Like the author of this article, I was lucky enough to grow up in a city that has a lot of interesting houses. And I would walk past many of them on my way home from school to watch DS. So, also like the author, I would compare what I was seeing in real life to the houses on DS. I'd compare the Greek Revivals to the Old House, and with other houses I'd pick up on how different aspects of them looked similar to some aspects of Collinwood. (And sometimes my friends and I would even take pictures of each other in front of those houses, pretending they and we were a part of DS - not that we were obsessed with DS or anything - or completely fearless when it came to trespassing (but, hey, it was the '60s and a much more innocent time - and all we ever did was take pictures).
) And after I was lucky enough to actually find/visit Seaview Terrace in Newport in '69, my interest in the architecture of "Collinwood" only became stronger. But before long I wasn't necessarily just comparing the houses I saw to the ones on DS - I was appreciating and becoming fascinated with them just for their own unique qualities. My interest in architecture continued long past the time DS was canceled and absent from my life (nowadays it's actually hard to remember how dark those days were without DS in syndication or on VHS/DVD
), but it was definitely DS that got me started on what's turned out to be a life long interest in architecture.