This year, my childhood home was on the market, so I brought my husband and h.s. friend with me to go inside and see it. My parents were the original owners in the 1960's and it was a total shock to see it. I knew remodeling had been done, but walking through the rooms and seeing a monster addition that doubled the size which also was uneven and poorly done made me sad.
Glad I went in, but my memories of that day are replaced once again with the 1960's home.
1
My mother lived in the same apartment in Brookline, MA, from the time I was 11 until her death. My sons loved to visit her there, too. After her death in 1995, as we moved to New York, my oldest son placed a quarter on the lintel over a lobby door. In the more than 20 years since, every time a family member goes to Boston we visit the building and check for the quarter. If it's not there, we place another one. It keeps us in touch with our childhood home without disturbing the current tenants!
2
My parents built our family home in the late 1950s. It's a ranch-style rambler but they put some of their own elements on it so it differed from the other ranch-style homes constructed by the same builder. We were all proud of it and I can't think of a single time my heart hasn't skipped a beat every time I've driven up to it. My parents took meticulous care of it -- original furnace, oven, doors, bathroom fixtures, everything.
My mother didn't want either my brother or me to live in it after she died but my brother really wanted to buy my share and live in it. I couldn't face the battle, at the time, over clearing it out and putting it on the market -- I would have met resistance at every step. The result is that little by little he is eradicating its architectural integrity, mostly as a result of his unwillingness to maintain anything. The interior is a shambles (I think he's hoarder) -- there's almost no place to sit down. It is heartbreaking and I have stopped driving by or visiting him.
People say "let it go" and I'm trying but it's an emotional struggle for me. I'm hurt that my brother thinks so poorly of our parents that he won't honor them or exhibit some personal pride by undertaking the most basic of household chores, like vacuuming or cleaning the gutters. I wish I had buckled down and insisted on selling it -- if someone had changed or demolished it at least they wouldn't be family.
4
I have visited with my mother and father the Great Depression childhood houses of both my parents. The owners graciously let us in and they were experiences I will always treasure. Rember is that it is not your house anymore, it's their house and they are free to do as they wish (however ill conceived) to make it their special house. So if you see a change, realize the owner did it to make it their beloved home as well.
3
My family immigrated from Europe. Most of our childhood was spent in CT, where my siblings still live. I’ve been back to Europe to see the place my grandparents lived. My brother was stationed in Europe and he took photos of the last apartment we lived at before immigrating. My sister and I also went inside the house we grew up in CT. A lot of childhood memories come alive when I visited these places, especially of our parents and grandparents.
3
I sold my parents home when I had to put my widower father in a nursing home. The young couple who bought the house wanted me to see the changes they made a couple of years later. She had made the only walk-in closet into a pantry. My family had fought over closet space, especially since my dad was a clothes horse. I'd had a private room made from a double so he'd have more closet made in the nursing home. He'd needed it.
1
I lived in a home in Belle Harbor, from the time I was 1 year old, until I married 22 years later. It was one of 5 homes built at the same time. My best friend lived 2 houses away. Our neighbor eventually married my uncle, and my parents moved away. After my uncle died, the house was put up for sale, and we bought it, and remodeled it in much the same way my parents had. It felt in some ways like I had never moved away. Part of that was the beach, 3 blocks away, with the same lifeguard.
We stayed there for 26 years.
I was able to go home again, and give our daughter the good life I had growing up.
6
I have "visited" many of my ancestor's homes either by driving by, flying over, or on Google Street View. Some are no longer there.
My own home is just as it was when my parents died, with a new roof, the neighborhood much unchanged, except that the signs on the commercial street are now in Spanish, and the vacant lots have new McMansions on them.
I've found homes dating back to the 14th century. One ancestor's home a block off the Strand in London was for many years a Burger King, now a coffee shop. I found doing this lots of fun. I don't understand people thinking it silly.
11
Yes, I also like "flying" over my favorite places.
Street views are fun too.
4
@Doug McDonald I have also visited via Realtor.com and seen the interiors of my childhood homes of 60 and 50 years ago, as well as from the early and mid 90's.
Before I moved to Seattle, I had only lived in borderline tenement apartments and Mitchell Lama co-ops. If I went back to either apartment (both buildings still exist), there would be no changes other than paint or decor (including flooring). Maybe the apartments would have newer plumbing fixtures but the layouts were fixed by necessity.
