SCOUTING
FIELD NOTES

The Saddest House In New York City

07/02/2012

This is the story of a little house in Queens that broke my heart.

A few years ago, I was working on a movie that sent me to Richmond Hill, Queens, to find a beautiful, one-of-a-kind house. If you’ve never visited, Richmond Hill has a number of gorgeous turn-of-the-century Victorians…

…and in fact, chances are you’ve seen at least one or two Richmond Hill houses before in a film or TV show. Productions are always in the neighborhood for this rare look that’s tough to find:

For this particular film, we were looking for something a bit smaller, and it didn’t take long before I stumbled on this gem, built in 1905.

The exterior was gorgeous, and looked to be in pristine condition…

…and I especially loved the two upper floors, with their wonderful ornamentation and two oval windows. It turned out the house was for sale, and I quickly made an appointment for a tour.

As we were walking around the interior, I was equally impressed by the quality and personal touch in each room. It was clear that whoever used to live here cherished this house.

Out of curiosity, I asked what the house’s background was, and was told that its former owner, Nancy Cataldi, a local preservationist, had recently passed away. And suddenly, it all made sense.

Nancy was a major advocate for historical preservation in Richmond Hill, and had worked tirelessly to preserve the neighborhood she called home. She served as the president of the Richmond Hill Historical Society for nearly a decade, and is a major reason why so much beauty can still be found in Richmond Hill today. In fact, the street we were on was given the co-name “Nancy Cataldi Way” following her death.

As we were walking around looking at what remained of her possessions, I suddenly got a very sad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Nancy was gone, but her soul was all around us – in the worn floorboards, the antique furniture, the intricate wallpaper…But it was like I could feel that soul fading.

Ultimately, we didn’t film in the house due to rewrites moving the characters into a Manhattan apartment. Still, I never forgot the place, and when I was asked to find a house a few weeks ago, I immediately headed out to Richmond Hill to see if it might still be an option.

But as I drove by, something was wrong…

Maybe I didn’t have the correct address? I pulled over and double-checked my notes.

And then I realized:

I was at the right address.

Despite all her efforts and the endless amounts of preservation work she did in Richmond Hill, Nancy was never able to get her own street protected; the Landmarks Preservation Commission rejected her proposal in 2001.

According to this 2010 Daily News article, the new homeowners claim they were forced to renovate due to an invasion of carpenter ants.

You know what? Words are kind of failing me, so I’ll just let my pictures speak for themselves.

We ALL benefit from people like Nancy Cataldi long after they pass, and while it’s cute to name streets after preservationists, it’s a lot more important to carry on their legacy. Hopefully, this is a reminder of that.

Rest in peace, Nancy.

-SCOUT

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Alice

07/03/2012

This reminds me of “Beetlejuice” when the new owner says, “If you don’t let me gut out this house and make it my own, I will go insane AND TAKE YOU WITH ME!” OK…

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abby j

07/03/2012

I really hope there is no internet in heaven, the “soprano-ing” of that gorgeous painted lady has me sick to my stomach, I can’t imagine how Nancy would feel. WHY do people buy in these beautiful areas only to ruin the whole vibe with one nasty reno? These historical homes should be preserved. So short sighted. yuck. poo.

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abby j

07/03/2012

I hope they at least gave those windows, columns and front door to Build It Green. Oh God I feel sick.

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John

07/03/2012

Very sad – but don’t lose hope. With some work, it can be re-restored to the original splendor. We help make this happen all the time. Abby J is correct – it is very short sighted.

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Erik

07/03/2012

Will someone who knows the address of this do me the favor of printing out the comments and mailing it to them?
I bet they think it has been restored and will command an upgraded price.

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mike

07/03/2012

There’s a lot I could say, but I’ll keep it simple –

That is one ugly porch.

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Lakeplanner

07/03/2012

RE: Lalaland, who wrote “It’s not to my liking either, but does it count for something that it’s done very nicely according to a different aesthetic?”.

No offense, but this is relativist pap. A significant historical home, with a high degree of architectural integrity, was butchered by someone who purchased it on a whim with little or no understanding of the economic and cultural value of the property.

This is not subjective. The principles of traditional architecture are well established and based on the intellectual and cultural achievements of 5,000 years of civilization.

The deliberate and inept application of cheap, mass produced “traditional” architectural elements does not constitute a valid alternative aesthetic point of view. This is commodity construction designed to appeal to the least common denominator. Simply put, this is kitsch.

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1. Anne O
  
  07/06/2012
  
  I agree with Lalaland that this is a different aesthetic of an immigrant community – one I may venture to say is typically more newly well-to-do. That being said – Lakeplanner, I think you are absolutely correct. Imagine if the reverse were happening – American expats moving into historic neighborhoods and doing this.
  
  This is the neighborhood I live in and I am always sickened when I see lovely homes covered with fake brick, the yard concreted over, who knows what happening to the interior detail.
  
  In an earlier post, Ivan Mrakovcic said the LPC wouldn’t get landmark it. Well shame on them for not having a vision for this unique, irreplaceable neighborhood. But then again, it takes vision to see the future. Afterall the French Quarter in New Orleans was nearly razed until a group of visionaries stopped it.
  
