Request for specialist information

[gunhilltrain]

Does it need to be New York? In LA there are some newer neighborhoods with side-by-side apartment/condo buildings where you can look out a window from your unit into a unit in the building next door. There's no alley between them--they're both just set 5' back from the property line.

You mean you're looking sideways, not back-to-back. I've seen that in a lot of older houses in New York where the builders were careless - or indifferent - to the lack of space between facing windows. In this Bronx photo, the two brick houses on the left are about ten or twelve feet about, while the building on the far right (I believe it's newer) is a good thirty feet away from the side of the white house.

https://newyorkyimby.com/wp-content...catur-Avenue-in-Norwood-The-Bronx-777x387.jpg

 

[Bamagan]

Given the title - The Garden of Eden - I was thinking of a central courtyard with grass sections and maybe a fountain in the middle.

Em

Maybe consider New Orleans, where courtyard gardens in the Vieux Carre are quite common. Or Montreal, if you need seasons other than flavors of summer.
https://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/9d/cc/78/9dcc782cfe82835cdaa18c345256d49d.jpg

 

[ElectricBlue]

No it doesn’t. I might not even specify the city.

Em

That solves the problem completely. Write your own geography and your own city-scape, who's going to know?

My "city" combines bits of Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide (all places I've lived in), mainly because I don't want any precise clues as to my actual whereabouts, but I still want to write with an actual "place" in my mind. It's a "combinative" geography (thus coining a new town-planning term).

 

[AchtungNight]

My stories have been set in London, Taipei, New York, Athens, Beijing, and other places. But there is custom geography involved and a single place that can appear anywhere to connect them all. It’s a location similar to the Cross-Time Saloon or Caritas from Angel. Mayhap this building you’re designing can be a similar place.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Given the title - The Garden of Eden - I was thinking of a central courtyard with grass sections and maybe a fountain in the middle.

Em

There are a lot of such apartment buildings. These are in New York.

https://thumbs.cityrealty.com/assets/smart/1004x/webp/c/cd/cd2cde53275f6e9e46ff611c885a39bdb94ff47e

https://thumbs.cityrealty.com/assets/smart/1004x/webp/c/c4/c433571d0b7e79db7256a841efe1e66d959ee747

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/c4b...31-graham-court-courtyard.2x.rsquare.w570.jpg

 

[gunhilltrain]

Chicago:

https://www.chicagomag.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/main5_courtyard-1024x683.jpeg

Now I'm getting envious of these places compared to the somewhat, ah, disappointing one I live in now.

 

[EmilyMiller]

There are a lot of such apartment buildings. These are in New York.

https://thumbs.cityrealty.com/assets/smart/1004x/webp/c/cd/cd2cde53275f6e9e46ff611c885a39bdb94ff47e

https://thumbs.cityrealty.com/assets/smart/1004x/webp/c/c4/c433571d0b7e79db7256a841efe1e66d959ee747

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/c4b...31-graham-court-courtyard.2x.rsquare.w570.jpg

Can’t read those (or at least the first) on my phone.

Em

 

[EmilyMiller]

There are a lot of such apartment buildings. These are in New York.

https://thumbs.cityrealty.com/assets/smart/1004x/webp/c/cd/cd2cde53275f6e9e46ff611c885a39bdb94ff47e

https://thumbs.cityrealty.com/assets/smart/1004x/webp/c/c4/c433571d0b7e79db7256a841efe1e66d959ee747

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/c4b...31-graham-court-courtyard.2x.rsquare.w570.jpg

Last one works. And yes something like that

 

[gunhilltrain]

Can’t read those (or at least the first) on my phone.

Em

That is why I do more serious work on a desktop machine. So 2006!

 

[EmilyMiller]

That is why I do more serious work on a desktop machine. So 2006.

I don’t do serious work .

Not here anyway .

Em

 

[gunhilltrain]

Last one works. And yes something like that

Google (or some other search engine) is your friend!

 

[gunhilltrain]

That solves the problem completely. Write your own geography and your own city-scape, who's going to know?

My "city" combines bits of Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide (all places I've lived in), mainly because I don't want any precise clues as to my actual whereabouts, but I still want to write with an actual "place" in my mind. It's a "combinative" geography (thus coining a new town-planning term).

Somehow I don't worry about my exact (or close to, anyway) whereabouts being known. You can pin me down to a half-mile radius through my bio and through a number of the stories I've written. (It must be so obvious that I went to the City College of New York because I've described it often - or how it used to look anyway.) Well, I don't have a job any longer, and I've outlived almost all of friends and relatives. Does that have something to do with it? As for the people of Lit; I guess I'm okay with them.

