Robert Joseph "Bob" Vila is an American home improvement television show host
known for This Old House, Bob Vila's Home Again, and Bob Vila.
Biography = Early life=
Vila, native of Miami, Florida, growing up his father built the family home by
hand. Vila graduated from Miami Jackson High School and studied journalism at
the University of Florida. After graduating, he served as a volunteer in
the Peace Corps, working in Panama from 1971 to 1973.
= Career= Vila was hired as the host of This Old
House in 1979 after receiving the "Heritage House of 1978" award by Better
Homes and Gardens, for his restoration of a Victorian Italianate house in
Newton, Massachusetts. On This Old House, Vila appeared with carpenter Norm
Abram as they, and others, renovated houses. In 1989 he left the show
following a disagreement arising from his involvement with outside commercial
endorsements for New Jersey-based Rickel, and the subsequent retaliatory
pulling of underwriting from Rickel's competitor Home Depot and lumber
supplier Weyerhaeuser. He was replaced by Steve Thomas.
After leaving This Old House, Vila became a commercial spokesman for Sears,
and beginning in 1990 he hosted Bob Vila's Home Again, a weekly syndicated
home-improvement program. The series ran for 16 seasons in syndication before it
was canceled by distributor CBS Television Distribution due to declining
ratings; the series remains in reruns. Vila also appeared on various episodes
of the situation comedy Home Improvement as himself, where main character and
cable TV host Tim Taylor saw him as a rival and went to great lengths to try
to beat Vila at things, which he never succeeded in doing. Vila also made a
cameo in the 1993 comedy spoof Hot Shots! Part Deux.
Vila has written 10 books, including a five-book series titled Bob Vila's Guide
to Historic Homes of America. As of 2006, he still appears regularly on
television. He can also be seen on the Home Shopping Network, selling a range
of tools under his own brand. Other productions
Bob Vila's less widely known productions include Guide to Historic Homes of
America, In Search of Palladio, for A&E, and Restore America for HGTV.
= Historic Homes of America= Guide to Historic Homes of America
included two-hour segments on each of four major regions of the United States:
the Northeast, including New England and the Mid-Atlantic States, the South, the
Midwest and the West. The Northeast
Morris-Jumel Mansion overlooking Yankee Stadium in Washington Heights, Manhattan
Dyckman House on Broadway in Upper Manhattan
Hancock Shaker Village in western Massachusetts.
Strawbery Banke restoration in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Olana - "a palatial amalgam of Middle-Eastern and European influences."
The Mid-Atlantic States Chesapeake Bay and Annapolis, Maryland -
William Paca House and Hammond-Harwood House
New Castle, Delaware - George Read, Jr. House, built by the son of George Read
Baltimore, Maryland - Homewood House on the Johns Hopkins University Homewood
campus Washington, D.C. - Decatur House on
President's Park and Tudor Place in Georgetown
The South Thomas Jefferson
University of Virginia - ten residential pavilions surround the great, terraced
Lawn. Ash Lawn-Highland
Poplar Forest - octagonal house filmed while undergoing complete restoration
Monticello - includes Dome Room at top of building and Honeymoon Cottage.
Natchez, Mississippi House on Endicott Hill - early trader's
house Rosalie - Federal architecture mansion
with John Henry Belter furniture and a panoramic view of Mississippi River.
Stanton Hall - "perhaps the grandest Greek Revival house anywhere." Designed
by Captain Thomas Rose. Longwood - begun in 1860 by Samuel
Sloan. Never finished: construction halted in April 1861.
Texarkana, Texas - the Ace of Clubs House.
The Midwest and West Ellwood House - built by barbed wire
entrepreneur Isaac L. Ellwood in DeKalb, Illinois.
Frank Lloyd Wright Dana-Thomas House in Springfield,
Illinois. "It's richer in detail than any other Wright home."
Fallingwater in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains
Cooper-Molera Adobe - early Spanish Colonial owned by the National Trust for
Historic Preservation in Monterey State Historic Park.
Filoli - Woodside, California in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Designed by Willis
Polk. Tor House - stone house and tower
overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, built by
Robinson Jeffers. = In Search of Palladio=
In Search of Palladio is a three-part, six-hour study of the work and lasting
influence of the 16th-century architect Andrea Palladio. Palladio designed
various types of buildings, but the series concentrates on his domestic
architecture.. I. Villas of the Veneto
Villa Giustinian, Roncade. - For Vila this building provides the context for
Palladio's innovative thinking - gothic battlements, portcullis and stone walls
concealing a Renaissance palace and farm buildings.
Villa Pisani in Montagnana - a descendant of the original owners served
as Vila's guide. Villa Cornaro - A suburban villa on a
town street, a palatial residence which was also an on-site place of business
for running a large farming enterprise. Villa Barbaro.
Villa Emo - For Vila this is "perhaps the most dramatic farmhouse ever built".
La Rocca Pisana - spectacular hilltop belvedere by Palladio's pupil Vincenzo
Scamozzi. II. The Palladians in England and
Ireland London: Chiswick House, Marble Hill
House and Stourhead. Bath, Somerset: Queen Square, The Circus
and the Royal Crescent. Republic of Ireland: Casino at Marino -
"the architectural equivalent of a Fabergé egg".
Northern Ireland: Castle Ward - overlooking Strangford Lough with both
Palladian and Gothic facades and interiors.
III. The Palladian Legacy in America Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Mount
Pleasant. Marblehead and Waltham, Massachusetts:
Jeremiah Lee Mansion and Gore Place Hudson Valley, New York: Boscobel House
Museum - purchased in 1955 for thirty-five dollars. Meticulously
restored, situated on a bluff on the east bank of the Hudson River opposite
the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Hartford, Connecticut: Austin House - built for Wadsworth Atheneum director
Arthur Everett Austin, Jr. South Bend, Indiana. In Indiana Vila
looks at University of Notre Dame architectural school "where Palladio and
classical architecture are taken seriously indeed", Vitruvian House
designed by Thomas Gordon Smith and Villa Indiana designed by Duncan G.
Stroik. = Restore America=
Restore America consists of 50 one-hour segments which explore historic
preservation and building restoration in each of the fifty U.S. states.
Anticipating the turn of the 3rd millennium, it was first broadcast on
HGTV between July 4, 1999 and July 4, 2000.
Bibliography Bob Vila has written two dozen or more
books, which include: 1980: This Old House: Restoring,
Rehabilitating, and Renovating an Older House. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN
0-316-17704-0. 1990: Bob Vila's Guide to Buying Your
Dream House. Boston: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-90291-8.
1993-1994: Bob Vila's Guides to Historic Homes of America. New York: Quill.
Historic Homes of New England. ISBN 0-688-12493-3.
Historic Homes of the South. ISBN 0-688-12492-5.
Historic Homes of the Midwest and Great Plains. ISBN 0-688-12495-X.
Historic Homes of the West. ISBN 0-688-12496-8.
Historic Homes of the Mid-Atlantic. ISBN 0-688-12494-1.
See also List of Famous Cuban-Americans
References External links
Bob Vila's Official Website Bob Vila's Profile on LegendaryLife.com
Bob Vila at the Internet Movie Database Bob Vila interview video at the Archive
of American Television