For The New
Owners:
Our Story of 307
Stratford Road
We discovered
Ditmas Park year ago when we got lost trying to find a party at Ira and Tracey's
apartment in Kensington. We were on the wrong side of McDonald Avenue looking
for Albemarle Road, and we were amazed by what we saw. At the time, I made a
mental note to remember the beautiful neighborhood in which we found ourselves.
As a new mother, I
was experiencing a rather sudden nesting instinct and very much wanted to have
a house of our own. We were renting in Boerum Hill at the time. I began looking
at ads for houses in the Times each Sunday-long before there was the Internet
for searches. One Sunday, we got a Brooklyn edition of the paper, (rather than
the Manhattan edition,) and the real estate listings were numerous and included
many open houses in the area. I began attending with Elsa in my arms, and became
known to local realtors as 'the lady with the baby.'
That summer, there
were six listings of interest to us, all in the $200 to 300K range. I fell in
love with a dreadful home in terrible shape on Westminster Road that our
engineer nixed immediately. During our Maine vacation afterwards, Jonathan I
reflected on our other options. We decided that a house with a double parlor
would best suit our needs for a music room and a living room. We realized that
the house we should buy was 307.
Amazingly, when we
returned to the city, the house with the double parlor was still available and now
FSBO. We visited again, made an offer that was accepted, somehow qualified for
a mortgage and closed just before Thanksgiving in 1993. Elsa had just turned
one.
To our friends and
family, the house seemed huge-6 bedrooms! But I knew that by comparison, ours
was a tiny Ditmas Park house. The rooms were small and there were only 1 1/2
bathrooms. But I thought it was perfect for us. I remember asking myself,
"Who are we? Rockefellers? This house is plenty big." I often find
that we tend to believe in 'less being quite enough'.
After we closed, I
was anxious to invite my mother's group over to see the house. They oohed and
ahhed and told me to put gates on the stairs right away to protect Elsa from
falling. Instead, I taught Elsa how to climb up and down the stairs safely. I
modeled turning towards the stairs on my knees, and crawling down step by step.
She learned right away and never had a problem!
At the time, there
wasn't much happening commercially on Cortelyou Road. We were thrilled when
Cinqo de Mayo opened and we finally had a restaurant that we could walk to-and
a good one, too! We spent most of our time and did all of our shopping in Park
Slope, but I didn't mind because I always had a parking space when I got home, in my driveway!
Slowly we noticed that
the old ladies with stockings and shopping carts in our neighborhood were being
replaced by younger families with strollers. The first new mom I met was Kasia,
and her baby Justin. My mentor neighbor was Marilyn, mother of Hannah and
Molly, who set me up with Doreen for childcare, nursery schools and later,
art classes in her home! We soon met Soap Opera Alice, who was really on a soap
opera, mother of Anna and Julia, and whom everyone's husband was swooning over. Nancy
and Bob were our Brady-bunch family who combined their kids from previous
marriages and then adopted three more! They kindly shared their daughter Amelia
with us and she became a sister to Elsa. Wendy, next door, had older girls,
Kelly and Lindsay. Doris, too, had older children, Kiwi and Jennifer. Soon,
there was also Sara and Mike with Allegra and Marco, Julie Sullivan and her
brood of four, who was replaced when she
moved by Marcia, Stephen, Graham and Jamie. We also got Mary and Tony with
Harris and Adrian and eventually, Ira and Tracey, the folks from Kensington,
joined us in Ditmas Park and had Gus and Nattie. We added Jeremy to our family,
a Ditmas Park bred, in July 1995. But the best for the neighborhood was the
addition of Coco and Bruce and their three daughters, Vanessa, Vivian and Vera,
and the advent of a weekly front-porch Happy Hour and much later, First
Acoustics, a music concert series, right
across the street! Coco brought everyone she knows together: neighbors,
friends, Unitarians, family and talented (some famous) musicians!
Our back yard was
the perfect setting for birthday parties. Both of our children have summer
birthdays and they each had parties at home for many years. I have saved the
handmade invitations I sent out each year in their baby books. Halloween is an
especially fun time in the neighborhood. Lots of folks come from other
neighborhoods to trick or treat. One year, Jonathan gave out candy with no
costume on, just a headband designed to look like he had a knife stuck through
his skull. It was so funny! When Elsa was 13, she worked as a mother's helper.
One Easter, she planned an Easter party for all of the little kids she knew.
She lead lots of activities and gave out prizes and gifts and conducted an egg
hunt in our back yard. She did this all by herself!
