The history of a house -- or, perhaps a state of mind -- or, conceivably, both at once.
The price for the house, in full, was $23,400, a number that astonishes me even today. This was not a particular bargain in this neighborhood at the time; twice as much money would have bought twice as much house, they were going cheap -- even the fancier Victorians higher up Grymes Hill, on quieter streets with harbor views.
My mother lent us the ten percent needed for down payment. At its highest, the monthly mortgage -- long since paid off in full -- reached $325. Due to its solid construction (I've ridden out the tail end of hurricanes here in season, with nothing more than some rattling windows) maintenance has proven minimal, and fuel has always stayed manageable. Thus, in one fell swoop, I solved permanently the problem of living la vie bohème in new York City on an (approximately) bohemian income -- the smartest economic move I ever made in my life.
Though scruffy, the house needed only the cosmetic basics -- floor-sanding, painting -- to make it habitable. With the help of the members of the jazz-rock band in which I then sang lead in my spare time, and a few other friends, we (my first wife, Alexandra, my 18-month-old son Edward, and myself) hauled our possessions from the apartment we'd occupied for several years at 225 Broad Street, across from the Stapleton Houses, and took possession in late 1970.
I immediately claimed the barely finished attic as my writing space and library, and, though cold (just one small radiator) in winter and hot in summer, it has served as such off and on during my occupancy. The basement -- low-ceilinged, unfinished, but dry -- we used primarily as storage; when Alex got interested in photography we put together a crude darkroom in a corner thereof, with a cast-off sink donated by a friend and some other rudiments. It was a completely unheated space, save for whatever radiated from the old oil-burning furnace when the weather turned cold. On the other hand, it boasted one of the house's two toilets -- scrungy and chilling in winter, but nonetheless there in moments of desperation.
The other toilet was in the house's one full bathroom, on the second floor, just off the master bedroom. How an architect had constructed a house for his family and himself (they had several children) with only one tub/shower, and only two toilets (each requiring the ascent/descent of a flight of stairs from ground level) for the family plus guests, I never figured. That was the main inconvenience of the structure as a "machine for living," rectified in stages but not for some time.
The second major weirdness was the design of the kitchen, a room that for its size --roughly 10 feet square, smaller than the house's other 12x12 rooms -- had no fewer than six entrances: one from the staircase to the second floor, one from the basement, one from the foyer, two from the dining room, and the last from a small open porch that provided the only access to the outdoors from the rear of the house. Obviously visualized by a man who never cooked or washed dishes or did any of the household chores that normally take place in a kitchen. This seriously reduced available wall and counter space, additionally encouraging a chaotic traffic flow. (After various experiments I reduced these to the three most essential portals, closing off the others permanently.)
Aside from that, the building had the usual old-house issues to sort out: ancient and overloaded wiring, seemingly installed by an electrician with no grasp of logic (disconnected gas lines in the walls and ceilings indicate that the electricity came later); old plumbing; etc. Nothing in urgent need of attention. We heaved a sigh of relief and settled in. (Continued . . . )
