All the houses I’ve ever lived in are still standing. I’ve stopped by the house I grew up in a few times in the past 30 years and met the owners. The first time they remembered our family, but the last time I guess it had been sold again and the owners didn’t know our history. The house looks pretty much the same, but a slightly different color now.
A while ago I posted a thread about if you had an emotional attachment to a previous residence. Since my mother still lives in my childhood home I certainly have an attachment. I was happy to see a former house I owned get renovated and bought after several years of abandonment and decline.
Mine is. No clue if the people who purchased it from the estate, back in 2005, are still the owners.
I actually pass through / around my home town somewhat regularly - but have never driven by. It just seems like it would be weird as hell. Plus, we’re driving that way going from the DC area to New England, and have a few hours of driving ahead of us, so I’ve never wanted to take the time.
I still dream about living in the place, though - as in, “at home” dreams feature that place oftener than either of the two places I’ve lived the longest since then (13 years in a townhouse, 19 in our current place).
The house I first lived in is long gone. It was an old two-story farmhouse, set back a good quarter-mile from the road. My mom and I think it might have been haunted - I had some horrible nightmares about being chased by something evil wearing a Napoleon hat, if that makes any sense.
Anyway, when I was in kindergarten we swapped houses with my grandparents, who lived in a one-story house about three miles away. My folks remodeled the place and put on an addition about five years later. My grandparents moved out of the old place around that same time, maybe a couple of years later, and we bulldozed my original childhood house into the basement. I do have some strong, fond memories of the place - playing in our treehouse, sneaking fresh peas out of mom’s garden, climbing on the barn roof, mom using the open oven door to help heat the kitchen when it got really cold - but I don’t miss that house.
The house I lived in from the age of 6 until I moved away to college is still there, but my parents had to sell it in the late 1980s when the farm wasn’t profitable any more. The reason why they don’t have the house anymore is sad, but I’m not particularly sad about the house not being in the family any more in general. That’s how life is sometimes, you know?
What’s more sad is the house my great-grandmother lived in - on her own, for many years, while she was blind and in her 90s! - no longer stands. It was named an official county landmark, as it was one of the last remaining log-cabin structures in the county (more house had been built around the cabin structure, but the logs remained inside the plaster walls). Unfortunately that designation didn’t prevent it from being torn down after she died.
(all these structures are in Montreal (Canada)).
The mid-1920’s vintage house where I was raised is still there - renovated by subsequent owners, but still quite recognizable from the outside (but being a semi-detached house, that’s normal).
The house where my mother grew up (brand new when they moved in around 1920) a block away is still there, with the outside little modified.
The house/duplex where my grandmother and grandfather lived for a few years after their marriage in 1911 is still there. Houses across the street were demolished to widen the street in the 1960’s. The area is now mostly inhabited by Hassidic Jews.
The house where I spent my first 14 years is still there, part of a VERY desirable DC suburban subdivision. But it has been ravaged by poor renovations. At some time, the weeping Japanese cherry trees (one in front and one in back) were removed. I’m sure there was a reason for it, but what a loss. Those big pink and white beauties stood out in a neighborhood that already had cherry tree-lined streets.
But the house was transformed by someone closing off and opening up accesses between the rooms on the ground floor. The former family room is now unusable because various doorways in every wall make it impossible to place any furniture in it. It serves now as a poorly-laid-out dining room. Upstairs, my old bedroom was turned into two separate walk in closets for the master bedroom next door. (I don’t know if that’s lousy to me just because it was MY bedroom.) And the semi-finished basement has been finished with a new “family room” and bedroom. Plus many other changes that were for the worse. You can’t get around the house anymore without taking a longer path then previously which is noteworthy considering how they made the design “More open plan.” So not only was their intent lousy, but their execution of it was even worse.
But the house is still there.
The house I grew up in is still standing, but I haven’t been by in a few years. My dad passed there in 2015 after being released from the hospital specifically so he could die in the home he loved and on the land he grew up on (the property was once part of my grandparents’ farm before later being split among his siblings). He died within 48 hours of getting back there.
My mom was bed bound at the time due to a long list of health problems and we later moved her to a nursing facility that could give her proper care for her final years. She passed in 2018.
We sold the property shortly after her death. It’s an hour and a half or so from where we live and I don’t have any family left there that I’m close to so my only reason to visit is the occasional trip to the cemetery where they’re buried.
The last time I went by it really bothered me to see someone else’s life going on and changes being made to the place dad poured his heart and soul into. It’s irrational but it just felt like another part of them had died in a weird way. I have no urge to visit again. The place I remember is the home filled with love because they were there. Without them it’s just another house and can’t ever feel the same.
I always think that about my grandmother’s current house. It’s the only location that’s been constantly known to me throughout my life, and is sort of considered the family homestead, but once she’s gone I can’t imagine I’d ever want to go there again.
I just checked Google Maps. The house I lived in when I was little is still there. The roofline doesn’t look so hot, but fifty-plus years in South Florida will do that.
The house I consider as the place where I grew up is still there. I should hope so, since my parents and my brother still live there.