disquieting effect
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a strange and seemingly shunned house not far from either Queens Plaza or Court Square, a hidden relict on 43rd and Crescent which is shadowed by the Megalith. Intriguing, it’s a fairly old structure located at 25-01 43rd Avenue which is not long for this- or any other- world.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Department of Finance Building Classification for this lot is “V1-VACANT LAND”.
Don’t get me wrong- I’m not advocating for this structure to be saved or its owner’s plans for it to be thwarted in any way or even obliquely commenting on the rapid transformations and shocking scale of the “New Queens Plaza”– this isn’t one of those posts. Neither is it an extensive peeling back of hidden lore or sinister revelations.
Like a lot of things these days- it isn’t good, or bad- it just is.
The place does seem pretty “shunned” though.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What’s surprising about this little building, a clapboard scatterdash, is that it’s here at all. It’s obviously destined to be swept away, may already be gone frankly, as I haven’t been down this direction in better than a month. The enormous broom of economic inevitability is sweeping through the neighborhood and replacing the idiosyncratic and odd with the generic and corporate, and structures like these have no place here any more.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Enormous fencings, the modern kind which block the intentions of curious eyes, have been thrown up around the place. The process of clearance will eradicate traces of the former habitation, and since my self appointed mission is one of documentation, a point was made of finding a hole in said fencings large enough to fit a camera lens into. My dslr is too stout for such missions, but luckily the ever reliable Canon G10 continues to be part of my carry around kit.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The late model car half buried in debris and detritus behind this condemned and seemingly abandoned house witnessed in this product of the G10, however, makes me wonder exactly how long and why this property has been so astonishingly shunned.
The Newtown Pentacle 
“Neither is it an extensive peeling back of hidden lore or sinister revelations.”
Bah! Spoil sport!
A prosaic take on the matter:
Not shunned but merely abandonded by the owner(s) (probably an absentee owner) or the object of a protracted court battle between the heirs of the estate. It was neglected, possibly used as a tax write-off, until it became unsalvageable then the land sold. There’s nothing else that could be done in this case.
I shan’t mention how the owner couldn’t find tennants who wouldn’t stay more than a month, often fleeing in the middle of the night, ashen and shaking. No.
But I am interested in that old car. Properly restored (if possible), it would be a fine automobile to ramble about town in! Just the sort of ride I could envision our narrator driving.
Cav
January 19, 2011 at 5:14 pm
The Car.
Yesterday as I imagine it. Custodiat Memorium.
The old 1941 Chrysler Crown Imperial just sat in the backyard. Perhaps during the war, it wasn’t used much as it had a gas ration A card. Couldn’t get too far on 4 gallons of gas a week and the owner did his part for the war effort. Taking the streetcar or the subway to get around. Maybe the car broke down and during the war, parts were harder to find than hen’s teeth or a good mechanic.
Or perhaps he was a GI who unfortunately did not come home at war’s end.
After the war, it just sat in the driveway, forlorne and forgotten as later family generations were lured to newer, sleeker, automobiles until the old 1941 Chrysler’s condition deteriorated to the point of no return. The deep, rumbling voice of her engine forever stilled. Not worth fixing and someday, somebody will get around to having it towed away.
Nunc Requiem Hodie.
And now there she sits. It was a fine car in it’s day. Once someone’s pride and joy as much as the now forgotten and abandonded home she’s parked behind had once been. Faded, rusted, covered in decades of debris.
No, not shunned. Nothing more than a lost memory.
Cav
January 31, 2011 at 11:40 am