Gingerbread for Sale

There are a couple of astounding gingerbread houses on the market right now. Not the edible kind — the Victorian kind.

In the mid-19th century, when gingerbread trim on houses first became popular, carpenters would laboriously cut out custom patterns. By the 1870s and 1880s, the corbels, railings, brackets, and so on were mass-produced in factories (they still are; Google ‘Victorian gingerbread’ and you’ll see).

There’s gingerbread in abundance in places like Cape May, N.J., Ocean Grove, N.J., and Oak Bluffs in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. There’s quite a bit in Shelter Island, N.Y. and I’ve occasionally seen it elsewhere (anyone?)

Let’s hope this 6-bedroom house on Main Street in Sag Harbor is the custom kind. They’re asking $2.25 million for it.

And how about this one, in Greene County? CRAZY!! It’s called “the Icicle House,” for obvious reasons. It was built in 1845 and is on the market for only the fifth time, fully restored, for $290,000, with four acres.

Desperately in need of some foundation plantings to balance out the heavy-looking woodwork. A hedge of white hydrangeas would be nice.

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