On the skids
Unearthly cracking and high-pitched screeching noises broke the after-midnight stillness. The cacophony drew closer and closer, accompanied by high-intensity police-style gumball lighting. Being drawn along, taking tree limbs and leaving bits of itself, was a pink cottage, looking just like a child’s sketch of a house. There had been no warning, there was no police escort, and all the vehicles involved were unmarked. On earlier occasions of this sort, a notice was distributed so that people parking in the thoroughfare could park on another street. Earlier in the day, we had actually noticed this house up on beams waiting to be skidded and had commented that, if that was a candidate for removal, as it appeared to be, then its next-door neighbor, still on its foundation, appeared to be a good bet to go next. Little did we know. I caught a handsome image of this event as the progress was stopped beneath a streetlight, but I deleted it inadvertently. This morning, after picking up snapped limbs, I checked the City’s permit-search feature and learned that, in fact, the other house is the subject of a removal permit. Will tonight bring an encore?
The house from 901 Bouldin floated down the street in the same fashion Monday last week near midnight evoking memories of the opening shot of “Oscar and Lucinda”. Bouldin has traffic calming devices which include mid-street planters. The small trees in the planters were bowled over.
Where the house moved in 2005 once stood there are now two giant blockhouses. One of them is inhabited by two people; the other, by one person; there is no net gain in population to show for the replacement of the older house by two new dwelling units. Vegetation is gone and the privacy of the adjoining neighbors was destroyed, so their reasonably sized houses have recently been sold, perhaps to new owners who’ll tear them down and build something to match the blockhouses.
Was that one of the pink houses on Annie just west of the park? I’ve been wondering if they were both going. Ever since I saw the for sale signs I figured they were history. At least they were moved and not just knocked down. I wonder where a house like that ends up?
That’s the house. What I’ve heard is that sometimes, on those rare occasions when the City denies issuance of a demolition permit, the house is “moved” and never heard from again. These two little houses appear to be immediately post-WWII Cape Cod cottages, somebody’s little bowers, without historic value, although in perfect scale with their context.