This thread is totally random

05C40 said:
For those of us who are not familiar with NY Route 9A, where was this photo taken?
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The rest of the story

$$$&&&&&$$$$

Percy Loomis Sperr, June 23, 1934

Still standing "Pumpkin House" ("16 Chittenden Place") was built in 1925, overhanging Riverside Drive off 186th St, then still rural with farms.

The Hudson Heights home is just north of George Washington Bridge (1931) built six years later.

The land was once owned by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. Engineer Cleveland Walcutt bought the property and built this cantilevered house for himself, now overhanging 265 feet above Henry Hudson Pkwy (updated).

Six bedrooms are smaller than 11.5 x 10 ft, mostly 8 x 10. Four originally had no doors. Two "bathrooms" had no baths, just showers. He lost the home in foreclosure by 1927.

With 181st St Station (1906) already open, the property soon became enveloped by apartment buildings. Only a few people have owned the property since 1925, mostly recently since 2019.

** *

UPDATE: "Chittenden Place" was in an 1880 guide, once an Estate (tower), just north of Stewart Castle owned by retail magnate AT Stewart.

18th C to early 20th C Washington Heights began with wealthy elites building castles and mansions on vast estates.

Lucius Chittenden's 130-acre estate was originally inside Broadway, 185th St, 193rd St, and Hudson River. Paterno Castle (1905) was built just south, from 181st to 185 Sts.

Many estates got subdivided to create current Washington Heights. This part was renamed Hudson Heights for prestige again in the 1990s.

"Chittenden Ave" and "Chittenden Place" are named for Lucius Chittenden.

This house does not actually stand on current "Chittenden Ave." It is on the cross street W 186th St, renamed Alex Rose Place in 1983. The street sign is right in front of the house.

W 186th St was also called "Chittenden Ave" on a 1955 map, but not on maps from 1921 to 1930.

This property was only addressed as "242" Boulevard Lafayette (Riverside) in 1921 and 1927 maps.

After this home's 1927 foreclosure, the address was repackaged as "16 Chittenden Place" perhaps to sell it.

Charles Schwartz bought the "House on Stilts" in 1930, and then entombed the stilts. He died in 1935 ("carbon monoxide poisoning" in the garage).

"16 Chittenden Place" was noted in the original 1934 Percy Loomis Sperr caption for this photo. But "Chittenden Place" is not on any 1921-55 map I found, only "Chittenden Avenue."

The "House on Stilts" was sold to Anna Schwartz in c1935, then to Eugene Principe in 1946, whose family owned it until 2000. A separate 1-bedroom was created.

New York Times (Dec 5, 1999) had the following reader question for Christopher Gray:

"I am the exclusive broker for the house where I grew up, popularly known as the Pumpkin House, at 16 Chittenden Place in Upper Manhattan. There are a number of stories about the house -- one is that the developer Charles Paterno, whose estate was nearby, built it as a husband-catching trap for one of his daughters. Can you provide any enlightenment? . . . Victor Principe, Douglas Elliman, Manhattan."

CG replied: "Stories abound about this house, identified in other records as 16 Chittenden Avenue, but it appears that the Paterno family had no connection to the property, which overlooks the Hudson River on a line with West 186th Street. The land was in the estate of James Gordon Bennett Jr., the publisher of The New York Herald, which sold it to a Cleveland Walcutt in 1923. Walcutt, then living on West 180th Street, filed plans for a $25,000 house designed by Franklin D. Pagan and Harold D. Verna. The cantilevered, steel-framed base jutted far out over the steep slope down to what was then part of Riverside Drive, now the northbound portion of the Henry Hudson Parkway."

Interior designer designer William Wesley Spink then bought the listed house in 2000.

$$$&&&$$$&&&$$$
 
StoneColdHeel said:
Not motivated to work today.
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My motivation to work from mid December to mid January is always so low lol. I usually take a vacation around Christmas so i’m starting to look forward to that/the holidays in general by the second week of December, then when I have to get back to work in January it’s always a little depressing and takes me a week or two to get back into a rhythm.

My job is mostly client facing too so that also makes things really slow this time of year with other people taking time off and focusing on internal stuff to wind down the year and get ramped up for next year.
 
Doing my 2025 Goals today. Personal ones were very easy, professional ones are a bit more challenging.
Golas include:
Read 24 books
Walk 3,000,000 steps
150 workouts
Get to 175 gradually (Q1 goal is 182)
 
I've gone off the goal standard. The only likely achievements for the year is planting a garden and reading five books a week, but those are inclinations and not goals.
 
I surely don't miss working outside on days like today. Oddly, it was often worse to work inside in unheated spaces because you didn't have the sun.
 
My four year old grandson is wandering around in the first snow he remembers trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue. Iss that every kids' automatic reaction to their first snow? All mine did it.
 
finesse said:
My four year old grandson is wandering around in the first snow he remembers trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue. Iss that every kids' automatic reaction to their first snow? All mine did it.
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Even little kids born well North of the Mason-Dixon Line who see many snow storms each year run around trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues.
 
Fwiw, five a week is a decrease. Until I was in my forties and started spending too much time on message boards, it was more like 8-10 unless I was in a brain candy stage and reading Louis Lamour westerns and Nero Wolfe mysteries. I'd read 2-3 of those a day. I've always been a big reader. Started in the first grade. I think it took about a month before the librarian told me I didn't have to stay in the primary school area any more.
 
CRHeel94 said:
That's still quite a voracious reading speed. And I thought I read fast.
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I watched a documentary about Bill Gates. He goes on a trip once a year to be completely alone for a week. His secretary showed the stack of books he would read in that week. I probably couldn't read all of them in a year. There had to be 10 books.
 
CRHeel94 said:
That's still quite a voracious reading speed. And I thought I read fast.
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When we were tested in the fifth/sixth grade ( Part of a pilot program for the gifted and talented in NC back in 62-63), I read better than twice the average speed and faster than anyone else.
 
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