I found out today my mom’s old house is being demolished. It’s not the house where I grew up, but I took my kids out there every summer for 30 years, so there are a lot of memories there. One of my family members basically shrugged off the news and said as long as my mom wasn’t living there any longer, it really held no special meaning.
It got me thinking about my childhood homes. The first one is still standing. I saw it just last summer. The huge old cottonwoods in the backyard are gone, and the red brick has faded, but it’s still there. And the house we moved to when I was 12 is still standing, though it’s the only one on the street that’s not a McMansion, so I suspect its days are numbered. I find it reassuring that my old homes are still standing. They’re the substance of my memories.
Are your childhood homes still standing? If they’re not, do you feel any sense of loss that they’re gone?
My childhood home in Karachi, Pakistan seems to be still standing but has been expanded in three directions until it takes up 80% of the lot instead of the 30% or so it occupied forty years ago. This is pretty normal in Pakistan, as is adding additional floors on top. The row house my mother grew up in was one story in the 1930s, by the 1970s it was three stories.
I moved a lot when I was a kid. Maybe once per year. Of the many places I lived, I think there’s only I can’t confirm is still standing (I don’t remember the address and with my parents being dead, there’s no way to find out).
Of these many places, I guess the one I consider my childhood home is indeed still standing, and is (AFAIK) still owned by the same person. My dad rented it from his older brother and he still owns the place and rents it out. No particular attachment to it, not sure how I’d feel if it was demolished.
My parent, who are in their late eighties, still live there. We’ll probably sell the farm after they’re gone, and I don’t know whether the house will stay. It’s on 50 acres between I-81 and US 11, so a developer may snatch it up.
The first house my folks bought (when I was 2, my sister was 1, and my mom was pregnant with my brother) was built in 1950 and it’s still standing. The neighborhood looks different because trees have been removed and shrubbery has changed over the decades. What strikes me is how small it all looks. Then again, I grew up in a 1000 sq ft row house, and I’m now in a ranch style house on 3 acres.
But grandparents’ houses are still standing, each is over 100 years old and they’re both now in desirable neighborhoods - who knew they’d be such fancy addresses!
Funny you should ask. I hadn’t thought about it in years. But yes, thanks to Google Street View, I can confirm that the house where my parents lived when I was born and where I grew up to the tween stage is still there!
But the place that has by far the most emotional memories for me is our country cottage, a place of great serenity, great carefree happiness, and slightly scary nights (because it’s remote and, like, dark – and the freaky whippoorwills and owls!). That, unfortunately, is long gone. It used to be a little cluster of cottages by a lake when I was a child, with a nearby village from whence fresh baked goods, dairy, and ice would be delivered daily, but it’s now become all urbanized. The village is now a town, and sprawling all over.
My parents lived next to the hospital for 40 years and the hospital slowly, methodically started buying all property in the vicinity until their house and another were the only ones left. Dad passed and the hospital made mom a fair offer and let her continue to live there while the other guy held out. She lived there 3 years rent free and they built a parking lot next to hers while the hold out got constant construction and a helo pad next to his until he finally gave in.
Mom moved out and they used our old house as admin offices for another 7 years. They tore it down two years ago and finished the parking lot. It was a sad day when it was torn down.
The housing we lived in on base at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas is still there. So is the bowling alley and playground that wasn’t too far from the house. The empty field is now full of houses though. My apartment building in Germany is still there as is the movie theater across the street (thank you, Google Maps). Hell, even the little gas station through the woods behind the apartment building is there. Europeans do not feel the need to tear perfectly good buildings down. There are a lot more trees in the area than I remember growing up and the old church is now Russian Orthodox. All the houses I lived in in Colorado Springs are still standing.
So far as I can tell, all the childhood homes I lived in that I can remember are still standing.
My father (on whom be peace) bought the house where I grew up a couple of months before my older brother was born in 1946, and left it for his last trip to the hospital in 1991. It’s still there — I drive by it now and then when I’m in the neighborhood — but it’s obvious from the alley view that it’s been remodeled to the point that it’s a much different house. I haven’t lived there for close to fifty years, so I no longer have any kind of emotional attachment to it; indeed, it pleases me that someone made the investment in it.