This has helped me to feel unattached to the places I have lived in. It's all temporary. I'm temporary.
5
My brother & I walked by our childhood home in July, & the owner saw us & came outside. When we told her we grew up there, she asked if we’d like to come in. We walked through every room & enjoyed telling her some history, as well as hearing about some updates. What hit me the most was feeling the warmth of erstwhile gourmet meals prepared by my mother, who was an excellent cook. She really was the heart of that little midcentury home.
16
My grandmother’s house went on the market last summer. I had not been in the house since i helped to clean it out when my grandmother entered a nursing home. The town my grandmother lived in suffered greatly from the downfall of the steel industry and her house reflected it. What had once been the home important people stayed in when they came to town, it had been subdivided and dismantled in structurally unsound ways. My cousin and I decided to see it, considered buying it and turning it back into a family home, but it had been so structurally damaged, that it wasn’t feasible. All of that being said, it was so sweet to see some remnants of the original home, but we my cousin and I came away feeling sad at what had been done to that once lovely home. Our grandmother’s home was gone but the memories of that home stay with us.
8
I've never been back inside my childhood homes, but I did have the pleasant experience of meeting 2 women who grew up in my current home in the 40's and 50's. I met them in a way that was uncharacteristic for me. About 10 years ago, I was touring a home in my neighborhood on one of our community association's annual home tours, and I overheard two women commenting that the pocket doors reminded them of those in the house where they'd grown up. For some reason, I was bold enough to ask them what street the house was on. It was my street. I then asked them the number. It was my house. I invited them to come over, and they did. They spent about an hour, and they told me all sorts of interesting stories about how their parents had modified the house and what their family had been like when they'd grown up. They were charming, and I was delighted to meet them.
12
I can see stopping by to look at the old house, but asking the new owners whether one might enter is creepy.
8
I once owned a large 1901 Craftsman house in the Hollywood Hills which my husband and I were restoring. One day a lady, who was in her 80’s, stopped by and asked to see the house as it had been her childhood home. We were happy to show it to her and she was thrilled to see that not much had changed. She told us her father had been a film writer who was black-listed during the McCarthy era and he moved the family to Mexico where he later committed suicide. She later sent us a photo of her and her dad in happier times, with big smiles on their faces, sitting on the edge of our pool, their legs dangling in the water. Very bittersweet.
26
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher born in 544 b.c. said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
35
Several years ago my sister in law took her dad down to visit the house he had grown up in. The owner graciously welcomed them in and the home was much the same, but she was a little dismayed when Henry recalled he had been 7 years old in 1939 and how they had removed "that very dining room door" and used it to lay out his deceased mother's body in the living room.
23
When my parents and I moved out of our first real house, my mother commissioned a painting of it which hung on the walls of all subsequent homes until her death. Since I wasn't planning on using the painting, I contacted the current owner of the house and offered it as a gift. When I delivered it, she gave me a tour and in many ways the house appeared the same as it had 50+ years before. She was delighted to get the painting and asked me for a hug on parting. An especially gratifying meeting since she and I are of different races.
25
In 1989 I was 23 and still living at home in my mom's house when she died somewhat unexpectedly. I'd lived in that house since I was 3 years old and all of my memories were there. The house was emptied and put on the market a month later and I found myself living alone in my very first apartment.
Once the house sold, still grieving, I would drive by the house from time to time and notice the changes being made. I never knocked on the door; I couldn't handle it. At one point many years later, it turned out that two acquaintances of mine knew the "new" owners quite well and when we realized the connection told me, "I've been in your house hundreds of times!" The thought of that devastated me. I stopped driving by.
A couple of years ago I realized that the "new" owners had now lived there longer than my family ever had. I've moved on with my life; I have a home of my own and made new memories there with people I love. I love looking back at pictures of the home I grew up in. My memories are still in tact and I cherish them.
16
Last year I visited Detroit, my hometown. I asked the friend who had picked me up at the airport if we could go see "the old neighborhood". He refused, stating unequivocally it was far too dangerous. How fortunate the people are who can visit the places where they grew up. The houses may have been altered but the areas remain intact. Not so for the heart of the east side of Detroit. It remains a war zone.
