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I looked up our old house in Portage Lakes, Ohio and it also hasn't aged well. Several times during stressful events I have dreamed of being in my old bedroom but when I stop to think how small it, and the closet, were I know I couldn't go back. It will always be my safe place in the storm, if only in my heart.
I can relate. The first home I lived in was my grandparents' multi-family home that was in a Boston neighborhood. It's where my mother, aunt and uncle grew up. My grandparents made the first floor into one apartment where they lived. The second and third floors each had 2 one bedroom apartments. One of them was occupied by my great-aunt (grandmother's sister) and great-uncle.
Even to this day I occasionally have a dream about being at that house with my grandmother. In the mid-60s, the city took the house and several others in a 3 block area in the name of urban renewal. We all had mixed feelings about it. One one hand, it was sad because the family had the property for over 40 years. Many of their neighbors were in the same position. Yet, on the other hand, the neighborhood was turning bad and we worried for my grandmother and great-aunt's safety, especially since both of them had been mugged a couple of times.
In their place, the city built low income townhouses. Behind the house were elevated train tracks. In the 80s, the city tore them down and relocated the subway line further to the west.
A couple of years ago, I took a walk through the area via google street maps. Oddly enough, doing so left me feeling sad. I think what saddened me then was what saddened me at the time---further up the street the buildings were left untouched by the city and to this day, they still stand. The Catholic church up the street eventually got deconsecrated, then torn down in the early 00s. Yet the old parochial school was deemed to be historic and is now a charter school. It was odd seeing was was still left. For example, there was a public transportation bus yard nearby as well as the elementary school where my mother and her siblings attended. Both those places still stand.
When I was 5, we moved to the 'burbs. Our first house we lived in 4 years. My parents bought it new. Then a builder built 4 houses right around the corner so my parents traded up. Both those houses still remain. When our daughter was growing up and we visited MA, we drove by both houses to show her where I lived. The elementary school was nearby and had become an early childhood education site and the playground had been fenced off. I got to show her where all my classrooms had been. My brother was with us during that trip and he and I reminisced about going to school there.
BTW, this is a great thread and I'm enjoying reading everybody's stories!
Just the simple fact that I can look up my old house is a testament to the power of google street. Haven't been in it for like 14 years but it' still there, neighborhood looks the same too.
I'm actually far more interested in the commercial development around my houses than the houses themselves, the areas around them look unrecognizable. It's truly crazy how fast new buildings go up and comparing them to when you grew up and there was nothing around
The house I owned as a young adult is across town from me - I am back in my childhood home, which I have enlarged and renovated - some, need to do more.
My previous house is being cared for - but the current owners, whom I met shortly after they moved in, recently painted the exterior trim the wrong color, a light yellow, and replaced the front door. That REALLY changed the house's appearance.
The house looks much smaller now. It is a 1950s fieldstone ranch, and I kept the trim painted chocolate brown (as it was when I bought the house) and the front door a warm soft red, giving it a rustic look. I kept red geraniums and impatiens on the front porch and in planters beside the porch steps, along with a Boston fern in a hanging basket, to warm it up.
The front yard trees included a blue spruce (originally a Christmas tree of former residents, I learned), a large maple, two street trees, and a dogwood that I added, giving it a cottage-in-the-woods appearance. Now, all are gone except the maple and the dogwood...
It looks okay now - just very different.
The current owners were kind enough to invite me inside when I drove by, saw them in the driveway, stopped and introduced myself. The interior shutters were gone from the large paneled family room's windows, and the natural wood walls were painted ivory. The log cabin look I favored was gone, but the built-in bookshelf was still there around one window. The half bath off the family room was reconfigured, which it had badly needed.
The kitchen was totally changed - the natural cherry wood cabinets were gone, replaced by off-white, though the curved edge shelves around the pass-through (into the family room) were still there, just painted. The ancient but very functional gas stove was long gone, and the floor was new (needed replacing). The 1950s yellow boomerang countertops were gone, not unexpectedly.
The formal living room fireplace's natural brick surround was painted as well, and the off-white living room walls were now greenish-gray. Ditto the adjoining dining room - chair rail was left ivory, and the chandelier was replaced (wish I had the old one). The gold wall-to-wall carpet (new when I moved in, provided by the sellers) was gone and the hardwood floors had been refinished nicely. The window treatment for the large picture window in the living room was different - ugly vertical Venetian blinds (not sure they're really Venetian blind when hung vertically, but have no other name for them)'
A large cheap wooden deck had been added at ground level in the back yard just outside the back door (which was also new and lacked the window the original door had), and the large tree near the backdoor was gone. A second wooden ground level deck was nearby - cheap subs. for concrete or stone patios, I suppose.
Most of the backyard trees were still there, including the June apple - but the cherry tree and a couple of sugar maples were gone, in addition to the missing back-door tree. A tulip tree which had originally volunteered at my parents' home and was transplanted as a sapling is now a thriving, tall, mature tree, as is a pine tree given away as a ten-inch sprig by the local power company about thirty-five years ago. The flower beds were neglected and overgrown, and someone had "planted" a large air conditioning unit smack in the middle of one of them - the original AC was beside the driveway. So the deep backyard was definitely less attractive than when I owned the place, but has potential still.
The garage had been painted light yellow to match the house. Again, it looked okay, but much smaller and more obtrusive than when it had brown trim.
Despite the changes, there were bird baths, planters out front, and some landscaping going on, and the current owners were very gracious, so I try to be thankful my much-loved little house is receiving care and being enjoyed once again, after several years as a neglected rental. I was of very modest means when I lived there, and saved up for a long time in order to buy it (and then was not financially able to do much more than simply maintain it), so it and the happy years I spent there will always be dear to me in memory.
