Raccoon House owner identified at last

Above: the gutter shared with Raccoon House, after rain.

Emails arrived asking me to cease use (i.e. runoff from watering plants) of the shared-house gutter between us and Raccoon House until a leak had been repaired next door. The name on the emails led me to Google, which led me to this post on Lost City.

It identifies the owner of Raccoon House.

We received a polite note from Raccoon House the other day telling us that the drain in the gutter shared by our houses was blocked and that a leak was dripping onto the unoccupied top floor next door (maybe onto the raccoon?). Vincent, perched on the edge of the roof, managed to miraculously unplug the gutter, finding two hidden drains, so the problem was solved. Not that it was all ours to solve. One of the drains belongs to Raccoon House. I wrote another note letting them know that it was fixed, and left my email address on the note.

He is also the owner of the long-abandoned but now-in-renovation (which has stalled for months apparently because of a lawsuit about not having permits) house at the corner, two houses over, where Estorbo was lost a couple of years ago, and upon which a swat steam descended in 2005 looking for a notorious fugitive.

These revealing articles in the Daily News say he lives on the block. Where? The answer has to be Raccoon House. I had thought that the occupants were luckless tenants being starved out by a mean landlord.

The roof of Raccoon House sags at the west end, so is a permanent pool of mosquito rainwater. Well, usually. Not in the Heatwave.

Before I found the Lost City post, I found a couple of others. Pause for thought.

Raccoon House's facade is crumbling, the ornate wood beneath the roof line is pocked and rotten. The tartop roof itself is a breeding ground for mosquitoes when there is rainwater (a long-ago memory it seems; will it ever rain again?). The gutter downpipe does not connect to the sewer- pipe so floods our courtyard when it rains. There is no glass in the windows of the upper rear floors. It's fascinating.

So bear it all in mind. In case a raccoon, or blogger, in cement booties turns up in the East River...