Anyone live at 1300 E Lafaytte

[English]

Thanks for this thread. I really appreciate this insider's view of 1300 as I consider and narrow residential choices...

[Huggybear]

When I moved to midtown I all of a sudden felt very enclosed. I had a balcony, but that just didn't cut it. Even now that i live in a stand alone house, I still crave the openness of the floor to ceiling windows.

And this is something that seems to be lost on people who get really zealous about the greatness of [[very) old houses. Houses built before the mid-1930s had no cooling to speak of and nothing but steam heat. Windows were actually liabilities for homeowners [[both in winter and summer), and you'll find a lot of neighborhoods in Detroit where there are nice-looking houses with small windows - and in many cases with streets angled such that direct sunlight never really comes into the house. I can't even imagine what it would have been like with elms over the street. Depressing is the word that comes to mind. I grew up in a neighborhood like that, and it's a little bit like living above the arctic circle. It's all electric light, and you start to lose orientation in terms of the time of day. The sweet spot in the Detroit area is the houses built between the mid-1930s and the war. With forced-air heating ducts and attic fans to pull hot air out, they sported windows that were a bit bigger. And when a/c came along, it was a very easy conversion [[and one that was pretty much universally done). But the nice thing is that they have nice materials and build, too.

[Bearinabox]

And this is something that seems to be lost on people who get really zealous about the greatness of [[very) old houses.

Maybe it's just that not everyone shares your preferences.