I fell down the Google Earth hole one day and now I have a "Street View" photo of every house I ever lived in back in Ohio. The one I remember best recently sold for $ 124,000. The neighborhood looks the same except that the huge field behind the houses where my friends and I used to explore is now all houses. I zoomed in and the creek nearby where we used to catch pollywogs is still there. My elementary school is now an old age home.
Me, too! I have a wall collage of everywhere I’ve lived...except as an infant as it is now just a field (or maybe the highway beside the field) in my new home.
Let's see; I/we have lived in many houses of my 65 years wasting everyone's oxygen on this planet. But the funny part is, they are all within a ten mile radius of one another. So if need be, I just go and visit them.
I just Google Earth looked up my childhood home that I lived in from birth-8 years old. It's military housing, and looks exactly the same as it did in the 60s/70s. The "giant" hill facing it that my older brother used to gokart down is much smaller, though. lol
I like looking back, it's fun to see the changes. Except the last house that we sold 6 years ago. I had planted a bit of lavender that a friend gave me, and it had grown into a lovely bush. The new owner has ripped it out. Boo. That only bothers me because I meant to bring a cutting with us when we left town, and in the chaos I forgot. Plus the new owner is letting the hedges go wild and it looks kinda ratty. I loved that little house. Wish we could have brought the whole thing with us to our new city!
I do look up old houses that I have lived in . One was base housing but they all are torn down now and gone forever . The one pretty little house that my mother lived in when she was a girl and we lived in while my dad was serving overseas is really changed now they took down the chain link fence that was all around the property . They tore out all granny s hydrangeas and put shrubs in which look awful cause they are not trimming them properly . The one bright spot is the tree that my grandpa planted is still there and it was a wheeping willow and it is beautiful now I hope grandpa can see it . The swingset is long gone and so is the park across the street near the canal . The paved it over to make a walking trail and they paved the dirt road too that I used to ride my bike down to see a friend . I heard she still lives in the area and is married and had 4 boys and she bought her folks old house after they died . I would have loved to have bought my mothers child hood home but it is never for sale so I guess those folks who have lived in it like it and that would make my grandmother happy .My last house is owned by a lady who bought it from me and it looks like she is keeping it up like we did and I'm glad for that and she is precious for that . this house will go to who ever has the money regardless and we will purchase our retirement home when time comes .
I would be curious to see the very first apartment I ever had as an adult, but it's in Germany, so that's a bit of a hike.
I've done street views of the first apartment complex I lived in as a civilian--it was painted a soft, muted blue when I lived there, it's now a light tan. The blue was prettier, IMHO.
I live ten miles away from the apartment I lived in when I first moved to Colorado. I used to drive by it all the time--the patio railings had been green when I lived there, they've been painted brown. I haven't gone into the complex, so I don't know how it's changed from when I lived there.
I actually drove by my townhouse that I moved out of nearly three years ago. My hairdresser is in the area and I was curious. Looks like that HOA finally decided to do some painting and repair work. It's looking nicer. Part of me thought about stopping by to ask the new owner if I could see what she's done in the past three years, the other part of me's thinking, "Nah...."
My maternal grandparents' house came up for sale two years after my family sold it when my grandma died (my grandpa had passed on years before.) There were a couple of changes to it, mostly to the kitchen. When my grandparents lived there, the stove (electric) was against the south wall, the sink was at the east wall, and the fridge was at the north wall. The new owners ran a gas line and had the stove moved to the north wall, and put the fridge on the south wall. They also made some...slightly overly fancy changes to the bathroom. I think what they did might have been fine for a larger bathroom, but it was too much for that particular one.
My dad drove us by the house he grew up in when I was very little, but I don't remember anything except he decided he wasn't going to stop--his neighborhood had gone bad since his family moved out a few years before I was born (his mother had died and his dad decided to move afterwards.) I remember it was a shotgun house in North St. Louis, but that's it. I didn't spend much time where my paternal grandpa lived--it was pretty far out and he and my dad didn't have the best relationship as it was. I'm not even sure where he lived, and I was 14 when he died.
I make it a point to never go back to see the houses I grew up in. Won't even go down the street. It is too painful to see what has been done to them.
So true!
The last time I was forced to move due (to a divorce), I relocated myself and my tween-aged sons about two miles down the road so they could stay in their current school with their familiar teachers and friends.
We moved from a stunning 4000 SF custom-built two-storey with a finished basement, 7 years young, to a 1900 SF 1970s brick ranch on a slab and in terrible disrepair. I actually found the little beater house on Craigs List and bought it with cash from the proceeds of the sale of my big house. At the time, I was still traumatized and desperate to find something nearby that wouldn't require another mortgage.
For the first year or so, I drove by my former house often. It pained me a great deal when the new owners ripped out all of my flower beds, particularly the climbing roses and the trellis I had worked so hard to install.
They knew I lived only minutes away and would gladly have come to dig the landscaping up... oh, well. I knew they both worked and had a small child and probably didn't want to deal with pruning roses and tending flower beds. It was their house now to do with as they pleased, but I still cried.
Every time I go back to California I try to stop by and meet the people now living in our old house. I had some extensive research on the background of the house and the people who lived there. I gave copies to those who were interested.
One couple, when I told them I had installed the tin ceiling in the back parlor in 1999, tried to argue with me about it. They were sure it had to be original. They guy said you can tell original from the reproduction because of the depth of the detail. I told him where he could find the company that makes tin ceiling panels from vintage/antique molds. They were also appalled when I told them the "original" ceiling medallions were actually plastic, not plaster and were hand painted by a local artist who is a friend of mine (do you want to meet her?) I am pretty sure they remained convinced I was making it all up.
It has been a few years since I have been back. I go online from time to time to see if street view has been updated to see how our plantings are doing or what has been changed.
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