Ornoth

Every so often, curiosity impels me to check out my former homes on Google Streetview, to see how much they’ve changed over time. Usually it’s nothing dramatic, but today’s exception left me stunned, shocked, and incredibly grateful.

Back in 2001, I bought my first – and to date only – property, a condo unit on the second floor of the historic former Hotel Vendome, located in Boston’s trendy Back Bay.

By far its most dramatic feature – and the reason I selected it after viewing seventy others – was a sweeping view of the neighborhood. The living room’s south-facing bay windows not only offered tons of delightful sunshine, but overlooked an empty lot that had served as a parking lot since 1958. It was the only unit I’d seen that had such a wide-open vista.

That panorama included many of Boston’s notable buildings: the Hancock tower, the Prudential tower, the New Old South Church with its distinctive Italianate campanile, 500 Boylston, 222 Berkeley, the Boston Art Club and the 1884 headquarters of the Massachusetts Bicycle Club (both now part of the Snowden School). I could watch shoppers walking along trendy Newbury Street, catch glimpses of Boston Marathon participants as they finished in Copley Square, or admire the colorful DuBarry trompe d’oeil mural that decorated the exterior of one of the buildings facing the parking lot.

It was truly a fabulous view, and I enjoyed it virtually every single day for the fifteen years that I lived there. Here’s what it looked like around the time I moved in (as always, click through for a larger version):

Of course, there were also days when it looked a little more like this:

It was no secret to me how great a blessing it was that no one had built anything on that lot. In fact, it was kind of a mystery why it never happened. Although I never heard rumor of any plans, it was something I always feared. But nothing ever materialized, and I moved out and sold the unit in February 2016.

So you can imagine my shock when I happened to check my old place out on StreetView. Here’s the closest equivalent to what you would see out my bay windows as of September 2022:

Yeah. Wow.

The lot was purchased in 2019 by L3 Capital in Chicago, who filed a project review in 2020 with the Boston Planning and Development Agency for a five-story, 43,000 square foot building containing retail and office space. A building permit was issued a year later, and construction appears to have moved along rapidly.

So that accounts for my “stunned and shocked” reaction.

As for “gratitude”, that comes from having enjoyed that unsurpassed view for fifteen wonderful years, and for the blind luck of having sold when I did, just four years before this development project came to light, on land that had been a parking lot for the previous sixty years!

My Back Bay condo was a truly amazing place to live, and that panoramic view was a huge, irreplaceable part of it. But that treasured view is one that I truly can never again experience.

On leap day, we closed the sale of my apartment in the historic Hotel Vendome condo in Boston’s Copley Square.

Neither my original purchase nor the recent sale of the property were my favorite life experiences. Both entailed an awful lot of seemingly-unnecessary complexity, risk, and bother. Although I suppose the size of the transaction warrants such precautions.

When I bought the unit back in 2001, I was looking for a safe place to stash the proceeds from participating in Sapient’s IPO and meteoric rise to prominence and inclusion in the S&P 500. I paid a lot of capital gains tax and bought when real estate prices were high, but at least I liquidated my company stock options before the Internet Bubble burst in the early 2000s. Many of my coworkers held onto their shares—or worse still, used them as margin leverage—and lost all their unrealized fortunes when the market turned on them.

In the end, I’d like to say that owning a condo turned out to be a really good investment. After all, it proved to be a lot safer than Sapient stock, and the property appreciated by about 33 percent during the fifteen years I was there.

On the other hand, I paid a whole shitload of mortgage interest. While that (and property taxes) provided a nice income tax deduction, the government gives you the deduction because you are paying so much in interest (and property tax). So net-net, I’m not sure I got a better return than if I had invested the money somewhere else.

The good news is that I’m debt-free for the first time in 15 years, which is always an awesome feeling. Even though I’m over 50, being financially self-sufficient and independent remains one of the most central values that I inherited from my parents.

