Do you have a cite for this other than Google Maps? Google Maps isn’t very precise when it comes to drawing political borders on its satellite/aerial images. In my experience the borders are often off by several tens of metres.
I think that figure is highly inflated. According to Deutsche Post’s international letters page, mail from Germany to the Netherlands normally takes 2 to 3 days, with an average time to delivery of 2.1 days. The delivery standards for PostNL can’t be much worse.
Here’s an article on the place: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-incredible-complications-of-living-atop-the-us-canada-border
Of course there is Four Corners Monument, you can be in four states at one time.
Any links to any people involved in this? It’s neat to see these, but if I live on the USA/Canada border, I’d kind of like to know what your life is like in a divided house.
Yeah, it’s the Twilight Zone around here, for sure. There’s a big black hole in my floor, too. If I drop anything small, a pill, a coin, a needle, gone forever.
The house itself isn’t divided; see Post #23. The guy is able to enjoy his own property, but has to be careful not to leave and wander past the border (look what happened to that beach jogger). So the USA/Canada border seems intermediate in convenience between the BE/NL border or even FR/CH border on one hand, and the Israel-Syria or India/Bangladesh border on the other hand. IIRC there are some towns in the USA (Point Roberts, etc) inaccessible by land from the rest of the USA without going through Canada, which makes things decidedly inconvenient for the residents due to the border not being 100% free and open to cross.
There is an interesting thing about that and many other borders of its type. Some people claim that the 4 corners monument is just there for tourists and the “real borders” are some distance away because of surveying errors.
It is true that surveying errors were common back in the day, often by miles, but that has no bearing (no pun intended). The 4 corners monument isn’t just a tourist attraction, it is a definitional marker and cannot be wrong. The borders are exactly where it says they are because it is the ultimate point of reference.
My family’s land also has a definition marker on it that is just as interesting. It defines the border between Louisiana and Texas but it was put in place when Texas was a separate country so it was an international boundary marker in the piny woods. There used to be many such markers but it is the only one of its type that survives in the lower U.S. today. It is fairly big and substantiation and you can walk around it and switch between states with every revolution.
There have been cases where there were no such markers for reference and the surveying was done again using other methods. That is nasty business because it can and will cause some people to have to switch states if their original one has to give up land.
Another interesting building - the Chateau Chenonceau ( Château de Chenonceau - Wikipedia ) is build on a bridge over a river in the Loire valley, so one door on each side of the river. The one side is the grand gardens and main entrance. The one end is the main hall so technically the “back door” I suppose.
So between Occupied France and Vichy France.
Here’s an article about that house. It was up for sale a couple of years ago, and the article describes some of the difficulties of finding an appropriate buyer, though I’m not sure about the accuracy of some of the writer’s assertions. Dual citizenship required to live there? I’m dubious about that.
Looks like it’s still for sale, at a reduced price, even. Needs a lot of work judging by those pictures. If I were in a position to buy it, that’d probably be a total gut-and-rehab, but it’s in a historic district and is probably historic itself so I’m not sure how much you could renovate (and I’m sure it’d be a major PITA to get permits, plans approved, etc.).
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I used to have a small ranch in western Nebraska that spanned two time zones. I always liked the idea that my front porch was on central time and the back porch on mountain. Never had it verified though and never was able to determine the exact location of the divide.
Saturday nights we used to have a lot of drunk drivers catching one more hour of drinking time in the next town over 
The Dutch town of Dinxperlo borders the German town of Süderwick. The police station has both Dutch and German cops working in it.
Not straddling a border, but my brother used to own a house that was adjacent to the Canadian border. His deed defined part of the property line as being the international border. Normally, it wasn’t an issue. But it really complicating things when he had his problem with the monkeys.
Either elaborate or link, damn you!! 
You can see the border monuments on Street View and verify that they do divide houses.
eg here (spin around 180 degrees to see the next monument in the distance)
You can see the border monuments in the aerial view as small white squares, and the border line is plotted almost exactly in the right spot.
Is this at the edge of the property, or does the family land straddle what was once an international border? Surely it wasn’t all one parcel at that time?
A tribe of monkeys moved on to my brother’s property. It took him weeks to get rid of them.
More details?
Okay, at the time, my brother lived in northern New York on the Canadian border. About three miles away - in Canada - was Parc Safari, a drive-through wildlife park. Parc Safari had a large tribe of Japanese Snow Monkeys on exhibit.
Somebody at the park screwed up and left a gate open. The monkeys decided to go on a journey. They headed south and crossed the border into New York. Specifically, they found an abandoned barn that was on my brother’s property and decided this was the home they had always been dreaming of. They all moved in and settled down, apparently to stay.
I didn’t take my brother long to notice he now had some new tenants. Especially because his dog did not take well to the monkeys and barked whenever he saw one. (The monkeys quickly realized that the dog was chained and they were safe as long as they didn’t get too close. So they began teasing the dog. My brother said he was tempted to unleash the dog but decided it was probably a bad idea to start a dog/monkey war.)
My brother contacted whatever authorities are in charge of situations like this. I’m assuming the Monkey Police. They were able to track their origins back to the park (which probably wasn’t that difficult; I’m guessing there weren’t any other places in the region that had a tribe of monkeys).
And that’s when things became complicated. Because while the monkeys had come from Canada, they were now in the United States. So from a legal standpoint, the park needed to get permission to import a tribe of monkeys into Canada. And that took a few weeks.
Not surprisingly, the news that there were now a tribe of monkeys living in upstate New York spread. And my brother’s house became a prominent tourist attraction. The monkeys had no problem with this. They weren’t wild animals; they were used to dealing with tourists from their lives at the park. So when people stopped, the monkeys would all gather around and pose for pictures and beg for treats. My brother and his dog were much less amused by this.
The park finally got its permits together to come and pick up the monkeys. Catching them ended up taking another week. They finally caught the leader and that sped things up. Apparently they would bring the leader into the area, while confined, and the unconfined monkeys would come over to check in on him. They never got the full count back but there were no monkey sightings so they assumed whatever monkeys were still missing had encountered a hunter or a predator. Or figured out a way to get back to Japan.
:eek:
Fascinating!
Thanks!!
“…not my circus, not my monkeys.”
-Red, Orange is the New Black
Monkeys Leave Quebec Safari Park, On The Run In Canada And Across US Border
I think the part about the faulty hinge was an early cover-up. The story I recall was that somebody had left a gate open.
The part about local residents in Perrys Mills, NY - that was my brother.
The library is the site of this Beatles story:
“There is an unsubstantiated rumor that back in the early 70s the Beatles had planned to meet at the library. John Lennon wasn’t allowed into the USA at the time. Three of the Beatles could have sat on the US side of the line while John could have sat in the same room, just a few inches away, on the Canadian side.”