There goes the neighborhood!

I was pleasantly shocked the other day rounding the corner at Starbuck’s Neck and the Harbor View Hotel. One of my favorite houses, whose original owner was Frederick Baylies, Jr. who designed and built the three cornerstone churches of Edgartown, was newly visible from the street. The high hedges which surrounded it on two sides had been trimmed, and the beauty of the house was revealed for anyone to see.

This refreshing act of restoring a beautiful streetscape, I hope, is a harbinger of new civic engagement. I am really tired of Arbor Vitae. I understand its appeal and usefulness in hiding garbage bins and in screening one’s bedroom and bathroom windows from the neighbor whose house is set five feet from the property line, but enough is enough.

The act of building (or rebuilding, which seems to be the case in Edgartown) in an established place needs to include regard for one’s neighbors. If you do not want to consider your neighbors, then build to your heart’s content in a field somewhere else.

I realize that there are precious few buildable fields left here on the Island. And so that makes it doubly imperative that a sense of proportion and propriety be willingly observed. Zoning helps to make basic decisions regarding this. It separates commercial use from residential, and prescribes (and proscribes) certain parameters for building. But it is the sense of community that cannot really be legislated that creates a livable environment. However, I think that certain building practices can foster that environment.

I find it interesting that people are moving into town for the ability to walk to places, and to be a “part of things” in the “village”. But, you cannot really be a part of a village if you wall yourself off from the rest of humanity. How you landscape, as well as your choice of building style, affects the rest of the village. A streetscape of garage doors is not pleasant, convenient though it may be. But, sometimes the same people who want to live in town and walk everywhere are the very ones who “need” a garage.

A garden that is never seen is a net loss to society. One of the great losses that Edgartown has suffered over the years is the loss of so many gardens that can be glimpsed from the street. The “garden” has so often been turned into a building lot, which may also explain why new garages tend to face the street. There is no back yard left to put them in.

But I also know that times change. The Baylies house I began this essay with was moved to its present site in the 1920s. It was originally located on Main street, right in the thick of activity, which is not where we want to live right now. This is why in older towns one often sees lovely but neglected houses in the center of town. It is all too easy to forget that the Dr. Daniel Fisher house was once in danger of being torn down. And one does, unfortunately, still see such neglect in the town center.

Visual memory is an odd phenomenon. Once a scene is changed or removed and replaced with something else, the mind has a problem recalling it without prompts. We have no such trouble recalling a painting or a dress or a photograph, but once a landscape has been changed or even destroyed, our memory cannot bring it back. Our eyes see what is there before them, and what is there is reflective of our society.

A true village is an organic, living thing. It has been and will be altered by its inhabitants according to their values and needs. If it reflects those values sometimes in the most unexpected ways, it also suffers at times from unintended consequences. Sometimes those consequences are irreversible. The law of supply and demand can be very harsh.