However, liquidating that big asset comes with the intimidating (but probably desirable) challenge of figuring out how to best invest the proceeds, which represent about 90 percent of my net worth. I’m thinking something fairly defensive, but we’ll just have to see how it turns out.

And after listening to me talk about the move for so long, you’ll probably be happy to know that this severs my final significant tie to Boston. You’ll still hear lots about my exploration of my new home in Pittsburgh, but the long-talked-about departure from Boston is finally complete.

I’ll certainly miss the Vendome. It was my first experience in home buying, ownership, and selling, It was an amazing location and a wonderful place to be for those 15 years, and I loved it dearly. More than any other house in a long, long time, it felt like home to me, and I’ll miss that a lot.

But it belongs to a chapter of my life that’s now finished. Now it’s time to look forward to whatever new story unfolds.

I’ve written before about my condo in Boston’s Back Bay.

In addition to being strategically located, my building has a lot of history. Former luxury hotel where the visiting team for the first ever World Series stayed. First commercial building in Boston to have electric lights (installed by Edison himself just three years after he invented the light bulb).

And on the Commonwealth Avenue mall there’s a memorial to the nine firefighters who died in the 1972 fire and partial building collapse that remains the worst firefighting tragedy in Boston history.

I’ve seen a few photos from the fire. There’s one of people combing through the wreckage looking for survivors after the southeast corner of the building came down. There’s another showing the ladder truck that was buried under a two-story high pile of rubble in the alley out back.

I’ve always been curious about the actual damage done to the building and how much of it collapsed. After all, my unit is on that very southeast corner, on that very second floor, overlooking that very alley. But I’ve never found a photo that showed that very clearly… until now.

The photo accompanying this article was taken ten days after the fire, and for the first time, the fire damage and collapsed area are clearly shown.

Seeing this photo for the first time, I’m awestruck. Click on it and open it up in full resolution while I tell you what you’re looking at.

The building faces to the right, onto Commonwealth Ave. On the left, the back of the building features rows of bay windows overlooking the alley, then a parking lot, and (off camera to the left) Newbury Street.

Zoom into the pile of debris where the southeast corner of the building used to be. On the second floor, you will see a white internal wall with three dark vertical lines. See it? Right behind that wall is my main bedroom.

If you follow the second floor, you’ll see two narrow windows flush to the exterior brickwork, which are my two bedrooms, and then the bulge of my living room’s bay window, complete with the streetlight that remains there to this day. The area to the right of that white bedroom wall is probably my closet and the hallway that runs the length of my unit, and then the common area hallway.

On one hand, it’s nice that my unit wasn’t part of the collapse. On the other hand, you couldn’t possibly get any closer, and it’s a bit eerie knowing that a quarter inch of drywall is all that separates your bed from the place where nine men were crushed to death on the eve of Fathers’ Day.

Although this photo is over forty years old, it’s also disturbing how little the building has changed. Sure, they repaired the stubby central spire and replaced the collapsed section with a horrible slab of modernist concrete. But other than that, this could almost pass for a photo taken recently; it’s scary how familiar it looks.

Sure gives one pause to think.

I’ve always been a big fan of maps and mapping. I can remember living in Portland (see below), and making a map of the streets in the neighborhood. That’s pretty early, because we moved out of Portland when I was eight years old. I had a whole collection of topo maps by the time I was thirteen, and I one of the first people to own a handheld GPS, back back in March 2000 when Garmin produced its first model. And, of course, I’ve stayed on top of Internet-based mapping technologies from Etak to Mapquest to Google Maps and MS Live Search. I wrote my first Google Maps mashup as soon as the mapping API was released.

However, the mashups I created have been somewhat superceded by new functionality that Google has added to Google Maps, including the ability to share maps, if you so desire. So here’s a few of the maps that I’ve put together, in case you’re at all interested:

Ornoth’s House

A pointer to where I live, Boston’s former Hotel Vendome. Mostly this one’s just somewhere I can point people if they need directions.
 