16
@Artemis Hudson
The house in Detroit I spent my first 6 or 7 years in, in the late 1940s-early 50s, apparently burned down during the 1967 riots. But I can still "visit" the site using Google Maps.
3
I've been fortunate to see a couple of the homes I grew up in over the years. My Father road the Southern California real estate boom in the 1970's to upgrade to bigger homes. I have an attachment to all of them. I had wonderful memories.
The home that grounds me though is my Grandparents house. The walks to the corner mail box to mail letters and bills. Walking out to the bluffs overlooking a sunset that the was soon setting in the west. The Bluffs are all gone, developers built newer homes during that same real estate boom my father took advantage of. The front porch thankfully is still there. The place where I held my Grandmothers hand while she read to my brother and I will always be a part my heart.
11
The young family in my childhood home not only welcomed me in; they were all excited about how perfect I would be for the wife's brother, and offered to fix me up. Could have been have been one of those great stories you tell your grandchildren. But my husband would have objected.
23
My parents sold my childhood home 2 years ago and moved a mile away to a Townhouse. On a trip to see them, I decided to drive by the old house. It was GONE. Razed to the ground. Seeing the property with no house as like a visual illusion; my mind kept trying to build the house back up, like when you look at a picture of a body with no head. It just didn’t compute. I am beyond upset that my childhood home no longer exists.
17
@Marni W. I always take a nostalgia tour of my old dwellings when in cities I where I used to live. My old college neighborhoods, with garage apartments behind every little old house or houses divided into tiny apartments are torn down and now a sea of corporate-owned apartment complexes as far as the eye can see. So many memories gone. Not to mention the affordable rent and character.
5
I live in an 1890 built Victorian home which was once the homestead for a 60-acre multi-purpose farm. I have lived here with my family for 40 years and have the pleasure of having met a member of every family that has ever lived in this house. About 30 years ago, a man pulled into my driveway with his 90 year old grandmother. She was the youngest child of the builder of my home and she wanted to see it. Over the next 30 years the same situation occurred with five other families. It was a delight to share stories and listen to their memories. We have done little to the house in terms of major renovations. We still love the charm of older houses. But now it is time for us to downsize as we are in our late 70s. As we get ready to sell our house, we begin to wonder what kind of family will move in, what changes would they will make, if any, and what kind of memories they will have.
26
Let's hope they do not renovate it into an "open-concept" house. That would be a shame.
3
I really do not understand this obsession with wanting to see one's childhood home. As soon as a house has been sold, it is no longer yours, and your wanting to look at it an invasion of the new owner's privacy. Keep photos of your old home, by all means, but that should be the limit.
When I sold my apartment some years ago, I was invited to dinner by the new owners who proudly showed me the changes - I thought them lovely, but was not sentimental about the way it used to be. They are now planning to sell it and move to an entirely different area of Germany, so the next changes are due. Both the erstwhile owners and I will have moved on by then, too, and will certainly not try and barge into the latest owners' lives.
10
@CMD
Germany has undergone traumatic changes, especially during the last century. Many cities were devastated by WW2, and vast areas were laid waste.
I suspect if you'd grown up in an individual house, perhaps in a small town, you might feel differently.
3
@CMD
Houses can have important memories connected with them and sometimes one last look, especially for an older person, can be important as a way to get closure. I have never toured a former home, but once an elderly woman wanted to look at my home, which had been her home as a young woman. She had lost her husband in WWII as a young married woman and come home to live with her parents. I know she must have had a strong emotional connection. A few minutes out of my life meant a great deal to another person. i did not feel barged in on -- I welcomed her in.
I think I rather not see the changes people will make in my house after I am gone, so if I leave and do not die here, I will not come back again.
My original childhood home until age 13 was a co-op in New York, so it's not really the kind of place you can cruise by (and if you did, all you see is a door). But when I was 8 or 9 I chose teal shades for my bedroom windows, and for years whenever I'd pass the building I'd look up to the 3rd floor to see if they were still there. Well, turns out they survived well into my 20s. At some point in the last decade I looked and they weren't there. To be honest, I was surprise they survived that long!
13
My friend's family lived in a house for decades and then sold it. The adult children rang the bell and asked for a tour but the current owner declined. Then one of the adult children died and was cremated. The other two stopped by the old house -- no one was home -- so they grabbed the opportunity and dumped a bunch of his ashes in the backyard.
