PART I INSTALLMENT 3
THE CROOKEDEST HOUSE ON CRAGMONT
At first sight, the general effect of 707 Cragmont could only be described as “looming”. The house was perched high on an upslope, well back from most of its neighbors. An enormous and outlandishly steep central gable soared above the facade, further increasing the towering effect. Yet despite this imposing setting, my first impression in gazing upward from the street was: Hmmm, there’s something not quite right about this place. The pencil-sketch illustration in the broker’s listing had been charming, but overly flattering; in person, the house looked rather more cockeyed. The left side of the facade featured a quaint projecting bay, but the pair of casement windows in it seemed somehow distorted, and there was likewise something odd and rambling about the entire facade.
When we clambered up the hill, mounted the porch stairs, and stepped inside, we saw why: the huge living room with its massive ceiling beams was spectacular, but the floor sloped so severely that approaching the fireplace at the opposite end felt like trudging up a hill. Once you reached that end of the room, the pair of windows in the little projecting bay looked even more crooked than they had from the street. Their sills slanted in parallel with the crooked floor, and the sash had been trimmed into two parallelograms in a last-ditch bid to keep them operable.
Adjoining the living room was a large dining room with a lovely triple window looking onto the rear garden—but that window, too, formed a parallelogram. The wall between the dining room and kitchen leaned so severely that its old-fashioned galley door became wedged on the kitchen floor when it swung inward. But it was the kitchen that really took the cake: several corners—as later measurements confirmed—were about seven inches out of plumb over their eight-foot height. In the adjoining breakfast room, a pair of French doors leading out to the garden was straight out of a Disney cartoon; they leaned over about five inches, and their tops and bottoms had been trimmed off at severe angles so they would close into their distorted frames.
Judging by the what we’d seen on the first floor alone, it was already obvious that 707 Cragmont was a structural catastrophe—and I couldn’t have been more pleased.
Next time: Intrigued by the lopsided old joint.
Although I was chastened by the near-debacle of finding a "historic creek" under the cottage we'd hoped to buy, I continued to search the real estate listings. Oddly, it wasn’t long before I came across another house on Cragmont Avenue, just six or seven doors south of the one we’d nearly been saddled with. The listing read, “There is work needed to restore it to its 1920s splendor, but the present owners have been happily residing here for more than 40 years!” I was immediately intrigued by this description—no doubt just as the broker intended—because it suggested that the house hadn’t been “modernized” and “updated”, both of which are dirty words to me. I detest the idea of people chasing fads that will invariably wither and die in a few short years, leaving their homes even more outdated than before. Indeed, I hated the faddish “updates” I saw in nearly every home we’d toured up to that point, especially ones—like the inescapable beige-and-white exterior paint schemes—that reflected the real estate industry’s lockstep ideas of what makes a house more marketable.
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| The realtor's sales card for our next find on Cragmont Avenue. The line drawing was charming, if inaccurate, but it did help mask the the rambling appearance of the facade, whose right side was almost a foot lower than the left. |
As for me, I was out to find an “original” house, just as classic car enthusiasts pine for the holy grail of an “original” car that hasn’t been repainted, modified, or otherwise molested. I was sick and tired of entering some quaint old cottage only to find acres of shiny black granite in the kitchen or some jarringly faddish accoutrement like a vessel sink in the bathroom. I’ve always believed that a house that retains its original architecture is forever insulated from the need to chase evanescent fads and fashions, while conversely, a house that’s continually modernized is forever enslaved to them. In short, if a real estate listing contained the industry’s favorite descriptor— “completely updated”—I could pretty well be sure that I’d hate the place. Hence, I found the slightly apologetic listing for 707 Cragmont Avenue attractive. While the broker no doubt intended the qualifier “work needed” to telegraph a possible bargain, I took it to mean that little had been done to wreck the place over the years—a prospect I found irresistible.
Here I should mention that the asking price for the house was $795,000. It was well north of the range we’d been considering—but, come on, it was just a bit more in relative terms, right? This was an era of extremely loose financing, and banks were more than happy to make a deal, however convoluted it might be. So, despite the higher price bracket, I figured this was a house worth looking at.
At first sight, the general effect of 707 Cragmont could only be described as “looming”. The house was perched high on an upslope, well back from most of its neighbors. An enormous and outlandishly steep central gable soared above the facade, further increasing the towering effect. Yet despite this imposing setting, my first impression in gazing upward from the street was: Hmmm, there’s something not quite right about this place. The pencil-sketch illustration in the broker’s listing had been charming, but overly flattering; in person, the house looked rather more cockeyed. The left side of the facade featured a quaint projecting bay, but the pair of casement windows in it seemed somehow distorted, and there was likewise something odd and rambling about the entire facade.
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| "The Crookedest House" as it looked around 1960. By this time, it had already endured thirty years of landslide damage, with some walls tilted as much as seven inches out of plumb. |
Adjoining the living room was a large dining room with a lovely triple window looking onto the rear garden—but that window, too, formed a parallelogram. The wall between the dining room and kitchen leaned so severely that its old-fashioned galley door became wedged on the kitchen floor when it swung inward. But it was the kitchen that really took the cake: several corners—as later measurements confirmed—were about seven inches out of plumb over their eight-foot height. In the adjoining breakfast room, a pair of French doors leading out to the garden was straight out of a Disney cartoon; they leaned over about five inches, and their tops and bottoms had been trimmed off at severe angles so they would close into their distorted frames.
Judging by the what we’d seen on the first floor alone, it was already obvious that 707 Cragmont was a structural catastrophe—and I couldn’t have been more pleased.
Next time: Intrigued by the lopsided old joint.
