More Travel

Yes, I’m traveling again. But no, not to some exotic location touted in the pages of those glossy travel magazines. Instead, I’m going just five blocks away to The Fitzgerald, a new apartment building on Mt. Royal Avenue at the foot of Bolton Hill.

For more than a year, I’ve considered selling my house and moving to an apartment. My reasons, gently sloshing around in the back of my head, seem, when examined in the front, both sane and practical. The house is really bigger than I need; I live in only a few of its rooms. The house is in good shape now, but in any house built 35 years ago, disturbing problems of maintenance suddenly appear with upsetting practical and financial implications. The garden I’ve loved and carefully tended is now beautifully mature but my failing knees – even the replaced one – prevent me from working in it comfortably. And once the mosquitoes come, my extreme allergic reaction to their bites prevents me from enjoying the greenery, which I now rush through on my way to my car, slathered with mosquito repellant, a pungent cologne sure to make me unpopular at dinner parties. Further, I realize I’ve reached an age when I want a simpler life, and have given up the dream, albeit reluctantly, of a second home somewhere in the woods where I might use that second set of stainless steel I’ve been saving in the basement since closing my apartment in New York. No; I’m ready.

In retrospect, I realize I was even ready a year ago. But I was also smart enough to understand that my living environment – and the way I live in it – is critical to my happiness. When the thought of moving first popped into my consciousness and I consulted a realtor, we couldn’t find an apartment that spoke to me of home, that possessed the necessary features: an unusual configuration with possibilities for the expression of my creativity, sufficient wall space for my art and a place where I would feel down-sized but not down-graded. So I gave up the idea. Still, it persisted. So when The Fitzgerald opened its rental office in a trailer across the street from the site on April 1, I decided to investigate.

I’ve watched the building going up for some time and have been intrigued by its strange design and configuration. Clad in what looks like corrugated panels of dull blue plastic, the two most prominent wings of the building, five floors high and connected by a stack of three covered glass bridges, come forward toward the street like giant pliers not quite closed. (As I try to make this description as accurate as I can, the building sounds really ugly and I’m sure some will find it so. But to me, it’s just interesting, and unlike any other building I’ve seen anywhere.) Because of the angle of Mt Royal Avenue, the western wing’s six end apartments have angled walls with a lot of glass. These looked interesting. Inside the trailer, Meghan showed me the site plan and the layouts of the apartments I wanted to see. She gave me a hard hat and we went exploring. Tramping through plaster dust and threading our way around cables hanging from the ceiling, we made our way to apartments 532 and 533, the ones that looked interesting from the street. I liked them both immediately. Meghan explained that the one looking north was already reserved for the owner of the restaurant planned to go in on the first floor. But the one facing south was available. I took floor plans of them both and went home to see how my life might fit into these unusual spaces.

Both apartments consisted of a large room designed to function as a living, dining and kitchen space, with a granite-topped island facing the angled windows. Both had two bedrooms and a small den, two bathrooms and lots of closet space. I played with both designs and decided that I preferred the larger apartment. I went to work trying to fit my furniture into the spaces. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to find room for what I thought essential. Placing the art was much more difficult. The flip side of having all that light from such large windows, was not enough wall space for paintings. I forced myself to decide which art was essential and which I could give up. I still didn’t have room for it all. So I decided I would just have to live like the Cone sisters, who had so much art that they hung it stacked almost to the ceiling. I’d just do the same.

Confident now that I could live in 532, I visited the rental trailer again and gave Meghan a deposit that took the apartment off the market. But with that accomplished, I now had to face giving up my house. Could I really do that?

Stay tuned.