I realize that writing a blog is sort of like keeping a diary and then leaving it on a park bench or a bus. Unlike a diary, I suppose I actually do want people to pick it up (figuratively) and read it.
I still can’t get over those 2 houses I saw yesterday – and I see a lot in Manhattan too. Both are illustrated on the web, so for those unseen persons who read my blog (you are out there, right?) here are the respective listings:
I saw two amazing houses in New York yesterday, both on a broker tour. The first was a private brownstone facing Central Park West, priced at a cool $32 million. On the outside, it looked like a fairly standard 1880s row house. Inside, it looked like the Museum of Modern Art.
My firm just listed a limestone townhouse in Harlem, for a bit over $2 million bucks. It’s a beautiful place; with the same sort of woodwork I’ve got upstate at Daheim.
May whoever who came up with polarize light plugs be consigned to an eternity of trying to plug them into old fashioned extension cords. Since my old house was equipped with only 4 light sockets for 38 rooms – only kidding, sort of – we have a lot of extension cords.
One of my favorite things about big, old and preferably un-modernized houses are the bathrooms. They are so grand and spacious, and the fixtures to my eyes are really pieces of industrial sculpture.
My mother was from the south, and when I was a little boy she filled my head with wistful – and mostly apocryphal – tales of Louisiana plantations. She really hooked me on the big old house thing.
I’ve spent many nights alone in my house, and have never been afraid. It’s like all old houses; it makes noises. As with bats, the best thing to do about late at night noises in old houses is pay no attention. The bats will dematerialize, in the way of bats, and the odd thumps and creaks will go away. too
It is June the 9th, 2010, the first day of my blog about BIG OLD HOUSES. I have lived in one or another of them for the last 40 years. At one point, my former wife and I used to joke that we had lived in a total of 246 rooms.
