The crooked house on Marshall is in the process of being fixed, setting the scene for a great before&after one day.
There is still this wonderfully leaning house on 21st Street; are there other gravity defying houses in the area?
The crooked house on Marshall is in the process of being fixed, setting the scene for a great before&after one day.
There is still this wonderfully leaning house on 21st Street; are there other gravity defying houses in the area?
13 comments
Who ya gonna call?
DAVE-COOLEY!
That makes my brain hurt; it’s like something from an M.C. Escher drawing.
somewhere around 23rd and marshall there is a vacant house that is leaning just as much (looks like it could fall over).
There’s the brick house on Marshall that is across 22nd Street from the aforementioned crooked frame house on Marshall. It seems to be leaning precariously to the east, while the other house leans to the west. I’ve always found it a little frightening.
Yeah Bullwinkle… I call that one the Leaning Tower of Dilapidation. Someone said it was being worked on but I pass by that area almost daily and haven’t seen anything going on with it.
The house pictured above I had often wondered why it hadn’t been condemned years ago? Being off of its foundation in the rear and sits next to the blue house that is on its right which was the house with the broken back.
Remember that many of these frame houses were “workforce” housing, and may not even have a foundation beyond stacked stones. No-one ever thought they would be “historic.”
All I know is the house on 21st above will have a lot of work ahead since the porches and even siding had been reworked over the years to adapt to the severe lean towards the rear – let alone jacking it up to level it out. I often wonder how anyone eats on a table or sleeps in a bed in there? The floors have to be as pitched as the outside of the house!
Just the lean alone would make it unsafe with the extra stress hence wonder why it hasn’t been condemned by building inspectors years ago? If a house falls off its foundation during a flood, hurricane or earthquake they consider it unsafe so what’s the difference here?
Eric
Eric #7, I was in that house two or three years ago, with both an appraiser and a contractor; I was thinking of buying it at the time. It has been jacked up at some point in the past, and there are beams underneath (in the crawl space) that were installed to shore up the foundation, obviously not a great job but it holds it firmly in place.
But more importantly, the inside had had floors installed over top of the original floors, and they were built up on a platform so they’re actually fairly even – there is no noticable pitch inside.
The house hasn’t fallen off it’s foundation, as you put it, nor is that about to happen. The major problem the appraiser I hired found was that the front porch appeared to be trying to separate from the building. There is something going on with it, and I agree it needs major work, but it’s not something the building inspector would condemn at this point, when you go inside and underneath it.
However, that said, it DOES need some repairs!
This is the eyesore rental that I share an alley with. It houses VCU students on a regular basis and the various landlords have just band-aided any issues. Well, except for the weeds that are now rather big trees and the privacy fence that could fall down with strong wind any day now. But with all it’s problems, I definitely wouldn’t say it’s in such bad shape that it should be condemned.
VCS, you might call the city on their 311 line and report the weeds. Hopefully the landlord will cut them, and not make the student tenants do it…also report the privacy fence, it was pretty weak when I looked at the house and I think that was three years ago at least. The city won’t make you use your name if you don’t want to, their goal is just getting the correct address and nature of the problem, and weeds over a foot tall are a problem.
crd…
I was judging by the way the house appears when you look at it down the block in comparison to the other house. The rear portion of the building is definitely down to the ground like it has slipped off the piers where as the front is up where it should be, giving it a downward slope appearance to the ground along the 1st floor level. Not sure why – the same situation as the leaning house around the corner due to landfill? I know it was built in an area where Jefferson Hill was cut through during the 1880s to level the streets for trolley and traffic use.
VCS…It doesn’t look like a house to be condemned overall, just unsafe for occupancy yet salvageable. These older houses are built stronger than you think and can withstand a considerable lean grade. In fact there was a house built probably in the 1840s in Nelson County where we have a summer place and had been vacant for decades. It was a one room deep house with the whole thing leaning towards its back at a 45-degree angle and stayed that way for many years through all sorts of weather completely exposed inside and out to the elements. It wasn’t until the roof finally collapsed that it leaned further and finally fell over. That house was built like a rock – unlike the matchstick and plastic crap built today!
That said, what is going on with it? It is going on 2-months since the original post and have seen zero activity one way or another.
Eric
Someone just told me that this leaning house has been condemned, the city wants the foundation fixed. I have not been by to see what I expect to see, which is a nice orange sign, but plan to do so soon. At this point, am just bumping this back in the threads.
There was not a right angle to be found in that place.