Thar She Goes…

1. That was a very ugly house- a sort of wart on the skin of Upper Montclair. I for one, will not shed a tear.

2. So we excise a wart, and instead put up, what, a carbuncle? or something more in the way of a pustule?

3. Now that I think of it, if you look at a map of Montclair, it sort of looks like a face with some really bad acne. And there’s a big scar running down the middle.

4. Was this ugly example of a “50’s Modern” replacing what was once a more aesthetically pleasing home, on that site? Wasn’t this a 1950’s tear down to make way for the future of modern living, only to have the same fate, in a 00’s tear down, for what will be yet a another theme?

5. Saying one will not shed tears over a house is easy if you didn’t live there. But imagine what the house might have seen, heard, endured. It suddenly makes the voguish theory that “haunted” houses are really nothing more than “storage batteries” for emotional roilings fairly plausible. (There was for a long time a house with such a really bad rep in GR, but now when I drive by, those days seem long gone. Thank God, I’ll note.)
   Okay, too, perhaps the house struck you as “ugly.” But are you really going to feel any more comfortable amongst the sort of nouveau riches who giddily tear down a house they’ve paid, oh, let’s say $800,000 for, only to spend another, say, $1.9 million on something that bears very little relation to architectural taste and appropriate proportions? Maybe we thus really get what the new neighbors pay for, rather than what we purchase for ourselves.

6. I loved that house! I would drive by it all the time and admire its picture window. I liked the fact that it was a 1950’s house in the middle of all the grandeur that is Upper Mountain. I also loved the fact that it was a small house on a large lot – something that I found refreshing in this town. I do hope that whatever is built in its stead is something with a similarly unique spirit and not just another McMansion.

7. Actually, I’m kind of attached to that pile of rubble. Gives Montclair a kind of abandoned urban chic. I hope they don’t clear it and put up some eyesore.

8. Whatever the result of the investment made to establish yet another fabrication of some architectural statement, it should be contained as a thoughtful representation that harmonizes with the surroundings. If I were to invest vast sums of cash for this purpose, it would be to correct an eyesore that was built with no consideration to it’s locale. This house belonged on a cliffside lot overlooking the Pacific Ocean, not on Upper Mountain! Oh dear, landslides happen!

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