Plenty of Green

June 16, 2010

Here's one of Astoria's delightful Craftsman style homes along with a tiny hillside garage so typical of this place. I love the Craftsman bungalows as much as the Victorians, and we have quite a few of them here. This one is on the Bond Street hill. (I had no idea until I looked it up that "bungalow" comes from "Bengali.")

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Houses on Hills

May 20, 2010

Here is the back of the house in yesterday's post along with its neighbor. They show two more adaptations to living on hills. The white building in the distance with the gray roof is the apartment building I lived in when I first arrived in Astoria. It has five stories, but only three are at or above street level. I lived on the bottom story, and even the back part of that was high above ground level. The hallway was buried in the hillside, and it kept the place cool on those rare hot days.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.

Houses on Hills: Gangplank Style

May 20, 2010

Although this walkway isn't removable the way a real gangplank is, it provides access from the front door of the house to the hillside near street level. There are a few of these arrangements on Bond Street; this house is toward the west end of Bond near the mini mart. The trees on the hill above are very sparse these days. In spring of 2007, there was a major slide caused by heavy rainfall, and then our subsequent big wind storm of December 2007. Even the street hasn't recovered, and the hillside is held up off the road by cement retaining walls, with the street narrowed to one lane at the intersection with Hume.

This portion of the hill has collapsed before and was featured years ago in Life magazine on January 25, 1954. An ad for the issue lists part of the contents as, "massive mud slides (earth movement) in Astoria, Oregon moves houses and more." There are photos in the local history museum.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store