
New Jersey Tudor
Island Surveyor confirms that 17 Meadowcroft is slated for demolition. He’s troubled by that, I’m not, and here’s why:
The house sat on the market for 508 days and no one wanted it. How long should a property owner be expected to pay taxes on and maintain a house so that neighbors can drive by and enjoy its architecture? I think 500 days is enough; if someone wanted to save this 1929 structure, he had plenty of time to do so.
On a related note, between its 2005 and 2010 renovations, this mock Tudor was completely modernized: the kitchen was brought up to date, and the bathrooms and the mechanicals, so if anyone wanted to live here, its condition was not an issue. But Tudors are lousy houses to live in – the craze for building them in America was just another unfortunate diversion in American architectural style that has now passed, and I won’t miss it. Small leaded windows, dark, narrow hallways, undersized rooms, poor layout; all the hallmarks of a Tudor, all unwanted now.
Meadowcroft Lane, once one of the prettiest streets in Greenwich, lost all its charm when Mark Mariani arrived with his bulldozers and his super-sized “Westchester-gauche” building design, a design that has now been stamped out and repeated all over town. If this Tudor is to be replaced by something resembling a Mariani well, at least Meadowcroft will have a uniform mediocrity now, instead of a few reminders of what it once was.
To my eye, the only new house that has dramatically improved our streetscape is that stunning contemporary perched on the rocks at 332 (? Somewhere up there) Stanwich Road. The rest of what’s gone up has either replaced 1960’s – 1980’s POS or older homes built in mock-euro styles for the newly arrived rich at the turn of the last century. A new crowd, a new style, but nothing’s really changed, and won’t.
So fire up that dozer and have at it.