Then and Now

ongoing...

New York, New York

Morris–Jumel Mansion
It is located at 65 Jumel Terrace in Roger Morris Park in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan and is the oldest house in the borough. It was built in 1765 by Roger Morris, a British military officer, and served as a headquarters for both sides in the American Revolution.

Van Cortlandt House

The Van Cortlandt House Museum, also known as Frederick Van Cortlandt House or Van Cortlandt House, is the oldest building in The Bronx. The house was built in the Georgian style by Frederick Van Cortlandt (1699–1749) in 1748 for his family.

Hamilton Grange House
Hamilton Grange National Memorial is a National Park Service site in St. Nicholas Park, Manhattan that preserves the relocated home of U.S. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.

Merchant House
The Merchant's House Museum, known formerly as the Old Merchant's House and as the Seabury Tredwell House, is the only nineteenth-century family home in New York City preserved intact. Joseph Brewster, the builder, sold the house to Seabury Tredwell, a wealthy New York merchant, for $18,000. and Tredwell's daughter, Gertrude, was born in the house in 1840. 

Edgar Allen Poe Cottage

The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage is the former home of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It is located on Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse in The Bronx, a short distance from its original location, and is now in the northern part of Poe Park.

Bartow-Pell Mansion 

Originally the Robert and Marie Lorillard Bartow House, the residence and estate date back to 1654. The current house was built between 1836 and 1842. Ownership of the house passed between the Bartow and Pell families until it was finally sold to the City of New York in 1888 by descendants of the Bartow family.

College Grove, TN

Gstaad, Switzerland

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton loved Gstaad!

Zaanse Schans, Netherlands: The Windmills

All That Raw Land That Rolls

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
 --Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

Sun Valley, Idaho

The shades of the place:

Jacob Riis, photographs

coming soon!

The Green Shutters, an update

The piece below was first published at this blog in May 2013.

Today, I looked out of the windows and lo and behold workmen had cut through the brick that covered those old windows which were once surrounded by those old green shutters. The windows that were gone were today visible but covered by protective net.

And oh! The tree in the courtyard that grew taller than the building wall was removed and the smaller tree next to it was also destroyed. My green view is gone.

I took a few photos from my own windows. Here is one of them:

 This is from 5/24/2013: from The New York Times:
"Top 4 Floors in Chelsea to Be Above the Adjacent Structure; Condo Shaped Like Inverted L"


I moved into this apartment in 1968. There was a small tree in the back courtyard that was visible from my windows. And on the brick wall that faced my windows I could always see in bright colorful paint: "Sol Shapiro, Plumbing Supplies."

Also, on that wall were three large windows with green shutters. The shutters were rarely opened and when they were I never really saw any activity behind those windows.

I thought of those windows today and those green shutters. Over a decade ago, the windows were replaced with brick and everything on that wall was covered in dull beige paint. Now, it just a wall and nothing remains except this one memory:

In about 2002, I looked out and saw a young man looking out of the middle window and he stayed there for quite some time. He may have been saying good-bye. 

On this street, the old New York Telephone Company is becoming the Walker Tower. And the old post office that is a landmark may close.

Nothing else much has changed I suppose, except that the tree in the courtyard is now taller than the building.

Montauk in the Snow