Moon Doors (Thursday Doors)

The moon has
maneuvered itself
into my sunrise window

For weeks it was
only seen inside
the witching hours

What coastline
does it follow
within the seas of night?

My dreams are
surrounded by empty skies
waiting for change

I look for patterns,
some kind of lunar logic
to close my inner gaps

Mystified,
I remain subject to
the moon’s cyclical whims

I was looking for some doors to use with a moon poem I had written and I remembered I had photos of a group of houses on West End Avenue with arched entrances to doors with circular windows. They were taken at two different times, but covered most of the doors.

I did not realize that the houses on West End Avenue were once a wraparound to the similar house on 79th street with an identical doorway. Why was there a strange white house now in between?

The red houses were designed by architect Frederick B White to be a “single composition”. He was only 24 when he designed them, and tragically died just after they were completed in 1886. I’m actually surprised that all but one of the houses have survived intact.

The outlier was “updated” after WWI by its owner Harry H Lang. Architects Sterner and Wolfe redesigned the house in a mock-Tudor style, more popular at the time than the original Queen Anne building.

The Daytonian, as usual, has a detailed history of the various residents over the years. One was Aimee Hutchinson, who became an ardent suffragette after being fired from her teaching job for marching in the Women Suffrage parade in 1912. Another was Fritz “Cupid” Podzius, a marriage broker, who “reportedly arranged about 20,000 marriages although he himself never married”.

The Daytonian article, written in 2012, indicates that most of the houses had been broken up into apartments. I remember that to be true from my apartment-hunting days, but my current research shows that most, if not all, have been restored to pricey single homes. The corner house is under construction; it sold in 2021 for 5.5 million dollars.

383 has a For Sale sign out front, but StreetEasy said it was delisted. Either way you can see photos and a floor plan here. 389 has a video on StreetEasy from its sale in 2022, here, and also photos and a floor plan. And you can see the listing for 305 W 78 St here, which sold in 2021 for just over 6 million. It has a staff room and studio on the roof.

There are also some nice photos of the architectural detail on the West End Avenue houses at NewYorkitecture, here.

And here’s my morning moon–a welcome sight. My poem is a triversen, as suggested by Merril at dVerse.

And don’t forget to look at all the doors at Thursday Doors, hosted by Dan Antion.