(Just before it was turned over to the new owners his descendants gathered one last time to dine on the same thing my parents ate for their first meal there: Beanee Weenee. Nothing like having things come full circle.)
Yes, it is still standing. But it was constructed in 1956 in the San Fernando valley of Los Angeles. I have visited my “ancestral” home many times in the last 60+ years. The occupants know me now and are happy to let me walk around in the house. We have historical discussions about my time here and theirs. I love going back to my Pacoima place. Senegoid probably feels differently about his Pacoima experience, but Pacoima will always be my special place.
Mine was on the grounds of a state penal institution. It is still standing but I am not allowed to drive by to see it- probably understandable, but I wish I could see it again other than by satellite view.
My childhood home is still standing. I drove by it in July and then had to go around the block and look again because it was so unrecognizable. All the trees, including the one I planted are gone, all of the planter beds are gone, the lawn I mowed so many times is a bare dirt parking lot for a bunch of big, shiny pick-ups. I’m such a masochist that I looked it up online and found that inside had been gutted and they had put a drop ceiling over the lovely bare rafters that Dad stained every year.
I wish I hadn’t looked, I probably would have been happier to have seen it torn down and replaced.
I lived in 5 homes (all in different states) between ages 3, when I first went to live my adoptive parents, and 17, when I went off to college. I only remember the addresses for the last two of them, and since my parents are dead there is no one to ask about the others.
I don’t think I would care at this point if the houses disappear. The momentous, emotional event for me was when my parents sold house #5 and a lot of their belongings, and moved to Mexico, a little over 20 years ago (when I was 40-ish; now I am 63).
Consciously I didn’t care at all about my parents’ move. But I did have some dreams at the time about experiencing change and mourning loss, suggesting that on some level it was difficult for me to no longer be rooted in any place at all (since as an adult I continued and in fact accelerated the tendency to move around constantly, living not just in 5 states but in 5 countries).
I lived in “the house where I grew up” from age 3 to age 23, and visited my mother there many times for about ten years after that. But then she sold it, and it’s about 35 years since I’ve been inside. From Google Streets, it looks like the exterior is almost identical to back then. I would SOOO love to see the inside! The rooms that I remember as being large would probably seem tiny to my eyes today.
I’ve thought of knocking on the door, but the current owners would probably be too creeped out, so I drive by now and then, hoping to see a “For Sale / Open House” sign…
Not only is the house I was raised in still standing, my oldest brother’s daughter lives there now and is following her grandmother’s example of having more kids than actually fit in the house.
Yep, the house I grew up in is still there. It is the only house my parents ever owned, and I had to sell it after they couldn’t live there any more. Sold it to a divorced father who wanted his two sons to have their own bedrooms and a yard to play in when they were with him.
The house that I consider “the one I grew up in,” is the one we moved into in 1975 (on my tenth birthday), when we moved from suburban Chicago to Green Bay. Not only is it still standing, but my parents (and my sister) still live in. While it hasn’t been “my home” for over 30 years, I still feel nostalgic about being in it, when we go up to visit.
The house we lived in, in suburban Chicago, was one that my parents had built, in 1968. It, too, is still standing, and I drive by, every few years (it’s about 10 minutes from a friend’s house), just to see it.
So understandable. There should be a law against criminal assault on a house. The first house the now-ex and I owned was the sweetest place! It had a window seat, a breakfast nook, and secret compartments and passageways. (It was built in 1930, and the town saw a lot of bootlegging.) I looked it up on Google Earth and it’s so ugly now. Someone added a screen porch on the front, taking up most of the tiny front yard, painted it an ugly brick red, and added rooms onto the back so that there’s NO backyard now. I’ don’t want to see the inside. I know the people who bought it from us when we moved covered the hardwood floors with wall-to-wall carpeting.