One of my favorite
aspects of our new house was its proximity to Prospect Park. We spend many a
Saturday at the Parade Grounds watching and refereeing soccer games. We also
rode the loop on our bikes quite often. Later, we became regulars at the dog
run in the Nethermead. One year, Elsa received horseback riding lessons for
Christmas and rode a few times at Kensington Stables.
Finding suitable schools
for our kids was an issue and we neighbors moved in all different directions.
Marilyn sent her kids to a gifted program in Canarsie. Marcia's kids were
grandfathered in at PS 321. Some families joined the mini school at our zoned
PS 139. Others opted for PS 217 with a variance. I wanted a more progressive
school and chose PS 261 in District 15 for Elsa. Later, our whole family moved
to Brooklyn New School. Many families in our neighborhood eventually joined the
BNS family as well.
Jonathan and I
drove to BNS each day, but when our kids began attending other schools, they
became Q train experts. I remember racing to the Church Avenue station many
mornings with Elsa, trying to catch the 7:04 that would get her to Beacon High
School by 8:00am. Before the MTA had
cell phone service, on their ways home from the city, our kids would 'call from
the bridge' to arrange for pick up at Beverley Road so they didn't have to walk
home after dark. Jeremy had more than one unpleasant incident coming home from
the train, so we tried to make ourselves available to pick them up when ever
they were coming home late.
One interesting
fact about 307 is that for many years, the house was not connected to the main sewer line. Our
plumbing emptied out into a pit under the front yard! (We always wondered why
there was a sink hole in the middle of the lawn!) When we became aware of this,
we had to have a line to the city's sewer pipe installed. This cost $10K that
we did not have. Thankfully my mother was able to help us out.
When we bought
307, it was blue and covered with asbestos shingles. The porch windows were
trimmed with white window boxes with read hearts glued on. Inside were plastic red flowers. The
front door was painted red as well. We promptly
had it stripped. The day after we closed, Jonathan arrived with a crew of
painters before the seller, Gussie, and her family had left. It was so awkward!
The painters began stripping Gussie's living room wall paper right in
front of her. She and a neighbor were horrified and yelled at the painters to
stop. Jonathan explained that he had hired these men and that he was paying
them by the hour. Gussie and her friend moved outside. Thankfully, I was not
there to witness that.
In 2006, we
replaced the roof and decided to cover the house with vinyl siding to avoid
having to paint every year or two. We chose beige siding, but I often wonder if
I should have chosen grey to blend in better with the houses on either side of
us. The roofers added a layer of insulation under the siding which we hoped
would make the house more energy efficient. After we got the siding, Jonathan
spent a few days every summer washing his house with soapy brushes and a power
spray on the hose. The house looked freshly painted each fall.
Years later, the new
pipe to the main line was compromised by tree roots and had to be replaced.
Again, our lawn was torn up and we decided to replace the grass with a
perennial garden to support the environment as many friends and neighbors were
doing. Jonathan spent weeks carefully and slowly digging up the remaining roots
from the grass, literally inch by inch, and breaking up clumps of soil. When
all of the soil was lose, we designed the garden and planted flowering bushes
that would bloom all year long. Many neighbors assumed that Tracey, the
neighborhood gardener, designed our lawn. I always proudly explained that
Jonathan, too, is a great garden designer!
When I asked
Jonathan about his favorite 307 story, he recalled the day long ago when Elsa
came to him and said, "Daddy, my metal straw went down the drain." He
had to disconnect the drain from the kitchen sink to retrieve the straw, which
took considerable doing.
I remember another
day, just after we bought the house, that Jonathan says changed his life. We
were having a problem with the faucet in the kitchen and Jonathan called a
plumber who came, unscrewed the screen, rinsed it out, replaced it and charged
him $100 for 5 minutes of work. That was the last time Jonathan called a
repairman.
Elsa recalled
another story. Once, a neighbor, Willa, was all dressed up to attend a wedding.
She was crossing the street and Elsa, Kayla (Amelia's young daughter) and I
were watching from an open 3rd floor window. We thought Willa looked beautiful,
so we hollered out the window and told her that her dress was lovely. I then
muttered to Elsa that I did not especially like Willa's shoes. Kayla then
hollered out, "But Jenny hates your shoes!"
When Jeremy was a teenager, he learned how to sneak out of the house after Jonathan and
I had gone to sleep. I had bells on the front and back doors, but Jeremy could
silently climb out of his bedroom window, onto the roof of the kitchen, and
then shimmy his way down to the deck railings. He and a naughty friend would be
out and about the neighborhood, doing naughty things like egging houses. One
night, Jeremy was returned to us in a patrol car at 4am. That was quite a
shock! Had I known, I would have had bells on the windows, too.