City College site 1840's to the present, among other things:

https://mrmhadams.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/losing-manhattanville-.html

 

[MillieDynamite]

Manhattan may have only one alley, but it has many courtyards - spaces between the backs of buildings on adjacent parallel streets. Sometimes these are paved with concrete, sometimes they have grassed surfaces. Usually there is a fence of same kind marking the property lines. The spaces in Brooklyn are usually wider, as in the first photo which is in Park Slope but is much like the back of my former apartment in Sunset Park.

https://amazingarchitecture.com/sto...house-park-slope-palette-architecture-01.jpeg

A lot of older cities have such arrangements, such as Hoboken, Jersey City, and Philadephia. This photo is in Washington, DC.

https://cdn.onekindesign.com/wp-con...DC-Teass-Warren-Architects-10-1-Kindesign.jpg

So Emily has almost innumerable locations where she could set this - places where it is possible to see into the windows of buildings in back - especially with binoculars! The Rear Window set, based on a real courtyard, has both a rowhouse/brownstone (which are usually three stories high) and a couple of apartment houses (which are usually five or six floors for the standard older city configuration). It could definitely be set in the present, but it could any time in the last century of more. (My Brooklyn rowhouse had been built in 1902.)

I didn't say New York City, I said Manhattan Island, the burrow. But yes, even in Manhattan, there are buildings with a central courtyard. Only Murders in the Building's building is one such place.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I didn't say New York City, I said Manhattan Island, the burrow. But yes, even in Manhattan, there are buildings with a central courtyard. Only Murders in the Building's building is one such place.

I guess I need more coffee. You specifically said "alley," which usually means you can drive a vehicle into it (although not always, I guess). They definitely have some of those in Hoboken, and I guess Philadelphia and other cities. I also wasn't referring to the central courtyard of an apartment house until Emily brought that up. I meant the space behind buildings fronting on adjacent streets, as in this photo of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. I'd guess that most older cities are laid out like this.

https://media.gettyimages.com/id/12...=DyzsSF9AKGEWYObsRqCFkXXEC_8-RQ2c2DX-hssaWrA=

This is an alley in Hoboken, which is wide enough to allow cars through.

https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/2...yles/raw/public/processed_images/IMG_3588.jpg

You were pulling my leg with "burrow" instead of "borough" or "boro?"

 

[Kumquatqueen]

You specifically said "alley," which usually means you can drive a vehicle into it (although not always, I guess).

That must be a regional usage. Alleys in England are narrow, as in I'd expect to be able to touch both sides, and very rarely would a motor vehicle consider venturing in (it's also a concept with lots of regional alternatives, almost as bad as small round bread products - ginnel, back, twitten, close, snicket, jitty...)

This is an alley in Hoboken, which is wide enough to allow cars through.

https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/2...yles/raw/public/processed_images/IMG_3588.jpg

Two cars can pass each other? No way is that an alley in my dialect! That's a fairly wide road! Tbf one of the larger surprises of my adult life was going north of Central Park in Manhattan and seeing how amazingly wide the streets are and how spaced apart many buildings are, even on what's supposed to be the most expensive island in the world. I wasn't expecting suburbs!

 

[gunhilltrain]

That must be a regional usage. Alleys in England are narrow, as in I'd expect to be able to touch both sides, and very rarely would a motor vehicle consider venturing in (it's also a concept with lots of regional alternatives, almost as bad as small round bread products - ginnel, back, twitten, close, snicket, jitty...)

Two cars can pass each other? No way is that an alley in my dialect! That's a fairly wide road! Tbf one of the larger surprises of my adult life was going north of Central Park in Manhattan and seeing how amazingly wide the streets are and how spaced apart many buildings are, even on what's supposed to be the most expensive island in the world. I wasn't expecting suburbs!

Well, England had been heavily populated for hundreds of years when America had, well, just indigenous people. The Aztecs and Incas and some others built cities but those were no where near the East Coast of the U.S. And those were mostly leveled by the Spanish who started over again.

New York in 1660. A village really.

https://ny.curbed.com/2013/5/6/10246784/when-wall-street-was-a-wall-a-1660-map-of-manhattan

What eventually made the city was the grid plan of 1811, which is unlike any city in the British Isles that I know off. The avenues are particularly wide.

https://therealdeal.com/new-york/20...s-of-nycs-original-street-plan-go-on-display/

Hey, they forgot Central Park! Fortunately the city bought land for it in the 1850's ahead of development