Places I’ve Lived

A plot of all the places where I have lived, which are all in Maine and Massachusetts.
 

Places I’ve Visited

A general view of some of the places that I’ve visited. It’s only really valid at the state/city level.
 

DargonZine Summit Locations

These are the places where my magazine has held its annual writers’ gatherings. Virtually all of them are located in a place where one of my writers lived at the time.
 

Pan-Mass Challenge

The route of my annual Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride. The route varies slightly from year to year, so it’s not perfect, but it’s close, and will give you an idea where we go.
 

Flickr Map

This one’s actually a mashup hosted by Flickr, but it’s a nice geographical plot of the photos I’ve uploaded to my Flickr account.
 

I am in the process of seeing how truly amazing life can be.

Today, which is only the third evening in the past sixteen days that I haven't spent at the hospital, I came home after class to find water pouring out of my ceiling. Apparently a pipe carrying water from my A/C unit had backed up and overflowed a reservoir for condensation.

The leak has been stopped temporarily, but I'll have no A/C until it's fixed.

And I just took yesterday off work as a "sanity/recoup day"! Argh! Or, as I just told awfief, "When it shits, it pours!"

One of the things Americans rarely think about is history. Very few of us have any sense of what has gone on in our town, our neighborhood, perhaps even our building. In that sense, we Bostonians have a bit of an advantage, since Boston is a very small area with a long and rich historical heritage (for America, at least). Walk the streets of Boston and on virtually every block you’ll come across a building that has some noteworthy story associated with it.

I happened to buy a unit in one of Boston’s most noteworthy buildings. The initial Hotel Vendome was designed and built by William G. Preston in 1871 in Boston’s newly-filled Back Bay neighborhood, then greatly expanded in 1881. It is the finest example of the French Second Empire style in Boston, and located on the broad Parisien boulevard of Commonwealth Avenue. In 1882, it was the first public building in Boston to be furnished with electric lights. It was the site of many prominent social functions, and the guest register included stays by Ulysses S. Grant, President Grover Cleveland, P.T. Barnum, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, and John Singer Sargent. In 1903 the visiting team— the Pittsburgh Pirates, led by Honus Wagner—stayed at the Vendome during the first World Series ever held. In a bit of synchornicity, both my mother’s and her sister’s graduating classes from nursing school held parties in the Vendome during World War II.

But that’s all nothing compared to the fire: the worst firefighting tragedy in Boston history, one of the twelve worst in all of U.S. history, getting an entire chapter in Stephanie Schorow’s “Boston on Fire: A History of Fires and Firefighting in Boston” which I recently read.

It happened on Saturday June 17, 1972—the day before Father’s Day—while the Vendome was undergoing a major renovation. The fire broke out in the upper stories, and eventually sixteen engine companies, five ladder companies, two aerial towers, and a rescue company fought the blaze. The fire was under control, and fresh firefighters were conducting mop-up operations when an overloaded beam under the second floor gave way and the entire southeast corner of the five-story building came down, killing nine firefighters, injuring eight more, and destroying a ladder truck. Two of the twenty-five orphaned offspring would go on to become firefighters.

Twenty-five years later, a memorial to the firefighters who lost their lives was dedicated on the Commonwealth Avenue mall. A long, low arc of black granite describes the events and gives the names of the men who were lost. A fireman’s helmet and coat are casually draped over the stone, but forged in bronze. Every year a brief ceremony of observance is held.

As a resident of such a building, it’s hard to forget its history. I live on that same southeast corner, surely within inches of the 40 by 45-foot section that collapsed. I live on the second floor, surely within inches of the resulting pile of debris, which was noted both as 26 feet and two stories deep. I live within inches of the place where eight men died.

