Almost Gone

I wasn't expecting this.

I'd set out with my camera for Beaver Street south of Eagle to see if there were any visible remnants of the previously photographed Elks Lodge, the gutted structure behind the crane. Not much to see there, but next to it - to my surprise - was an old house. A brick house with cheerful moss-green paint still on its window frames.

The house must have been completely hidden for almost a century. The front of it appears to have faced Eagle Street where it would have been completely enveloped by the handsome DeWitt Clinton Hotel which was built in the 1920s. The north side of the house would have been blocked off by the Elks Lodge and adjacent structures on State Street, and the side shown here would have been obscured by buildings on Beaver Street which were torn down only recently as part of the ongoing stabilization and demolition of buildings in the Wellington Row parcel.

I don't know how old the house is, though, or from whom it was built. And I have to wonder why it was never demolished sooner and, instead, left standing and enclosed as other buildings rose around it.

It's probably gone already. When I poked my camera through the fence to take this picture, demolition had already begun on this long-forgotten house.