Do you know where in Red Bank the above photo was taken?
Send your answer (or best guess) to [email protected] by noon, Thursday, June 11. We’ll reveal the location the next day.
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Here’s the answer to last week’s “Where.”
The photo was a shot of what “Where” regulars alternately called “The skinny house,” “house on a diet,” “the spite house,” “slim jim, ” or the “half house” at 87 Maple Avenue.
The skinny house has long fascinated the Wherester and he’s always wanted to go inside. Alas, several attempts to knock on all the doors resulted in no one coming to answer.
This listing with ample photos on a real estate website would have to suffice.
Skinny as it is, the house is deeply embedded in the memories of longtime locals.
Armand Crupi, who grew up on Peter’s Place, recalled hiding behind “slim jim” as a kid. Kathleen Harbot recalled walking past the house on her way to saturday matiness at the Carlton Theater. Seve Van Etten recalled living there with his wife when their first child was born. Alex Hensler, who previously lived a few doors down, wrote in with some pandemic memories of the skinny house whose dimensions turned out to be ideal for social distancing.
“Alana lives in the basement with her dog Nala,” he wrote. ” There is a doctor on the first floor. And my commuting partner Megan and her husband Steve lived on the top floor. We used to each stand at one of the columns since they are six feet apart and hang out! Other neighbors would stop by, too.”
Today, the red brick, gambrel-roofed structure is home to the office of Alyce DiBenedetto, a psychologist and the residents of a couple of narrow apartments.
Turns out, the photo had been featured in a Where Have I Seen This published five years ago by the previous Wheremaster.
Back then, redbankgreen wrote that we were unable “to verify or disprove the story Sharyn Ross heard from her grandfather, a mason: that it was built as a “spite” house.” But the skinny structure at 87 Maple Avenue, on the northeast corner at Peters Place, has been an object of curiosity since even before it was built more than a century ago.
A Red Bank Register article of October 21, 1908 announced that Mrs. Phoebe Colyer had just bought the vacant corner lot for $500 and planned to build on it over the coming winter.
The “odd-looking double house” she planned was to be just 15 feet wide and 85 feet long, two-and-half stories tall and with a full cellar, the newspaper reported.
Why so long and narrow? Zoning laws did not yet exist, but Drummond Schroeder, the manager of the estate from which the lot was derived, had imposed his own: when he sold the parcel four years earlier to Charles W. Jones, Schroeder included a deed restriction requiring that any house built there be set back 35 feet from both streets.
But Jones, having quickly forgotten the restriction, subdivided his purchase in three, creating a lot just 50 feet by 119 at the corner. Later realizing he’d only be able to build a house 15 feet wide to conform to the restriction, he went back asking that it be lifted, but Schroeder refused.
Mrs. Colyer, though, “knew about the restrictions in the deed and believed she could make the lot a good investment” by erecting the narrow house and dividing it into two rental units, according to the Register. She had “no doubt,” it said, that after $3,500 in construction costs, the apartments would be “constantly rented” at $20 to $25 per month, giving her a return of 12 to 15 percent on her investment.
Phoebe, however, apparently got cold phoete. She sold the property just five months later for an undisclosed price to William Bucklin, who had his own, but similar, building plans, Register reported.
Though he had “fears that the house might possibly be considered a detriment to the neighborhood because of its odd shape,” Bucklin said he planned to build it there that summer. And it was there when he sold the property in 1919 for $7,000, according to another report in the Register.
Thanks to those who wrote in.
Arlene Lospinoso, Adele Murphy, Armand Crupi, Jim Cummings, Alice McKeon, Brian Bopp, Deborah Tuzzo, Armand Crupi, Bill and Judy Fraser, Michael Maier, Peter Cavalier, Chuck Stern, The Colmorgen Kids, Christine Jahnig, Barbara Shannon, Frederick Ploetz, Ann Ciabattoni, Borden Wolcott, Chris Havens, Art Schneider, Amy Gonzalez, Dan Mancuso, Brian Fitzgerald, Sandra Talarico, Gina, Evie Kelly, Peter DeFazio, Mary Lundin, Kathleen Harbort, Kate Brannan, Chantel Bouw, Sue Noone, R Doremus, Alex Hensler, Peter Cavalier, ML, John Robinson, Jim Erving, Steve Van Etten, Charles, Dan Dean, Cathy Costa.
I hope I got everyone. Please email or text me immediately if we missed you at [email protected] or 848-331-8331. Your sharp eyes and hustle should be properly rewarded.