8
I live 1,200 miles away from my childhood home in suburban NY, so I use various Internet map programs with various views to satisfy my curiosity.
I identified several minor changes to our former house and informed my family. The map program also showed that our annoying next-door neighbor sold their house to the owner behind them. Annoying neighbor's house was torn down to expand the new owner's back yard. I wish that happened decades earlier.
10
I will be forever grateful to the kind woman who let me see our former and longtime family home just before they were selling it.
Despite the many changes she and her husband had made and it really looked so very different, I felt the essence of the house -- my Mom -- was still very much there and that feeling was reinforced when the woman/owner said: "We've really enjoyed the house and yard in our years here, and I always especially loved this kitchen. It always just had the best feeling, so warm and comforting."
It wasn't a large, nor a fancy kitchen, not when we lived there certainly, and not even with their changes and updates.
But my Mom had practically lived in that room. She baked every day. Every day. She cooked wonderful signature dishes there. Not fancy food ... but oh-so-delicious and memorable.
She wrote out beautiful cards and treasured notes at the kitchen table.
She wrapped the most thoughtful gifts there.
It was always 'her' space, imbued with her special warmth and love and giving spirit. And that clearly remained; I could still feel it, palpably. And it was evident in this woman's tone, smiling face and actual words ... she had felt some element of that from the very start of her time there.
I left that afternoon more at peace than I'd been in a long while.
So, thank you to the kind owner who took a chance on me and gave me such a gift of home ... one last time.
59
@jazz one lovely story, thank you for sharing it.
8
Since we moved into this c 1830s farmhouse a dozen years ago, a stream of people have knocked on our door to say they grew up here; a contractor told us he used to date someone who lived here; a classmate of my daughter once rented here. The former owners, now living on the other side of the country, stopped by this fall, having travelled back for a granddaughter's wedding. We're just the current caretakers of this lovely, old witness to countless lives and stories.
33
If people are obsessed with preserving their childhood memories then buy the house instead of whining about changes (likely needed improvements) the owner chooses to make. Therapy would be cheaper though.
4
@Theo no one’s obsessed. Just sharing different experiences. Some like it and some have no need. There’s room for both. Just divergent points of view. No one is suggesting you return.😊
3
I have to admit that I find this whole thing puzzling. And a bit creepy. I cannot imagine invading someone's privacy because I happened to have lived in their home at one time. I just don't get it. It seems presumptuous. I'm especially puzzled at the reaction of Ms. Biddle upon learning her fiance's family had once lived across the street from her family home and had known to previous owners of hers. It's a bit neurotic, IMO. People lived there before you, and unless it's torn down, someone else will live in it in the future. Grow up. It's just a house.
21
My thoughts exactly! Her former home had “experiences she wasn’t privy too”???? If you are consumed with thoughts about what is happening inside a home that you no longer own, you should take steps to make your present life more interesting!
7
Get over it
Once you sell, it belongs to the buyers
Nostalgia is a waste of time. Move on.
5
24 Harvard Court, Rockville, MD. The neighborhood has changed. The structure has changed. What do I remember most? Shining a flashlight across the street to my 3rd grade friend across the way, after bedtime. What fun!!!!
8
When I lived in the Willow Glen section of San Jose a woman knocked on the door saying it was her grandmother’s house and could she look around. I think the house was on the market at the time. It was a very small 3 bedroom house so did not take very long. When she left she commented. “I remember it being bigger”.
5
growing up we lived in my grandmother's house till i was about 12. apparently one saturday morning my mother sighed in bed next to my father and said, "I guess I'll never have my own house."
there just happened to be a big old house (1857) for sale a very little bit down the street. so my father bought, updated a lot of it, and we moved in. i lived there till i was 20 or so. he paid 16,000 in 1963, sold it for 78,000 in 1978, and when it hit the market again two summers ago for 545,000 my kid sister and i went to an open house.
as she put it, there was still a palpable sense of my parents presence in the landscaping and the little touches like the labels my father put on all the new wires he ran. the owners finished off the barn attached to the back of the house into an office and a workshop. very nice work. and so much stuff. they had a pod in the driveway and when i signed the guestbook i wrote,"Dude, you're going to need more pods."
the visit left me strangely untouched. it had been a long time since i had been in there, around 40 years and enough had changed that i no longer felt connected to much of a degree.
i only visit my grandmother's house in my mind, as there was a brutal and sad murder there and i have no wish to see it.