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  1. Lakeplanner
    
    07/07/2012
    
    Thanks for the response Anne. I’m a professional urban planner with a background in urban design and historic preservation. Where I work in Central Florida, the oldest homes only go back to the early part of the last century – around 1905 or so. Most of the homes in our historic neighborhoods date from the 1920s and 30s and consist mostly of Craftsman and Spanish Revival style bungalows, along with local vernacular styles (e.g. Florida Cracker).
    
    Termites are a huge issue down here, yet we still manage to do a decent job preserving our relatively limited historical building stock. So, you can imagine my response when I read that carpenter ants were the justification for this monstrosity.
    
    As someone below commented, it takes a lot of money to look to this cheap. According to Zillow, the home last sold in December of 2009 for $555,000. See http://tinyurl.com/74nt3m6
    
    Sorry, but I don’t buy Ms. Harricharan’s argument that they couldn’t afford to maintain the facade. You don’t spend that kind of money on an immaculate historic home, only to destroy it’s value through the application of cheap vinyl windows, vinyl soffits, vinyl beadboard, stucco and fake brick veener, unless you’re a callous fool who has too much money and too little common sense.
    
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2. Anne O
  
  07/06/2012
  
  Interesting, I just showed this to a friend from South America. When she saw the renovation, she said, “oh, how nice.” Really??
  
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Rose

07/04/2012

I wonder why the new owners didn’t just flatten it to the ground and start again.
Cannot believe this Nick, lots of hearts along with yours are breaking over this.
May Nancy rest in peace indeed.

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Joel

07/04/2012

I’m not sure why they took down all of those lovely trees in the back yard. Now they have a great view of…..someone else’s back yard.

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Wells Moore

07/04/2012

I drive around eastern CT, where I am now living, and get sick to my stomach when I see the mutilation and destruction of historic houses and magnificent trees. I want to jump out of my car and scream at these idiots. But that would do no good. People need educatin’. The only way to prevent all our history from going down the Home Depot sewer is with preservation and education. People just don’t know any better. Someday the earth will reclaim all of this. But why do we have to suffer the idiots in the meantime?

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G Gonzalez

07/05/2012

I’m an Architect- Unfortunately I see too much of this. Good quality buildings with design integrity (often constructed at high cost for their time, or in traditional ways that would cost a fortune today) being destroyed to put up cheap, tacky, poorly designed buildings.
So often we have to push and argue to retain well designed, well constructed buildings, and update/ re-use them sensitively.
Too often people’s first instinct is to pull down the old & build something cheap. It is like going backwards.
Unfortunately, the majority of people have little education & appreciation for the built environment, despite its importance in everyone’s quality of life.

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Adam

07/05/2012

I have seen this kind of thing more often than I would care too. This is awful. Why bother investing in a beautiful historic home only to turn it into a suburban stereotype. I can only hope that they, at the very least, took the old doors and windows to a salvage place. It does scare me to think what they might have done to the interior.

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Ryan

07/05/2012

I think it looked better before. I’m also generally a supporter of preservation. Having said that, if this house was of such historical significance, why didn’t the author of this post or any of the commenters on the board purchase it in order to preserve it? It’s really easy to tell someone that they should spend their own according to your tastes. But the fact is that these new people owned the house, they wanted a different look, and they didn’t break the law in order to achieve it.

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1. Mara
  
  07/05/2012
  
  This is a failure of the Landmarks Commission. They should’ve required the owners to do any repair work to remain true to the house’s architectural history. The point of the Commission is to protect places like this from the blinding ignorance of people who purchase and then alter without realizing (or maybe just not caring) about the damage they’re doing. The Commission simply did not do its job. Shameful.
  
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Anne

07/05/2012

I was born and bred in Richmond Hill, 106th St., near Forest Park. I now live in the Paris area. I sold my family’s house when the last inhabitant passed away because I could not keep it. It had deteriorated. But something is wrong in Richmond Hill, and other areas of Queens. It’s that so many neighborhoods in NYC have renovated, become trendy, yes – gentrified beyond reason – but better connected to Manhattan to permit people to commute more easily to work.. None of this was ever done for Richmond Hill. The old Jamaica Avenue El still rattles deafeningly by, day and night, going basically nowhere. The few remaining businesses are basically Mom and Pop stores. The area will not attract the young and dynamic if transportation doesn’t improve (I used to take an hour and a half to get to Midtown Manhattan, between the slow infrequent bus and the subway) and some financial help (tax credits, whatever) should be made available to encourage people to restore. How about a “Queens Heights”, to complement Brooklyn Heights ?

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Dia

07/05/2012

Beautiful and thoughtful post.

That renovation is hideous and so sad–they turned that spectacular house into an eyesore.

