Home Discussions

My Auntie Clare and Uncle Henry have a place in Bedford, NY. This trip is my second time visiting their home: back in 2000 both my brother and I were out for the Sherwood family reunion.

Back then we both marveled at the house: it was huge, the kitchen was awesome, they had a deck and tiny machine-powered pool in the basement and the forest right out past the backyard grass. I had two cousins that grew up in that house, and to the credit of my Auntie and Uncle, they didn't turn out snotty; they're both quite lovely people.

Both Clare and Henry were lawyers before they had kids, and back in 1990 when we visited New York, we stayed at their apartment in Manhattan, a skyrise with a doorman. Like Corrie and I, they waited to have kids, but they waited even longer, which I'm sure helped provide them with the perspective necessary to raise such cool kids in such an amazing place.

We stayed two nights this visit, and in the past seventeen years they finished the basement, which I suppose they were working on back then. Their wine cellar is smaller than it was in 2000, but that's because the theater is finished. The theater connects to the workout area, with the endless pool and the hot tub. That area is underneath the deck, with a secret skylight you only know about from the basement area.

On the highest level of the house there are the kids' two rooms and a bathroom for them, on the 1.5 floor there was the master bedroom and large office, on the first floor was the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and a breakfast table in a sunny atrium right off the kitchen.

It's all very rectangular, and Uncle Henry joked that anything curved they added. They bought it back when they did, when their eldest child Danny was a toddler, because of the vicinity to the wilderness.

It's also the largest by square footage of any place we stayed this trip. It's very lived in, and beyond a few quirks (the monkey wallpaper in the bathroom?), the only thing that harbors a second look is the toilet paper.

Corrie made some professional observations about the era it was built and about the craftsmanship back then as well as the era of their upgrades, but it's more technical than I have the time for here.

Both Uncle Tom and Auntie Clare have awesome ranges, and kitchen setups in general. Clare was telling me about how she and Henry returned from their honeymoon in France carrying maybe four copper pots and pans onto the airplane. Henry has always been handy in the kitchen, and I guess he got a deal.

That was 1986, back when it barely mattered what you brought on the carryon...

Anne and Val's place in Leonia gave off the vibe of a very successful and sophisticated mancave,

Josh and Elizabeth bought a house in Poughkeepsie from the original owner. Her daughters were moving her into an elder care facility and were excited to be able to sell it to a young family. I hear they keep in touch with Josh and Elizabeth.

It was a mid-century modern kit house that was designed by a gentleman's name which I can't remember. He designed buildings in Manhattan that I recognized, and this particular design of a house won an award in 1954-ish.

It had tons of character. There were things I may have wanted to change, but the appeal is definitely there. Plus the backyard is huge and is also ringed with some wilderness on the back side.

The shape was very rectangular, but not exactly like the Bedford place---that was more of intersecting rectangular planes---this is like one large rectangle, but it feels very dynamic.

And that brings us back to Marc and Linda's. They had a two story place with a basement, so three stories. Plus a garage they don't put cars inside of, only storage. And there's plenty to store. With two kids, hockey, and general getting around, they have...stuff.

They even have a bounce house in the basement, along with a kitchenette ad bathroom. The basement is almost a self contained place to itself.

It seems funny to me that between Otium, the Bedford house, the Leonia house, and the Poughkeepsie house, that the Dobbs Ferry place with a bounce house in the basement and the forest up the street, is the most normal place we saw.