For at least 30 years, Birchwood Drive in Woodcliff Lake, NJ was a dead end consisting of about 12 homes ending at 20 acres of woods. There were no sidewalks or lamposts, the enormous trees were the setting for a beautiful and private street.
It all ended abruptly in 2003 when a McMansion development rammed through the street. Huge trees were bulldozed and a street of gruesome monster sized houses was dropped arbitrarily on the land. No attempt was made to integrate the brand new homes with the older street. No contiuity or joining together–it was as if a mad plastic surgeon had wielded a scalpel upon a beautiful young model and decided to bloody her up with lifelong scars.
I took the above photos (standing in the same spot but pointing the lens if two directions!) to show how different the two views are. In name, Birchwood Drive describes both–but the Birchwood Drive I once knew, the place of friendliness and quiet rainy days, has been replaced by the speeding SUV and the grotesque landscaping of garish annuals, twiggy trees, and the Tony Soprano style of architecture that all too tragically characterizes modern NJ.
Here in Van Nuys 
patrick,
Um, sorry. I guess I got a little carried away. 1 a.m. is a bewitching hour for real estate based rants.
LikeLike
well…
yes. it’s sad when our childhood homes change hands and it’s sad when new houses are added to ‘our’ block. it’s sad that we can’t play hares and hounds or ring and run or army or forest adventure anymore…
but really…
new jersey, as you know, is the most densely populated state in the nation…and appearances aside, is even more densely populated than the san fernando valley. even though you considered your neighborhood in woodcliff lake your ‘beautiful and private retreat’, all the wealthy people who live there now probably are thinking along the same lines – except *their* beautiful and private retreats are the big ass homes they retire to in the evenings.
you know from living there that woodcliff lake is located in one of the wealthiest counties in the country…and you know from going back to visit that even though bergen county is insanely ‘full’ – and so different than it was when we were kids – almost every open half-parcel of land is being covered by houses. what else could one expect?
they’re certainly not building housing for moderate income folks. and could you imagine woodcliff lake allowing multi-unit housing?? please.
it would be nice if our old neighborhoods could stay the same. but it would also be nice if our old neighbors moved back home from california.
come on out to western jersey. plenty o’ room. plenty o’ trees. but the morning commute east on rt 80? i’ll stack it up against your roads any day. 🙂
LikeLike
umberto, um…nevermind.
LikeLike
I am sure that to the farmer who sold the field that became Birchwood Dr., your block looked just as garish and out of place as those McMansions do now. Those 12 homes probably did a great deal of damage to the local habitat, and continue to do so today.
That farmer, in turn, probably saw fit to thrash a whole bunch of natural systems operating in his backyard in order to generate cash to pay his debts.
The true horror in all of this is that in each step of development (the next being, I suppose either abandonment of suburbia, or gradual multi-story tenements) is that nowhere along the way have people been able to truly integrate their way of living with the natural systems around them.
Each method of land use was plunked down, dropped from on high, into a world of plants and animals whose value to us as resources and an aesthetically pleasing part of our lives was totally disregarded.
In this light, the McMansion is no sore thumb. It is but the next step in a process that began with the narrow minded use of that landscape for a narrowly defined, short term,cash-only profit.
The roof slope and the tree cover are a frill of lace, a small piece of decorative painting, on the side of a massive machine built on the economic ideologies that brought us single-use pudding cups and the attitude that an infinite amount of raw materials are available to the man lucky enough to plunder it first.
Forgive the upper middle class consumer – for they know not what they do. And when they do find out – they’ve already cast their lot with the side they never imagined they’d be on.
LikeLike
It’s such a shame when things like that happen. But to be fair, those 12 homes were also built on what was once just the woods. Look on the bright side. If the new home owners ever plant trees along the street it could all fill in very nicely. 🙂
LikeLike