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Nov 6, 2011

Houses Die Too

     A home in my Garden District neighborhood will be torn down next week, a victim of neglect, the elements, a fire, and a recession.
     The house was on the National Register of Historic Places, but on Tuesday the Montgomery City council signed the death warrant, and soon it will be rubble and then nothing.
     I had never seen the house before...Noble Avenue is not a block I travel on...but if my relatively cursory research is correct, it was the home of Charles Linn Gay, who may be the same individual who died on July 27th in Daphne, on the Alabama coast. Or perhaps it was his Father's home, since the gentleman who passed was a Charles Linn Gay, III.
     There is a wikipedia article about the house here.
     Two women were there when I visited it on Saturday, drawn to it like myself, saddened by the loss of such a fine structure, but realistic too. At what price would you save it?










     The Gay House was built in 1900, making it relatively new as far as house ages go. The oldest timber frame house in America is in Massachusetts...it was built in 1637.
     And a stone residential building in New Mexico---still occupied!--- dates to between 1000 and 1450 A.D
     Still, the loss of the much younger home in my neighborhood is sad.

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