6
My family had a home that sheltered four generations. It was sold about 20 years ago. I have no desire to go through it. I visit it -and all the changes in my 60 years of life-in the attic of my brain.
10
@Mary , I agree. I think to my self, "who has time for this?" Life is too short to revisit the past sometimes. Live in the present and the future.
3
@JulieB
"You can't go home again."
-Thomas Wolfe.
1
I didn't live in a house we owned till I was 17. All rentals before that (military family). The house we owned was torn down several years ago. Never had any desire to go back to any former home, good memories or not. My favorite house was the one at Fort Bliss- late 19th century brick house, two stories, attic and basement. My brothers built a tree swing. Fun place to be a kid.
9
My brother still lives in the house we both grew up in. When we lives there, years ago, my parents could afford to furnish the house sparsely and this is how I knew it until the day I married and left the house. When my brother took ownership of the house, some thirty years ago, things began to change. Now most of my parents' furniture is still there, but newer items have been added; the house is no longer the peaceful, minimally furnished house it had been; now it is chock full of "stuff," so much so that it is difficult for me, an older person, to move about the rooms without fear of stumbling on something, falling and breaking bones. Oh well.
8
My 1920s house received some ill-advised “modernizations” in the 1970s. I’ve tried in vain to find pictures of the original house before a curved wood and fake glass solarium was installed. Did it replace a screened-in-porch? A regular porch? All I have is the date of the original solarium permit.
I’ve pulled up the pink shag carpet, removed some psychedelic bathroom wallpaper and am generally trying to go back to basics. But if any earlier owners want to drop by with some design tips and possibly the original floorplan, I’m all ears!
16
@Amelia
If you live in NYC, you can see tax photos of your house from 1940, and possibly again in the 1980s, on the NYC Municipal Archives website. Start here:
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/records/historical-records/order.page
6
Some people have a strange attachment to, or dislike of, the houses they lived in. The best cure against this is to convince oneself that a house is nothing more than a pile of bricks, destined to be eventually raised.
We live in a house built in 1909. In the early 2000s, a couple who lived there during World War II visited us, was courteously received, and told us of the original lay-out of the rooms, inluding their mother's written notes, still preserved on the doors of storage cabinets in the basement.
5
Raised if on the seashore and insurance insists; razed when no longer habitable. Or a new McMansion is in the cards.
4
An elderly couple showed up at my front door a while back and introduced themselves as former owners of our little hillside bungalow back in the 1960s. They wanted to come inside and look around, and as I opened the door for them, the wife said, "We raised 5 boys here." I stopped them, and said, "Sorry, you must have the wrong house. There's only 2 bedrooms and one full bathroom here." She pushed by me, saying, "Bunkbeds in the bedroom and the basement." My mind flashed to our lower level, which had been unfinished and unheated when we bought the house in the 1990s (since upgraded by us into home offices with a bathroom). Who knows what the couple thought about their walk down memory lane, but their visit gave me a new appreciation for what our little 1956 house must have seen over the years.
23
@lauraK7b That is what houses were in mid 20th century.
There was usually a 'fancy' area in most towns and cities where the rich people lived in bigger houses, but new construction in the 40's and 50's was generally modest bungalows where people did raise more than a couple of children. I don't remember anyone having more than one bathroom, and the current concept of revulsion at having to 'share a bathroom' was unheard of.
I am not sure where the McMansion thing came from, increased affluence or increased expectations, but I wouldn't want to live in any of the ones that have replaced the modest bungalows in the neighbourhood I have lived in for close to 50 years. I am happy with my old house, and my kids and grandchildren are happy to spend Sundays here and eat in our small kitchen and play in the yard with what are now big trees.
I shared a room with my sister all my life, as did most of my peers. Older kids did sleep in unfinished basements, they generally weren't that cold, but if they were, you put on more blankets. It wasn't hell, and it was affordable. My parents paid their mortgage off in 10 years.
11
I've done this with my childhood home and the home my Grandparents lived in. The owners of my childhood home are the ones who bought it from my mother. They haven't changed a thing. Even the shag carpet was the same! They are amazing lovely people and we are now dear friends. They say too me, "Your house is beautiful now. The leaves are changing. We trimmed the tress near the pond near your clubhouse." They understand the emotion of what the house means to me.
