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IT WORKED BEFORE, SO I’M TRYING IT AGAIN. I rented my townhouse in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, last month through this blog when six real estate brokers and Craigslist couldn’t do it. Now another of my rental properties is becoming available as of Oct. 1, 2009: a whole, albeit small, 1840s “trinity” house (3 floors – 1 room on each – plus basement and garden) in the South Kensington area of Philly, a few blocks from the trendiest of trendy neighborhoods, Northern Liberties, and not far from Fishtown.
The house is diminutive, like many old Philadelphia houses – about 200 square feet per floor, joined by narrow twisting stairs. (People with vertigo or bad knees need not apply.) It works for a single individual, a loving couple at most.
It gets great light, has a large-for-Philly backyard (mostly gravel but planting area could be expanded), original doors and proportions throughout. It’s totally charming, and the space feels good to be in. At least I think so, as does the tenant who’s lived there happily these past couple of years.
For an aficionado of old houses and vintage lifestyles, it’s a chance to live like a working-class family of the mid-19th century, but with more amenities (heat, indoor plumbing, electricity, etc.)
Kensington was once called “Little England” for the number of English immigrants who worked in the neighborhood’s behemoth textile and carpet factories, many of which have been converted to living lofts or artists’ studios.
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The house is on N. Palethorp between Jefferson and Oxford, a nearly traffic-free alley around the corner from the magnificent St. Michael church. It’s actually the rear half of two back-to-back trinities under one roof (they’re entirely separate, each with its own entrance). It was renovated (re-wired, new kitchen, new paint job) in 2007. Here’s how the layout stacks up:
- Ground floor: kitchen/dining. Opens to garden.
- 2nd floor: bedroom/bathroom with pedestal sink, claw-foot tub
- 3rd (top) floor: open loft-like space. Could be a living room, studio, or large bedroom (with the smaller room on the floor below used as a living/sitting room).
- Basement: washer/dryer, storage
The rent is $850/month, plus utilities (gas for heat, hot water, and cooking, and electricity).
You were thinking of moving to Philly anyway, weren’t you? Email me at caramia447@gmail.com for more info or pics, with a few details about your situation and a phone number.
This post is adapted from an article I wrote that appears in the current issue of Garden Design magazine. These are my own scouting shots, taken a year ago this month.
THE VIEW FROM THIS 4,000 SQUARE FOOT ROOFTOP TERRACE in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is a triple whammy, with the East River, the Manhattan skyline, and the monumental latticework of the Williamsburg Bridge all seen in close-up. It cried out for equally spectacular landscaping.
The client, who is in real estate, hired celebrity garden designer Rebecca Cole to turn the vast, 11th floor terrace into something two people could enjoy without feeling lost in space. Cole, a well-known TV personality and author, imagined the space as a sort of urban woodland, where you can “literally wander as you would through the woods, taking different paths around birches and evergreens, coming upon places to sit, noticing pretty little ground cover flowers.”
It does indeed feel like a natural landscape, which Cole designed by using the existing 24-inch-square concrete pavers almost like graph paper. She started with the trees (clump birch and red maple are the mainstays), “putting them in spaces that feel like they’re making winding paths. Then I figured out how many containers should surround them.”
Cube-shaped metal planters mimic the grids of steel across the river. They’re filled with tough country-style perennials like rudbeckia, echinacea, Russian sage, coreopsis, spirea, nepeta, and salvia. Sun-loving and drought-tolerant, they are surprisingly happy on an exposed urban roof.
The client wanted a water feature, but because of the windy conditions, a fountain was out. So Cole came up with an architectural solution, simple and geometric – little ‘infinity pools,’ flush with the ground. Here, too, the experience resembles a walk in the woods, where streams pop up every once in a while.
Half a dozen shallow rubber trays, pre-planted with sedums in mixed shapes and colors, form patterned ‘carpets,’ below, positioned for all-season viewing from the loft’s floor-to-ceiling windows.
TAKE A PEEK behind the massive privet hedge at the Barefoot Contessa’s East Hampton garden. I did that on Wednesday. It was open to the public for a few hours as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program, to benefit the organization’s work in preserving exceptional private gardens (usually of people who have died) that would otherwise be lost.
I generally find these Open Days fairly intimate affairs. Rarely crowded, they often feature eccentric and highly original gardens. Many times the gardeners are older women who have earned their stooped backs, cracked hands, and vast horticultural knowledge by dint of years of effort. Usually the homeowner/gardener is present to greet visitors and answer questions.
This garden was different. It’s the home of Ina Garten, the celebrity cookbook author and TV personality also known as the Barefoot Contessa. I’ve never seen the show or read her books, or even tasted her famous brownies, but I did enough research to discover that she was born in Brooklyn (applause) and is self-made, having worked up from modest beginnings to this perfectly manicured, sprawling estate. Her husband Jeffrey is the former dean of the Yale school of management.
[Click on any image below to enlarge]
It is a striking example of what can be done when money is no object. Here’s the description from the Open Days directory:
This garden features design work by Edwina von Gal implemented about fifteen years ago at Ina’s house, and new garden areas designed by Joseph W. Tyree at the barn Ina designed and built on an adjoining piece of property two years ago. Edwina’s original design at the house is arranged in squares like a kitchen garden, but is planted with perennials, annuals, roses, vegetables, and herbs. It includes a crabapple orchard and rose and hydrangea gardens, and is designed to feel like a traditional East Hampton garden. Joseph’s work at the new barn is set up into three distinct areas: the lawn, a walled garden, and a Lagerstroemia walk. The lawn connects the house by a series of low, broad, stone steps to the barn’s main terrace which is bordered by a low hedge and shaded by two great Linden trees. The sun-filled walled garden is planted with beds of lavender and herbs and has fragrant roses trained on the walls. The lagerstroemia walk is planted with only the white ‘Natchez’ variety of Lagerstroemia, boxwood, hydrangeas, and perennials and wraps around the walled garden and barn.
A short distance off Main Street, the garden is so insulated by hedges and 40′ tall cypresses it could be somewhere in the Tuscan hills. It is undeniably beautiful, yet it feels somewhat impersonal and not particularly imaginative. Maybe I’m just being a grouch, or suffering a case of sour grapes, when you consider the dramatic contrast to my own humble weed patch.
Ina Garten is a fabulously successful entrepreneur, and by all accounts a delightful person, but she’s not a gardener. Even when you can hire the best to do it for you, somehow it’s not the same.
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