Instead, at 8am, sixty-five 1-1/2 ton bags of stone from the demolished 18th century French convent in Bourg-en-Bresse arrived in my neighborhood for delivery.  I had never unloaded a truck of stones let alone five trucks of stones… and thus began my on-the-job training as a logistics pro.  Each cab WAS to be hauling a 20 foot long container that I calculated could get through the narrow winding cow-path streets and up our driveway for unloading.  So, so wrong I was.  Each cab was hauling a 40 foot long container and could not manage the last tight curve two blocks from our house.  The first trucker pulled over on a nearby street and walked through the neighborhood to find me.  When I saw the size of the truck, I let out a big, shall I say, sigh of emotion?

I had hired my demolition crew to help unload so we had a skip loader, basically a Bobcat on rubber tracks and a pallet jack.  We had no choice but to unload each truck of 13 bags of stones two blocks away from the house.  The first truck was heading slightly down hill.  The next four trucks would be positioned up hill to help my pallet-jack crew.  It took two men inside the truck to put each pallet with a bag of stones onto a pallet jack and push the package towards the back of the truck for unloading. Once positioned, the skip load operator would maneuver the pallet and bag of stones onto his fork and lift it off the truck.  Then if the package was flopping over, iron chains would be thrashed around its waist to keep it stable for its trip down the street, past my neighbors, up the driveway and around to the back of the property to a tightly placed position along side its brethren stones.

Each truck was to arrive every hour and a half.  You are allowed two hours to unload a truck before you are charged a penalty.  Upon discovery of the 40 foot long problem, I called dispatch.  “Don’t send another truck until 10am!”  It was too late.  By 11am, I had three more semi’s stacked along the road, in our little bucolic town, waiting to unload. What was really most amazing of all, not one neighbor came out and yelled at me! 

At 5:45pm, nearly 10 hours later, we unloaded the last bag of stones with a flashlight from the back of the container.  God bless the skip load operator.  He made 130 trips down the street, up the driveway to the backyard and back that day. 

My overall vision is to design and build a timeless building: one built of quality materials using time tested methods; powered by renewable energy with a well insulated building envelope; and designed to bring joy to my family and friends.  If I can create a place that people love, I will create a place that people will take care.  And a place that is conserved is a place that is sustained for future generations.   

So Bronxville and the area closest to town on a hilltop was to be the focus of our real estate hunt.  The very next day, a good friend of mine from Bronxville, Holly, called.  I mentioned that we had decided to look for a property in Bronxville walking distance to town.  Since, I wanted to design my own house and not re-jigger an existing stone and shingle Victorian house that was typical of the area, it would mean finding a teardown.  I had the idea of designing and building a sustainable house from reclaimed materials, using historical architectural precedents in a more classical manner– a house of texture and quality above all else.  Holly immediately hyperventilated and told me that friends of theirs were about to put their recent purchase back on the market.  They had decided to build but had found more land in northern Westchester.  Their house had already been stripped and was awaiting a dumpster.  It was two blocks from town at the top of the Hilltop.  In her spirited way, Holly said they could just sell it to us. 

And that is what they did.  I was on a plane the next day Sunday.  I spent a day looking at real estate and the following day negotiating what there was to negotiate.  Basically, the seller gave us his price. and we accepted. Now the trick was to salvage what we could of the existing 50’s ranch style house so that we could finagle a mortgage.  It would be another four years before we were back in New York and could begin our build.  In the intervening years, I took courses in sustainable design and thought and thought about the kind of house that we should build.

Time to Go!  The 1950’s house had finished its useful life many years ago.  It was an energy nightmare.  The original heating system of copper tubes in concrete had eroded and had been cut and replaced before we bought the house.  The insulation to the exterior was either non-existent or had disintegrated.  Since the house had been built lower in elevation to either the front or back yards, water damage had rotted the ‘un’-pressure treated sill plates and termites were evident.  The double glazed windows of aluminum, which transferred heat and cold from the outside in, had failed and were all needing replacement.  The roof had turned to peat and was growing weeds.  The exterior terraces surrounding the house were made up of over seven inches of tiled concrete – a supposed extension of outdoor living but more like a concrete jungle.  By eliminating this impermeable surface area, we will return land to the earth.  Fortunately, we were able to reclaim fixtures and fittings before the mechanical choppers took its first bite.

I had the sledgehammer in hand and a sheet of glistening glass in front of me.  Time for the building games to begin! Lifting the sledgehammer I was surprised by its weight.  As I swung it back behind me, I worried that I might head into the plate glass along with the hammer!  With an instinct for self preservation, I held back on the swing and only managed to crack the first layer of glazing. The second swing shattered all.

I had thought about this day for years and it was finally here.  I was so ready to clear the palate and begin building my dream home.  I never anticipated that I would be so sad when the little house, unloved in recent years but absolutely loved by its creators, started to come down.  I thought of the owners, he was the publisher of House Beautiful, how proud they had been to build their dream house on this site.  The house before them had also been the pride of a Richardsonian architect and it too was torn down during the Depression for being too unwieldy in a time of austerity.  Am I third time charmed?  Each generation thinks it has the answers to timeless building.  Dare I be so bold?