On my 50th birthday this year, I stopped at my Grandparents former house. I asked the new owners if they still had the old birdbath in the backyard because it had belonged to my Grandparents since the 1950's and they left it when they sold the house in the 90's. I offered to buy them whatever replacement they wanted. The owners helped me load the massive concrete, peeling old thing into my car and declined a replacement. they wished me a Happy Birthday and told me it made them feel wonderful to grant this birthday wish. I have been sending them old photos of when the house was first built to thank them. The birdbath is now in my English garden, in my new home in Connecticut ( 30 years in CA) and I look at it every day and think of my Grandparents.
47
Not a good idea. Memories are all of what you should have. It can be pretty devastating to revisit your childhood home. I drove by it but I knew that the house had been gutted and would not resemble what we had when we grew up. The outside was and is the same but I left it at that. It would tear my heart up to see what had changed. I am glad I didn't enter what wasn't mine anymore.
10
Recently drove thru my old home town and by my residence from 50 years ago - thankfully still there just smaller than my recollection.
7
I have a similar situation,but it’s the entire village,my family was the first of our heritage to arrive . We are in the same home 100 years.
I have a very strong sense of ownership and pride that so many people wish to be here. I’m somehow related to every third person in the cemetery.It wasn’t little house on the prairie but it is home.
5
I’ve been lucky to have two previous owners visit and tour our home and a third who wrote a beautiful letter telling us all about the home 70 years earlier. I loved to hear all the stories and didn’t say much-it is their trip down memory lane. We all love the house and it is a place of happy memories. I removed a decorative feature and had put it in the basement, the man who had installed it was quite taken aback that it had disappeared, I prayed it wasn’t visible when we toured the cellar. However occasionally I drive by my childhood home, but never knock-I’m sure I don’t want to know.
8
Many years ago, my mother and I were making the two hour drive home from a final round of hospital testing that had discovered stage 4 pancreatic cancer. In a small town near the city in which the hospital was located was a home that her grandmother had once owned, and where she and her siblings had spent many summers while growing up. We exited the freeway, found the house, and knocked. The new owner--hearing only that it was an important house in my mom's childhood--graciously showed us around. We didn't stay long, and we didn't burden the owner with the news we'd had. But for the next, and last, eight weeks of my mother's life, she was so happy to have set foot once more in a place that held such happy memories for her. I am forever grateful to the kind owner who never asked questions of the sad and stressed women who visited her that day.
107
An older man knocked at my friend’s door, and when she answered she was asked if this house had burned down in the past. My friend told him no, the house was built in the 1950s. He then said that he grew up in the house and it looked completely different to what he remembered. My friend and her family had so heavily remodeled the house that it was now unrecognizable to the original owner. That story made me think about childhood memories and the effect they can have on people. I had never before thought about how changing the orientation of a garage could make someone emotional.
12
I think this is a relatively recent phenomenon - totally remodeling old houses so they are no longer recognizable. My great-grandfather built a rambling white house in New Hampshire, which is now a B&B (very successful, according to its website). The new owners gutted the inside, adding new plumbing (which was definitely necessary) and making it very attractive and inviting, though why they painted the exterior the color of Pepto-Bismol is a mystery to me. Still, I am very happy that it wasn't torn down. It's not my family's house any more, but it is thriving and full of life. That's a happy fate for a house.
29
About ten years ago, I saw an elderly man looking at my house. It turns out, he grew up in the house, and his parents were the first owners. I invited him in and he showed me where the coal used to come into the basement and also told me interesting facts about how the house was built in the 1920s. It was wonderful for him to see his childhood home, and an education for us.
81
I was partly raised by my grandparents, in the house in South Bristol in West LA they'd bought in the 1940s. It was sold in 1960 after my grandfather died (I was 13).
I took a new photo from the curb every few years, documenting changes in the front door and shrubbery, then moved to Maine.
In 2002 my husband and I flew back to LA to look at all my old haunts. The new owners of this house let us into the back yard!
At first I couldn't figure out why the house looked so different from the back. Then it hit me: someone had torn down everything but the lovely white brick and wood facade! They'd extended it in all directions, turning my home into a mansion.
