The history of a house — or, perhaps a state of mind — or, conceivably, both at once.
The first significant structural change effected was building a terrace off the ground-floor dining room, in 1971. I had this done not in wood but in cement poured into a framework of I-beams, with wrought-iron railings and a staircase down to the garden. (In those days, the difference in cost between the two alternatives was not staggering, and it proved a wise one-time investment.) As a bonus, this structural addition provided an instant ceiling to the flagstone patio below, thus creating a two-tiered outside space, airy and bright above, intimate and cool beneath.
Depending on the weather, we used the terrace, the patio, or both, passing food out to the terrace through the dining room's small rear window or carrying it down the steps from the back porch. Sometimes (ah, the nimbleness of youth) we even clambered over the radiator and through the dining-room window to get to the terrace more quickly. So, though not exactly easy to access, we had an available and semi-private outdoor space in which to relax and entertain.
There was also a wide, unscreened front porch running the full length of the house, ample for a play space for Edward and available for sitting. It faces a nondescript cluster of two-story brick apartments with a front lawn and trees that hasn't changed a bit. Van Duzer had been until then a fairly quiet, curving two-way street; a year after we moved in the city redesignated it as one-way, to alleviate the morning crush of traffic headed toward the ferry, so the speed of cars thereon and the general level of automotive noise increased. This made it less attractive as a hang-out -- too hectic, not someplace to converse or drink or eat if you had any alternative.
More than that, however, we were simply not front-porch sitters by inclination. Chalk it up to the fact that at that time we smoked some marijuana, and the sidewalks and buildings opposite had too clear a view. I think of it more as a generational thing. In any case, we adults didn't make much use of this area, relinquishing it to the younger set. I planted a crabapple tree and some privet hedge in the narrow front garden, just for cosmetic purposes and a bit of screening, then forgot about that area of the house for almost 25 years.
In the fall of 1972 Alex and I separated, heading toward divorce. I moved to East 4th St. in Manhattan, coming back to 465 Van Duzer only to pick Edward up or drop him off, until the fall of 1974, when Alex moved into Manhattan and I reoccupied the house. Aside from a few semester-long residencies out of town, I've lived here ever since.
During that period of her occupancy Alex used the ground floor as a photography exhibition space, calling it the Little Photo Gallery. Staten Island did not have a population ready to support such a venture, and it proved difficult to attract visitors from Manhattan. When she left in '74 she relocated to SoHo and founded Foto, a pioneering gallery, on Broome Street, which she ran for almost a decade.
Moving back in prompted me to make some changes I'd contemplated during my time away from the place. The first involved a real transformation of the back garden.
Though it provided shade, the mimosa tree dumped endless quantities of seedpods, leaves, flowerets, and other debris on the ground. Also, as a mature soft wood, now considerably straggly and overgrown, it threatened always to lose branches in stormy weather, many of which would have fallen across the retaining wall and onto our neighbors' property. I had it cut down in 1975. That expanded the space visually, and let in more sun.
The following summer (1976) I finally had the dining-room radiator repositioned and converted the window behind it into a storm door, adding light to the dining room and, most importantly, making it easy to step onto the terrace and from there walk down into the garden. For this I hired a local craftsman, Carmello di Benedetto, a Sicilian from Aetna, specialist in ornamental plasterwork but good at just about everything. At the same time as I had Carmello cut the doorway to the terrace, I also had him create brickwork planterboxes and walkways through most of the garden. He based this project on designs I sketched out with my live-in girlfriend of the time, Tricia Grantz.
This solved several problems at once. As previously mentioned, the soil in the back garden was a mix of clay and rock, in which nothing grew. There wasn't all that much of it, the lot having an odd shape, so putting in grass or sod and then mowing it seemed pointless. On the other hand, using it as a base for a layer of sand and then brickwork, with elevated planterboxes in which to grow flowers and vegetables, made perfect sense. It also added a distinctly mediterranean note to the appearance of the garden, which I realize in retrospect marked the moment of my first intuition of the house's true nature and the beginning of my collaboration with its architect.
Filled with good rich topsoil, kitchen scraps, and leaves from the remaining maple tree, the planterboxes (augmented by containers on the terrace) soon began yielding flowers and assorted vegetables. My simple rule of thumb has been that whatever thrives in this environment and survives my genuine, considered, but not always consistent care gets to live on here; all else fades away of its own accord. So assorted iris, lilies, daffodils, tulips, and roses have proven themselves, along with honeysuckle and wisteria and English ivy and violets. A dwarf Japanese red maple planted to honor my cat Tu -- and to transmute his corpse, buried beneath it -- replaced the mimosa and, in scale, works much better in that space. (Several other resident housecats, previous and subsequent to him, including my beloved Steiglitz and Mo, rest peacefully here as well.)
I have experimented with assorted vegetables and herbs and spices over the years. Dependable and worth the effort: tomatoes, mint, chives, sage, thyme, and a few others. One stretch of planterboxes contains a stand of pale yellow raspberries that provide handfuls of delight every year. I tried assorted roquette-type lettuces in 2004 but wasn't impressed with the results. However, the ability to get my hands in the dirt of my own homestead has soothed and nourished me since '76. Probably the spirit of my maternal grandparents, farm people from West Virginia, speaking through me. (Continued . . . )
