Web sites). No part of this interview may be used relating to any product or service, other than the program.From The Ashes: The Life and Times of Tick Hall (1/60) (Exchange; start date: 7/1/04) Presented by Rhode Island PBS/WSBE.
Dick Cavett at the ruins of the burned Tick Hall.
Photo credit: courtesy of Marshall Brickman
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