I'd long known I'd never want to see the interior again, preferring to keep my memories free of modern furniture, rugs, wallpaper, and paint. But so much more had happened.
There was no longer "any there there."
Last year we sold the 19th century Maine farmhouse we'd made ours for 46 years. The new owners are posting changes on Facebook... All is change, so one might as well get used to it. Thankfully, these changes do not include mansionization!
16
After the new owners of my c. 1913 family home did some renovating (unnecessary, of course, to my mind; a good paint job would have sufficed), they invited me in, and I was gratified to see, at least, that they took my advice about the fireplace to heart -- they took the paint off -- and kept the irreplaceable moldings and ceiling medallions intact.
After all, I remember going to see the house in the 1950s, before we moved in, with its exquisite wood, untouched, and red-tiled fireplace with its copper hood -- before my family painted everything refrigerator white to brighten it up.
Even then, my baby heart sank. (How did I know enough for it to sink?)
As for the even older house I live in now, it has a history. When a prior neighbor who used to visit often as a child during the Second World War asked me if she could see the backyard, I took her through the house and she showed me where the owners kept a spinning wheel, and pointed to where there had been a small pond out back. A small pond! It was the sunken, claw-foot I excavated many years ago and, flummoxed, reburied. I enjoyed seeing her revisit a place she'd liked and hearing about the previous owners.
I'd like to think I am taking care of this old c. 1860s house in a way that the next owners will appreciate.
And yes, I have stripped the paint off the Bennington doorknobs and the copper keyhole escutcheons.
24
I have gone back and what is most disturbing is to see beautiful mature trees and landscaping eviscerated in northern NJ. I can't believe some fine towns have no ordinances to prevent this carnage. There is also the aesthetic assault with new McMansions and widespread ugly fencing. I will not go back again.
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@glorybe
I have dim memories of the Dutch Elms that lined the streets when I lived as a child in Detroit. But I know that Dutch Elm Disease took all those trees, and their replacements are likely far less shady.
On a family gathering, we visited the house in Fallsburg, NY, where one cousin lived when she was a child. It had glorious views, she told us, across the valley. But in the intervening years the trees had grown taller, and those views now exist only in her memory.
7
Nowadays letting a stranger enter your house is a bit risky thing to do, because who knows if he or she, who claims to live there in their childhood, could turn out to be a bad person etc. However coming back to a place where we used to grow up sounds really emotional, but of course we will have to face the inevitable changes the current owner has made. Glad that the author had a good time with those memories.
24
@Jei Really? If a middle aged couple showed up on your doorstep and said they grew up in the house, would you really think they were out to rob or murder you?
What they heck do you do about repairmen or furnace inspectors?
This is where that sort of paranoia gets your country.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/10/05/man-jumped-bushes-birthday-surprise-his-startled-father-in-law-fatally-shot-him/
1
I'm surprised that the author was allowed free access to the house. Shortly after moving into our home, (only one previous owner...) a woman showed up at our door, saying that she knew the "Smiths" and had many memories of playing with their children in my home. I didn't invite her in past the front entrance hallway, but it was enough to bring tears to her eyes as she reminisced.
12
I took an Etour of all the places where I have lived, by Googling their addresses. No current residents were aware of my checking out the current status of their dwelling.
A couple had been ripped down, two had their exterior fronts gussied up (dreadful taste), and the rest looked the same.
I did take the subway to Brooklyn and check out the dreary railroad flat-tenement where I had lived from age 3 to 11, and it was exactly the same dump. Everything on that street did look much smaller. No, I did not knock on the door.
29
@Mary Ann : I did exactly the same thing to the house in Brooklyn That I grew up in(birth to age 15), it had been extensively remodeled. Turned into a double medical office and from a two family living area to a single family dwelling. The most depressing part was the remodel of the free-standing garage(cheap and ugly) the garage and that side of the house was covered in ugly dirty Graffiti. I didn't ask to go in or knock on the door or even get out of my car, I just left depressed.
2
@MstrTwister
You can check out the current value (online) of your childhood home.
In 1950, my railroad flat had a large kitchen at one end, a large living room at the other end and three doorless cubicles in between. The rent was $30.
Now, after much-needed renovations, the rent is $2,000. This is a nothingish neighborhood in between Red Hook and Park Slope.
The people who now live there should get a rebate.
3