276 Otter Rock Drive
Barbara Wells new listing is an 1890 Queen (not that there’s anything wrong with that) Anne mansion that is exactly what a Belle haven house should look like: big, rambling and beautiful. There are seven bedrooms in the main house, most with views of Great Captain’s Harbor, more fireplaces than I could count, elegant rooms for entertaining and almost two acres of land. A carriage house and an asking price of $10,635,000 complete the package. A very, very nice house.
Moving Down a Bit
Hillary Mcatee (New England Land) has listed 29 Meadow Drive in Cos Cob for $995,000. Meadow is a quiet side street, this house is in beautiful condition and I imagine that it will be gone, for more than its asking price, by the time this column is published.
Scale
A lot of the huge new houses going up these days seem, to my eye, to lack any sort of human proportion. Master bedrooms resemble airplane hangers, “great rooms” could easily host the next Republican National Convention, bathrooms accommodate forty of your closest friends and so forth. I observed sad testimony to the cost of all this in one Back Country mansion: most of the house was barren of any sign of human activity but in an alcove off the great room the hapless family had assembled a normal-sized couch, a television and some chairs and books. It seemed obvious to me that this was the only room they felt comfortable in; what a waste of a house, and what a display of architectural ineptitude. Of course, these big boxes do sell like polyester leisure suits in the Seventies so perhaps the architects are just building to the market. But when was the last time you wore your leisure suit?
Alice in Blunderland
A fellow Realtor who I assume wishes to remain anonymous has asked that I advocate “bad driver school” for some of our clueless colleagues. It is certainly true that, were demonstrated driving competence a prerequisite for holding a real estate license, we would lose at least a quarter of our competition faster that a fender crumples. These people crowd into a car on open house days and talk among themselves, gab with their customers on cellphones, gesticulate, look at maps, and do everything except pay attention to their driving. They crash into our cars, park in the middle of the street, run over mailboxes and, in short, create havoc on our roadways. My friend would like to ban these duffers from public highways but I think that’s a bit harsh; why not have office managers conduct driving exams and, based on the results, assign designated drivers?
If it’s there, tax it!
Betsy Campbell, an RTM delegate, recently called for adding a second zoning enforcement officer and in support of her proposal said something to the effect that any town with a Grand List of twenty billion dollars can afford two zoning cops. For all I know we need a dozen additional compliance officers but I’m not impressed by reasoning that relies on “taxpayers can afford it” as its logical base. Needs and wants are endless; property owners’ money is not. I hope there’s a better argument out there before we add to the town bureaucracy.
Tch Tch
One of the chain store Realtors held a public open house the other day and advertised it with at least four signs, including one on the Merritt Parkway, all bearing its corporate name and logo. That’s a violation of both the Greenwich Association of Realtor’s rules and our town’s sign ordinance. I’m not certain that a generic open house sign is any less offensive to people upset by signage than one that also advertises the real estate firm but rules are rules, laws are laws, and even large firms shouldn’t unilaterally exempt themselves from them.
Power to the people!
A Brunswick student recently appeared in Greenwich Time wearing a Che Guevara tee shirt. Now, he could have been indulging in irony, an attitude not unknown to kids his age, but I did laugh. Brunswick tuition costs, what, Twenty-five thousand of a parent’s after-tax dollars? It reminded me of my favorite quote from the Sixties, made by a student radical to a reporter: “you don’t know what Hell is, man, until you’ve grown up in Scarsdale” (he was probably right, albeit unintentionally). Oh well, Churchill is supposed to have said, “if you aren’t a Progressive at twenty you have no heart. If you’re not a Conservative at forty you have no brain.” There’s plenty of time for young Che admirers to discover “Atlas Shrugged”.
Barbara Wells new listing is an 1890 Queen (not that there’s anything wrong with that) Anne mansion that is exactly what a Belle haven house should look like: big, rambling and beautiful. There are seven bedrooms in the main house, most with views of Great Captain’s Harbor, more fireplaces than I could count, elegant rooms for entertaining and almost two acres of land. A carriage house and an asking price of $10,635,000 complete the package. A very, very nice house.
Moving Down a Bit
Hillary Mcatee (New England Land) has listed 29 Meadow Drive in Cos Cob for $995,000. Meadow is a quiet side street, this house is in beautiful condition and I imagine that it will be gone, for more than its asking price, by the time this column is published.
Scale
A lot of the huge new houses going up these days seem, to my eye, to lack any sort of human proportion. Master bedrooms resemble airplane hangers, “great rooms” could easily host the next Republican National Convention, bathrooms accommodate forty of your closest friends and so forth. I observed sad testimony to the cost of all this in one Back Country mansion: most of the house was barren of any sign of human activity but in an alcove off the great room the hapless family had assembled a normal-sized couch, a television and some chairs and books. It seemed obvious to me that this was the only room they felt comfortable in; what a waste of a house, and what a display of architectural ineptitude. Of course, these big boxes do sell like polyester leisure suits in the Seventies so perhaps the architects are just building to the market. But when was the last time you wore your leisure suit?
Alice in Blunderland
A fellow Realtor who I assume wishes to remain anonymous has asked that I advocate “bad driver school” for some of our clueless colleagues. It is certainly true that, were demonstrated driving competence a prerequisite for holding a real estate license, we would lose at least a quarter of our competition faster that a fender crumples. These people crowd into a car on open house days and talk among themselves, gab with their customers on cellphones, gesticulate, look at maps, and do everything except pay attention to their driving. They crash into our cars, park in the middle of the street, run over mailboxes and, in short, create havoc on our roadways. My friend would like to ban these duffers from public highways but I think that’s a bit harsh; why not have office managers conduct driving exams and, based on the results, assign designated drivers?
If it’s there, tax it!
Betsy Campbell, an RTM delegate, recently called for adding a second zoning enforcement officer and in support of her proposal said something to the effect that any town with a Grand List of twenty billion dollars can afford two zoning cops. For all I know we need a dozen additional compliance officers but I’m not impressed by reasoning that relies on “taxpayers can afford it” as its logical base. Needs and wants are endless; property owners’ money is not. I hope there’s a better argument out there before we add to the town bureaucracy.
Tch Tch
One of the chain store Realtors held a public open house the other day and advertised it with at least four signs, including one on the Merritt Parkway, all bearing its corporate name and logo. That’s a violation of both the Greenwich Association of Realtor’s rules and our town’s sign ordinance. I’m not certain that a generic open house sign is any less offensive to people upset by signage than one that also advertises the real estate firm but rules are rules, laws are laws, and even large firms shouldn’t unilaterally exempt themselves from them.
Power to the people!
A Brunswick student recently appeared in Greenwich Time wearing a Che Guevara tee shirt. Now, he could have been indulging in irony, an attitude not unknown to kids his age, but I did laugh. Brunswick tuition costs, what, Twenty-five thousand of a parent’s after-tax dollars? It reminded me of my favorite quote from the Sixties, made by a student radical to a reporter: “you don’t know what Hell is, man, until you’ve grown up in Scarsdale” (he was probably right, albeit unintentionally). Oh well, Churchill is supposed to have said, “if you aren’t a Progressive at twenty you have no heart. If you’re not a Conservative at forty you have no brain.” There’s plenty of time for young Che admirers to discover “Atlas Shrugged”.
posted by Chris Fountain at 10:16 AM
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