The house where time stood still

[tonyb]

Thank you for sharing. So interesting. I love that stove top.

I wonder if the owner kept it empty in case his mother and sister ever changed their minds and decided to join him in NZ. Kind of sad to think about someone keeping this place in pristine condition and waiting for something that never happened.

Yes, the accompanying story does tell a tale in which a person could find a hint of sadness, and oddness as well.

The account raises lots of questions in my feeble old mind, none of which are answered. It's safe to assume that the original owner, who, according to the story, left the place unoccupied all those years but lived in a house on a parcel created by subdividing that original one, very likely kept the place heated and/or air-conditioned, as the seasons required, and he must have let water run through the pipes on occasion. Or so I'd think anyway. And the roof must have been replaced at least once over those 50 years, and the paint would have needed refreshing at some point. Et cetera, et cetera.

I'm unfamiliar with the climate in that part of New Zealand, but I've never known of any place where structures are impervious to the elements. The sun bakes 'em, water rots 'em, wind erodes 'em. Out here in the maritime Northwest, if you leave a house (or even a room) unheated, you'll very likely soon have an impressive collection of mildew and mold. The place will literally rot away from within. Gotta replace the roof every coupla-three decades. Even concrete walks and driveways and foundations show signs of age in considerably fewer years than the house in question has been standing.

And somebody must have come through the place with a vacuum cleaner and dust rags every now and then. I can just imagine how sad it would be to maintain a place like that in the hopes that loved ones would come to occupy it at some point, but that some point never comes around.

[Undertow]

HodgePodge, the same thought came to my mind - that is an interesting back brace on that chair.

Very cool pics, very interesting. Interesting perspective, tonyb. Makes you wonder...

[tonyb]

The more I think about this story the odder it seems.

Look up that 96 Cameron Road address on Google Maps and see that that house is in what appears to be your typical post-War, pretty well built-out everyman suburb, on the edge of agricultural land with "raw" land beyond. The house and its grounds appear well maintained.

So this place stood vacant for 50 years, during which economies went up and down and neighborhoods went through their better and worse periods and people moved in and people moved out and this unoccupied house never became a target of vandalism? Or perhaps it did but the damage was repaired? And the owner kept up the routine maintenance for half a century without collecting so much as a dime in rent?

Could be that it's all exactly that, in which case it would be an extraordinary tale, for sure. But I'd like to know more about the person who made all that happen and why he did it. I mean, half a century of keeping this place up in the hopes that perhaps some loved ones who live on the opposite side of the globe will move in at some point? It's not as creepy and detached from reality as, say, Norman Bates's relationship with his mother, but it is indeed odd.

Perhaps that's all beyond the range of that newspaper reporter's vision or resources (deadline pressure, other assignments, etc.) and/or the editor's desire for the story. But man oh man, the story as it stands sure leaves me with lots of unanswered questions.

[Gregg Axley]

Agreed.
50 years without cleaning it or replacing things, even in the best of environments, would cause the place to look like 1313 Mockingbird Lane...