Blog Post #2- Neighborhood Walk
This weekend I traveled back home to Long Island and went on a walk around the neighborhood of Bayshore with my mom
On my walk one of the houses I looked at caught my attention due to their split landscape of lawn and rocks. One thing I like about Bay Shore houses is it maintains it's charm. Although this is not captured in the picture this house is actually across from a dock with boats in the water. The rocks in the front of the lawn give it a beach type feel while behind the flowers it gives us a homey feeling.
This house had caught my attention on my walk due to its lack of character and no landscape. I thought this was interesting since majority of the houses on the block have incredible landscape filled with trees, flowers, and different types of bushes. From the looks of it it looks like it is possibly abadoned or possibly with someone who takes little care of the house. The house is not bordered up and if you look closely some of the windows are open but it seems like it lacks furniture. Perhaps someone might be moving out of the house or a new family is living in the house.
I really liked the character and the landscape of this house. This house looks like an older home that was possibly updated and modernized in some aspects but still keeping its original charm. It could have been built in the late 1800s or earl 1900s and reminds me of a cottage.
This was my favorite part of the walk. This mailbox was standing outside one of the houses we passed on the corner. This is actually a U.S Postal Storage Box. These were designed in the late 1850s. This was for the purpose of storage for mail drivers as they would make their rounds around the neighborhood. Today, they are rarely seen due to the lighter load of mail due to the internet.
I really like the architecture of the shore houses. I don’t know how to describe it but houses that are usually on the beach or a lake have a distinct look and feel. I also liked the inclusion of the old postal storage box. I hope they don’t get rid of them in the future because they are cool relics of the past.
ReplyDeleteMaybe those big front porches and windows? If I lived across from the ocean, that's what I'd be looking at!
DeleteMy first thought when I saw the stones section of the yard was, "Well, that's one way to keep mowing and weeding to a minimum," and some people de-grass their lawns for that reason. I think your beach-y explanation is a better one. But it does make you think about what is considered okay in a front lawn and what is not. One of my neighbors turned their entire (small) front lawn into stones and shrubs, and I heard someone say that it was unattractive in a leafy neighborhood. Years ago, there was a UB librarian who lived in Buffalo who was FINED by the city for letting her front lawn go wild. She wasn't a slob, just 60s counterculture. So there are kind of narrow limits with what we can do with our property without getting criticized or even getting into legal trouble. What do we think about that?
ReplyDeleteThe cottage? Great instinct there. That style of house is called a Cape Cod, where such houses were originally built back in the 1600s and 1700s. From the 1920s to the 1960s--we'll read about this later, but maybe you can already see a postwar suburb, Levittown, Millersport Highway look--they became popular again. What's interesting about this one is the use of building materials--boulders, stone chimney, patterned roofing--to make it look "rustic"--cottage-y. House styles are often about associations we have with them, and what we want the house to feel like. Cozy and homey? Sleek and modern?