Knowing that you are living in the middle of the site of such an infamous tragedy would probably be enough to freak a lot of people out. It doesn’t bother me, really. After all, I’m proud to live in a building with such historical significance. But there’s another reason why it doesn’t bug me: it’s because even though I wasn’t here way back in ’72, I still remember and honor those men, and I view my presence here not merely as just some place to live. I consider myself something of a steward of this very important landmark, and want to do my part to see that it is kept for future generations, and not forgotten in our uniquely American ignorance of who and what have come before us.

For more information and photographs about the Vendome fire and memorial, go here or here, or read “Boston on Fire”.

It was a year ago today that I bought my condo. It really doesn't seem like it's been that long, although I suppose part of that could be the fact that I didn't actually move into the new place until six weeks later.

One of the big changes that resulted is that I now have a big ol' hunk of debt, for the first time in about eight years. Certainly, my net worth is still very much positive (since the condo is very definitely an asset), but I'm committed to coming up with a mortgage payment every month, most of which is money flushed down the shitter. Consider that to date I've paid off about $1600 worth of principal on my mortgage, and closer to $12000 in interest. And over the life of my loan, I will have given my mortgageholder two and a half times the amount that I borrowed. And I was lucky in that I got a good interest rate and didn't have to pay mortgage insurance, which would have been even more money down the tubes! Anyone who tells you that having a mortgage is a good way to force yourself to save is talking out of their ass, because you're paying someone more than twice whatever you save, just for the priviledge of forcing you to save.

Of course, I can't complain. My house was my justification for selling my Sapient stock when I did, and it's already proven a much, much wiser place to keep my money. Not to mention, I'm really thoroughly pleased with the place. It is a substantial improvement over my old place, and I could see myself staying here for several, perhaps many years.

It also appears to have been the vanguard of another major transition in my life. Every so often I go through a sea-change, where everything in my life is thrown up in the air and comes down differently, but almost always for the better. One example was graduating high school, my relationship with Ailsa, and starting college. Another was when Linda and I got married, I graduated from college, moved to Shrewsbury, gave up DargonZine, and got a job at MediQual. Another was when Linda and I separated, I moved into Natick, regained control of DargonZine, grew my hair out, started nightclubbing in Boston, Ailsa moved in, I finally got my teeth fixed, and I got involved with the polyamorous and BDSM communities. The most recent was back in 1995, when Puggle and I moved into my Boston apartment in the West Fens, I sold my car and my television, started working for Sapient, and became a fixture in the nightclub and BDSM scenes.

But that was seven years ago now, and another wholesale change is well under way. I was fortunate enough to make a comfortable amount on Sapient stock, and wisely exchanged that for a down payment on my new condo in a fabulous location in Boston's Back Bay. I made the transition from a hardcore programmer/analyst to a World-Wide Web and user interface designer, and entered a formal program at the New England School of Art and Design in order to bolster my creative, artistic, and design skills. I was laid off from my job at Sapient, forcing me into my next career move. I cut my hair short. And, in the only substantial disappointment of recent times, Inna ended our three and a half year relationship.

The funny thing is that the times when I've been happiest in my life have always been right after I've gone through those periods of dramatic change, because I've found a place that is more suited to the person I've become since the last change. I find that odd because I am, by nature, a creature of routine and habit; though I probably stay in my well-worn paths longer than necessary, and welcome the opportunity for change when it comes.

And as I said above, as well as in a private journal entry entitled "¡Que Linda!", I certainly appear to be on the cusp of another such sea-change. Whether I'll wind up being in a better place than I've been in for the past seven years, I don't know, and I have no guarantee. But between my savings, my Sapient severance, and unemployment insurance, I have the luxury of both enjoying the coming summer, free from the stresses of work and relationship, but also of taking the time to visualize and then craft the life that I want to lead in the years to come.

As I see it, there are three main elements of life that are of primary importance in my happiness, and which need to be optimized during times of wholesale change: career, housing, and social life/relationships. But even though career and social life and relationships are still TBD, I'm extremely happy with the job I've already done in terms of securing my "next generation" housing arrangements, and that's ample cause to celebrate. Happy House Closing Day!