Gingerbread House

Timon and I are buying a house! A gingerbread house built in 1910, lovingly renovated by a young couple before us. The house is part of an old summer church camp, founded in 1874 in Ossining, NY. The camp has about 25 cottages, most of them from the victorian era, and some in better shape than others. While it is possible to drive your car up to your house to unload groceries, etc, there are no cars in the camp (they are parked at the entrance to the camp itself). On the property there are old growth trees, a huge old barn, and a big meeting house where potlucks are occasionally held. The little camp is surrounded by a small buffer of woods, and a ravine and stream borders one side. In trying to come up with a description of the feel of the camp, some have suggested: Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, a Victorian trailer park (no trailers, but trailer-sized cottages), and one cottage in particular looks like the house that fell on the wicked witch of the east. I'll try to take some more pics of the surrounding camp in the future, but for now the photos are mostly of our house, which is rumored to have been the minister's home. We are hoping to move in by December 1, but at least before Christmas. You can click on any photo to see a larger picture.

The living room, where we hope to put in a wood burning stove.
The furniture, obviously, is not ours.

Looking from the entryway through the dining room to where Mika is standing in the kitchen.

The dining room, which we are thinking about turning into a library.

The kitchen is probably our favorite room.

We do get to keep this blue hutch.

Mika helping us measure and takes notes on the rooms.

The second floor has the master bedroom, a small bedroom, and a bathroom. There is another half bath downstairs, off the dining room.

Master bedroom.

Bedroom #2.

Stairs to the attic.

There are plans within plans for the attic, and its first incarnation will likely be an office/art studio.

Our next door neighbors

We've already met the neighbors who live in this white house. They are our age, and he is an ecologist who works with a good friend of ours, and she is an editor at Audobon magazine. Another good friend of ours lives 4 miles away, so we're very excited about the community. We are still on the same train line, but about 15 minutes north from our current apartment.

Walker Evans, the photographer who worked with James Agee on the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, lived in Ossining off and on, and took this photograph of a cottage in our camp in 1930: