In the late 1990s, a local realtor called me about a house that was about to go on the market. It needed a complete renovation, but it was on one of Baltimore’s most beautiful streets, East Lane, a hard-to-find alley street that backed up to the verdant stretch known as Stony Run Park. A fixer-upper was my only hope of living on that street, but even the fixer-upper price seemed out of reach; I could afford the house, but not the renovations. Reluctantly, I said no.
What I could not have, I gave to Tess, at the end of The Sugar House. Renovations continued through In a Strange City, but she has lived happily in that house since then. Word filtered back to me that the owners knew it was “Tess’s house,” but didn’t mind; it’s not as if tour buses are barreling down East Lane, looking for the home of Tess Monaghan.
Today, I spent the afternoon making a video for this <a href=”http://www.visitmybaltimore.com “_blank”>site</a>. While the site is open to anyone who wants to post a Baltimore-related video, I was one of several locals invited to narrate a tour of my “secret” Baltimore – places that are hard to find, or have little-known trivia associated with them. For example, it’s easy enough to find the Poe memorial at Westminster, but did you know the date of his birthday is wrong? Do you know how to find John Wilkes Booth’s grave in Green Mount Cemetery? Or Hattie Carroll’s home in Cherry Hill? Do you know about the <a href=” http://www.kalismezze.com/”_blank”>lima beans</a>, or where to get deep-fried green peppers dredged in powdered sugar?
Tess’s street was part of my tour. The home owner happened to be there and she came outside – a reasonable reaction when one sees a film crew in front of one’s home – and invited us inside. The house is a thousand times more beautiful than anything I imagined for Tess. While it appears to be a modest bungalow from the front, it is deceptively deep and large, spread over three stories. Built on a steep slope, it feels like a tree house, especially on the top floor.
Look, I’m resigned to the fact that Tess is younger, aging more slowly than I am and has a faster time on the erg. I am happy that she has thick, wavy hair. (I used to say that she out-weighed me, but had more lean body-mass, but I’m now in the “fitness” <a href=” http://www.healthchecksystems.com/bodyfat.htm”_blank”>range</a>, and verging on “athlete.”) I want nothing but good things for Tess.
But, dammit, I want that house.
Anybody else have a dream home?
Yep. It belongs to Robert Silverberg, the lovely and talented author who lives in the Oakland hills. I haven’t been in decades but it was love at first sight. It became a regular phrase to mutter “come the revolution, comrade Bob…..”
It’s a fantasy house that doesn’t exactly scream “Oakland hills” (which were terrif before the huge fires and I don’t know now) but it was very castle-y, stone and fireplaces and had as I recall a separate building or two for sleeping or some such.
I’ve seen that on tv, separate buildings for socializing and for private – these ohmigod-must-cost- gazillions houses in Arizona/New Mexico. With great views. Swoon.
Other dream houses are just plain silly things like huge Victorians with wraparound porches and lots of gingerbread or Garden District homes in New Orleans. Silly because they all have multiple floors and lots of stairs and that’s not even something I like daydreaming about any more. Despite being mad for Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Macintosh, I don’t think their furniture looks all that comfy. I still dream of window seats too. (I still want to have a Victorian dollhouse with an elevator inside and a ramped porch outside!) (anyone else into dollhouse miniatures?)
I think I’d like “Touchstone” that Marcia Muller created for Sharon and Hy.
The house I grew up in. Literally. When I dream at night,whatever I dream, that’s the house where I still live.
Does the tour of Baltimore you gave for the site involve the same tour of Baltimore you gave me?
Because that was a whirlwind tour.
Oh dear, I only know the answers to 2 out of the 5 Baltimore trivia questions. Proof positive that I have been away too long.
There’s a little street in Mt. Washington that my husband introduced me to, telling me that it was nicknamed Gingerbread Alley. There’s a house, a Victorian, on that street that is my dream home (and there are a couple runners up there too).
I’ve just recently discovered a dream home in Colorado, if there can be such a thing. I think that for me a dream home, by definition, has to be in Baltimore. But…, there is this average-sized (so many houses out here that would otherwise have dream home qualities are just too, too huge) and very nicely renovated house in a fabulous location that is both convenient and off the beaten track. It has acreage, incredible views, and is a wonderful home for the horses that live there.
Dave,
This tour was more limited — six places with me, and then I provided narration for several more things, which will be covered with “B-roll.”
Not any particular house. When I was a kid my father was a homebuilder, and we got to look at lots of new houses. I especially liked going to the events called parade of homes, where I would choose what room would be mine in all the houses. I still like houses that are interesting, not cookie-cutter. But if I were to move now, I would want something all on one floor or with an elevator. My knees are NOT aging well.
What are the chances for an historical tour of B’more while at B’con next year? Would love a Poe tour!
I have a fictional small town in my novel, too: Whiskey Creek. At least I thought it was fictional, till I did a google search and found it is a suburb of Fort Myers (sp?). ah well, I’m still using it
My dream house was a house I never had to actually buy. I’d love to have a big luxury apartment in NYC or a condo in Ann Arbor downtown at some point.
