Monday, February 28, 2011

The Horror


Well, it happened. Construction has begun on the vacant lot across the road. 120 Amity Street has been sold and is currently nothing. By sometime next year it will be a townhouse.


The Lamm Insitute, next door at 110 Amity Street,  used to bother me. Children were wheeled in and out in wheelchairs with disabilities ranging from severe to very severe. The place was hollow and dirty and the huge grounds deserted, empty, neglected. All very Victorian and hard to swallow in 2010. I had grand plans of designing a real garden for the wheeled children. Then it was shuttered and put on the market.

A local homeless man used to sleep in the sheltered doorway until plywood doors barred it and gave him the boot late last fall, just when it turned cold.

Locally, Curbed tells us, it is known as The Amity Street Horror, though that was news to me. It was fairly horrific, though the architecture itself never bothered me. I like it. It was more the utter neglect characteristic of many of the LICH-owned buildings that surround us. And the Dickension children...


The real horror now, is noise. Heavy equipment is roaring in the cold drizzle, and it will be a long year. With double glazing buffering some of it in cold weather, spring will be interesting, with the usually-wide-open door to the tiny terrace admitting the roaring and the dust. I imagine myself sitting here and trying to write. Help.


Help.

9 comments:

  1. I lived two doors down from a construction site on east 87th street, years ago. It was indeed a nightmare, with the noise starting promptly at 7 am. I'd find another place to work/write if you can.

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  2. Thanks for the fracking link. The water is contaminated with radiation, so we won't test it, then we can say no problem. Cancer? Nothing to do with radioactive drinking water. And the ocean is not big enough to dilute it. Imagine, all that in the Karoo ... help ...

    What became of the children you wanted to make a garden for? Are they being better cared for somewhere else?

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  3. What a awful situation. Not a happy year.

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  4. time to apt hunt again? another horror.

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  5. Down on Degraw a wonderful old (decommissioned) church is being turned into fancy condos. Strong Place, I think it's called.

    And what about Raccoon House?

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  6. After the digging and rigging, it should get a little quieter. Let's hope they stick to code work hours.

    Try to be out of town when the jackhammer comes in for the water main -it'll come after they dig/pour the foundation is my best guess.

    also, noise canceling headphones....

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  7. Dit is terrible. Daar is nie dalk 'n stil biblioteek waar jy kan gaan sit en werk nie? Dis op die langduur goedkoper as 'n coffee shop.

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  8. there's nothing quite so upsetting as wheelchairs with severe disabilities. ;)

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