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Hayes

07/05/2012

This story made me shed tears. A real sense of loss, even though I’m not from Queens and never lived there. But the house was a true thing of beauty that has been carelessly ripped to shreds.
The front view looks like a bucktoothed Donald Duck.
I agree with the comments about cultural sensitivity – if you’re moving to a new neighborhood you should be sensitive to maintaining the existing appearance. It’s called being a good neighbor. Presumably the appearance is what drew you to move there in the first place!
Can you imagine if someone decided that the Eiffel Tower should be more functional with vinyl siding? Or that the Statue of Liberty ought to be “updated” by making her look more like Rosy the Riveter?
This is a loss for all Americans, not just those from Queens.

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Adam

07/05/2012

Ok – I agree- it is tragic that her house was not protected – HOWEVER – to go off on the people who bought it and insult the way they decided to redesign THEIR home is beyond rude and arrogant. I have been a part of historical preservation initiatives, and yes, there are many structures worth preserving for their historical value and what they bring to the community. But there are times when people go overboard. Trying to maintain the look of a whole community just because some people think that is a more classy or more interesting style is snobbery at its worse. And it is counterproductive to creating a sustainable city. If you love that style so much, buy the house and maintain that style. If you can’t afford the house, and you chose to live somewhere else, then who should be paying to maintain the look of a house that would cost a fortune trying to meet the standards of the historical preservation society? You want the tax payers to foot that bill? If enough people loved that look so much, someone would have bought the place for that look. We have become a society that has abused our powers. Historical preservation was never meant to preserve things just because we liked the character of it. It was meant to preserve things that had HISTORICAL VALUE and that were rare enough that wihtout preservation, that type of structure will never be seen again. A movie theater from the 1900s that has the original screen and the original ceilings – and is only 1 of 4 left in the country – that is a worthy cause. It is a tourist attraction and it can generate revenue. Someone’s house – if they were famous and important to history – that makes sense. And yes, this house may have made sense to preserve based on its owner – but there are still plenty of those houses that are preserved and so people can still see what it used to be like.
I have a friend who lives in a house that was marked as historical – and they can’t even put in a handicap ramp for their mother who lives with them. These people didn’t tear down this place and turn it into a McDonalds – they didn’t build a McMansion – they didn’t do anything really other than change the color and some other typical modern updates that many people make these days. Do I agree with those updates? Nope. But should i or anyone else be judging them based on their TASTE? Their style? They come from a different culture – why should everyone who comes to this country adhere to what everyone else believes is beautiful. You are all a bunch of snobs and it makes me realize why I stopped getting involved in historical preservation issues.

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1. Lakeplanner
  
  07/07/2012
  
  Adam, you have a rather limited understanding of the purpose of historic preservation. The field has long since moved past the simplistic notion that only those buildings that are individually significant (i.e. someone famous lived there) or the last of their kind (i.e. your example of the 1900s movie theater) should be preserved only as historical curiosities that generate tourism dollars. Jane Jacobs, in her numerous writings, understood the value of historical preservation and would disagree with your assertion that it is counterproductive to creating a sustainable city.
  
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Adam

07/05/2012

Its not like these people bought this house saying “i can’t wait to make it look like something no one likes- and i’m glad they didn’t preserve it so I can have it” They had nothing to do with the decision for historical preservation. They simply found a house that was in a location they wanted to live in and met their needs for price and size. Who the hell are all of you to judge them. You want to judge someone – judge the township – and even them – you can’t fault because they would be on the hook for figuring out how to afford to preserve another house. You know how much these areas rely on property taxes for their revenues? You think it’s cheap to preserve whole blocks of houses in the NYC metro area? The woman should have pushed to have her house preserved before the others. But if the point of preserving the houses was to ensure people can see the history of the area, and to appreciate the architecture – the goal was achieved as through the other houses that were preserved. So please, stop ripping these people up. They don’t deserve it. No one forced any of you to live in that house or look at it. You can go spend your money to preserve whatever house you want to preserve.

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Adam

07/05/2012

Hearing comments like “yuck – what a disaster” is pathetic. I wonder what your house was before you had it. For all you know, before you had your house – there was a really cool looking tent or wood cabin where someone lived or sold beer. And now your ugly big house with air conditioning and cable tv is there. Think about that.

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Adam

07/05/2012

And finally – to the writer of the article – you should be ashamed of the way you are portraying this family who bought this house and demonizing them for doing something that everyone in this country hopes to do one day – own a home and make it theirs.

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1. Scout
  
  07/06/2012
  
  Adam –
  
  As you wrote: “It is tragic that her house was not protected.”
  
  Exactly when did I say anyone who owns this home did not have the right to make any and all changes they wanted to? Of course they have that right.
  
  I’ll reiterate my final paragraph:
  
  “We ALL benefit from people like Nancy Cataldi long after they pass, and while it’s cute to name streets after preservationists, it’s a lot more important to carry on their legacy. Hopefully, this is a reminder of that.”
  
  The point of my post is to remind people what can happen to unprotected historic homes. If you see these pictures and feel strongly, you can carry on Nancy’s legacy by becoming active in historic preservation. If you do not feel strongly, you can choose to ignore it and live with the changes.
  
  It’s as simple as that.
  
  Reply