If it was up to me, I’d never buy a house, it scares me. But my fiance already owns her own house so I get to slide right into that with no pain. And her parents are into real estate so they know their way around all of the ins and outs of it. But still, ick.
OH, and about houses…old houses…I have a , well, I guess you could say a “fetish” about old farm houses with tin roofing, and wraparound porches, and rockers on the porches…with a balustrade all around the porch, on which you can prop your tired old feet at the end of a long day, and sit and feel the cooling breeze of a summer thunderstorm rolling across the cotton fields….yep, memories…memories…it’s my grandmother’s house, and it’s gone now, taken down board by board and rebuilt as the bottom story of a cousin’s new house…the 2nd floor mirrors the first, but it isn’t the same…Grandma ain’t there anymore..and there’s no jelly cake waiting on the sideboard, and no homemade custard ice cream in the metal ice cube trays in the freezer…and well, you get the idea. I still miss her, and the house.
Definately the house that Lenora Mattingly Weber lived in which was the model for the Beany Malone house. It still looks very much as she described it except that there are more that three houses on that side of the street. I was fortunate to have the chance to go inside of it once. Next time you’re in Denver Laura, we’ll have to at least drive by it.
Otherwise I mostly have a dream room which is a large master suite that has an attached sitting room with a fireplace in it. The house would sit on a fairly large acreage with woods and a brook.
Zelda, I didn’t realize the real-life “Malone” house was still standing!
The “green” house that I’m building in fantasyland.
As much sustainability as possible in a small home with a T1 line and the perfect backyard and screened porch. The only thing missing is an outdoor bedroom, I’ll save that for the mountain retreat.
Laura,
The Malone house is really still there. It’s just a few blocks from Murder By The Book. It sits sideways to the street and has a driveway that goes past the front door. The garage with “Kay and Joe’s” apartment is still standing. The current owners also rent out the third floor and a building that is a converted chicken coop. The main change from when the Webers lived there is that the butler’s pantry is now a bathroom and there is a huge addition that houses an indoor pool. The current owners let birds fly around loose in the pool area.
The duplex that is the model for the Kern house is where two of the Weber grandchildren still live. It’s where the Weber’s moved after they sold the Malone house and where Nonie wrote most of her books.
Come back to Denver and I’ll give you the tour which includes getting lost up near “Lilac Way”.
For a long time I thought my dream house was the little villa, San Michele, built by Alex Munthe on Capri. I took refuge there one hot, tourist-filled day, trying to escape my parents. I had a near-ineffable experience there, impossible to explain. Munthe had a philosophy of “small rooms, but many of them,” promoting solitude and self-containment over family and community–plenty of the latter right outside the entrance on a busy square. The rooms in his villa were small and white, with soaring arched ceilings.
But we were in Cooperstown last week, where we will eventually settle, and we looked at a large meadow for sale. My husband very much wants to build an eco-friendly, cost-efficient house, and has spoken often of geodomes and earth shelters. I had a lot of resistance to living in a domed “Hobbit hole,” until I saw one. A local builder built an earth shelter home outside C’town 20 years ago, and we went to visit. There, built into a hillock, the roof a part of a meadow, was the twin of San Michele–beautiful rooms with soaring arches, slate and tile floors, thick, white plaster walls, bright and cool at the same time. I’m converted.
Diana,
Eco-friendly is increasingly eye-friendly, too. And house with a roof that’s part meadow — it sounds like a fairy tale come true.
There is a house across the street from me, part of which is built into the ground and has a grass roof. My dog used to love to run up there and then could easily walk over to the rest of the roof. From the other side of the house it looked like she was stuck on the roof. She must have enjoyed the views because it was of her favorite places (of the many places she was not supposed to go).
There’s a house in my hometown that I always thought was really nice. It overlooks the Penobscot River with a great view of an old 1850′s granite fort on the other side. And the town library is literally on the front lawn. But for some reason the US Department of Agriculture bought the house and turned it into an office building. So, I guess in some civic idiot saavant way of thinking, we all own a piece of it. Isn’t that nice?
Here’s how I ended up in my dream home. I decided that in my journal I would describe the perfect day–from getting up to climbing into bed. In my perfect day, I wrote, smoked only three cigarettes, got an appropriate amount of exercise, and looked out the window a lot. When I described my entry to my husband, I realized that I hadn’t once thought about living in a rambling Victorian mansion or ancient stone farmhouse. All I cared about in my dream house were the trees I could see from the window.
That very night we stopped at looked at a place on a river that had been for sale for almost a year. It was overpriced at the time since there was nothing there but a one bedroom cottage, but the forest and river caught our hearts and minds immediately and the process of purchase began that night. Eight years later, we’re here in a modest three bedroom home,with an uncomfortably big mortgage, and very grateful for our home. There’s a price, I guess, for the dream home, and neither my husband nor I can imagine ever leaving this place.
Although…that, too, is almost a downside, because no one, ever, really owns anything, right, especially land. I think we’re good tenants of the place–1000′s of trees have been planted, and many a rescued dog has learned the trail system of the river flats.
Sorry for such a wordy entry, but the question got me thinking!