In the back yard,
there is a mulberry tree next to Wendy's fence. I planted this tree years ago
because as a third grade teacher at BNS, we taught an Ancient China curriculum
in the fall each year. As part of the study, we raised silk worms. Silk worms
only eat mulberry leaves, and finding leaves in Brooklyn in the fall is tricky.
We teachers often found ourselves trespassing onto private properties all over
Brooklyn to pick mulberry leaves from people's trees for the worms in school.
So I ordered a mulberry tree from a nursery for our yard. It was years before the
tree produced enough leaves to feed the worms, and by that time, I was no
longer teaching third grade. Recently the third grade abandoned the Ancient
China study and no longer raises silkworms. Now our tree has plenty of leaves.
We planted many
trees on the property. I consider the trees to be my legacy. In front of the
garage, there are two cedar trees that were barely the height of the chain link
fence when they were put in. The flowering cherry tree along the same fence was
also a baby that grew fast. It grew so fast that our next door neighbor on the
Cortelyou side, Mac, was concerned that the tree was allowing squirrels to
enter his eaves. One day while we were at work, he had the limbs on his side
chopped off, leaving it lopsided, and, in my opinion, ruined. Distraught, I
went to the police, but there was nothing they would do for me. Sadly, that
ended our friendship. I hope you have a better relationship! Fortunately,
nature is strong and the tree bounced back. You will enjoy beautiful pink
blossoms from this tree, early each spring.
I am most proud of
the flowering dogwood in the front yard. It was the very first tree I planted. For
years I waited for it to grow taller than the porch, as Dot and Vinnie's is at
the corner of Stratford and Slocum. The dogwood grew slowly because the
gardener who planted it, an old Italian man from Bensonhurst, left the iron
cage around the root ball when he placed it in the soil. Apparently, this was
the practice, to slow the growth while increasing the number of blossoms each
spring. The tree does have many blossoms each year and, recently, the tree top
branch poked out above the porch!
There was also a
huge tree in the yard behind us that became weak and unhealthy. With each
storm, limbs fell, endangering us and other neighbors. The owner of the
property was elusive and unresponsive, and it was not until Jonathan threatened
her on the phone that she finally had the tree cut down. Our previously shady
back yard suddenly became sunny and exposed the yellow house behind it. It
might be a good idea to plant some fast growing trees along the back fence
line, now that they can get sun, to obscure that house.
Stratford Road is a
street that has had more than its share of drama. In addition to torrid love
affairs amongst the trash cans, subsequent divorces, runaway children and
gender transitions, there have been two murders. Yes! The first was the famous
John Giuca case. The son of our beloved babysitter, Doreen, was convicted of
felony-murder in the death of a CT college student named Mark Fisher. The case
was all over the news and dragged on for years, through the tumultuous trail. It
was hard for all of us to believe that our babysitter's sweet son would grow up
and be involved in something so awful and serious! Doreen insists that John is innocent, of course, and many neighbors agree with her. The
second murder happened at the corner of Stratford and Beverley in the white
house-a tragic case of domestic violence. The house has since been sold and the
new owner has fixed it up extensively. I often wonder what happened to the two
children who lost their mother, and whose father is imprisoned.
We have famous
people in the neighborhood. Michelle Williams lives on Albemarle Road. Some
Hollywood folks bought the house at Rugby and Albemarle and do a huge Halloween
shin-dig. Many, many houses are used for TV and movie sets. Coco's house was
used to film parts of The Squid and the
Whale and I spent hours seated on my porch watching for stars to enter and
exit the house. Mary's house was used for a month for a Queen Latifa movie.
Alice teases that her house makes more in the business than she does since she
was killed off of her soap opera. Our house has never been selected for a site
so I just toss the flyers in the recycling, but you may get lucky!
Our family has
many, many fond memories that we will cherish of our experiences at 307. When
we decided to relocate, our children begged us to keep the house for them and for
their future families. But we did not fancy the idea of being long-distance
landlords. Plus, we believe that it is fitting that a new, young family enjoy
the house to create new memories and stories of its own. Elsa and Jeremy will find new communities of friends of their own, just as we did when we found Stratford Road.
Elsa, Jeremy, Jonathan
and I wish you every happiness! We hope you are healthy, warm and comfortable
in your new home.
