Itinerantdaughter's Blog

Those of you who own The Itinerant Daughter Encyclopedia will know that there are few things I like more than living quarters in structures that were constructed as non-residential spaces.  You’ll see it on the Index of Greatness, right between Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion and freshly peeled garlic cloves (so delightfully smooth!)  All this to say that if you would like to buy me a condominium in the refurbished Danvers State Hospital in Danvers, Massachusetts, in honor of my upcoming nuptials, I’ll definitely promote you to Best Friend Status.

So––I’ve just been traipsing around Europe, hence my criminal absence, and I discovered that Berlin is a veritable treasure trove of such structures.  Allow me to share a few of my favorites:

1. The Water Tower in Prenzlauer Berg

This round building on the edge of a park in bougie Prenzlauer Berg is basically my dream.  From a blog called Berlin — Around Town:

“The unofficial symbol of the district is the giant, 30-m (98-ft) high Water Tower in Knaackstraße, built in 1877 as a water reservoir, but shut down in 1914. The engine house in the tower was used as an unofficial prison by the SA in 1933–45 – a period recalled by a commemorative plaque. The tower stands on Windmühlenberg (windmill hill), where some of the windmills that had made Prenzlauer Berg famous in the 19th century once stood. Today the round brick building has been converted into trendy apartments.”

Also an acceptable gift.

2. This apartment complex in an old hospital in Kreuzberg

Or framed medical records

3. Augustrasse 25

It’s probably no one’s fantasy to live above a dance hall, but Clarchens Ballhaus is no ordinary dance hall.  It’s hosted bloody duels, dances for war widows, and many a Stasi agent looking for an enemy of the people. I feel like you could get used to lying alone in bed at night, listening to crackly old tango records emanating from downstairs.  To be fair, I’m not actually sure that the building HAS apartments in it, but I’m currently trying to track down official CB historian Marion Kiesow to ask.

And a beer garden to boot!

And if you are bored, you can just pop downstairs for a concert!

I’m so over it.  Newest blow: the most adorable little house in the world, at 121 Charles Street, is probs going to be torn down to make room for an ugly glass bougie panopticon-esque highrise of some sort.

So teeny!

In addition, Maeve Brennan, whom I borderline idolize (both sartorially and artistically), wrote a very charming piece in her New Yorker column about monitoring this house’s move from uptown to downtown.  An excerpt, which I had to dig through the TNY archives for (you’re welcome):

“Tonight, Sunday, March 6th (1967), I heard on the radio that a two-hundred-year-old wooden farmhouse was moved this morning from Seventy-first Street and York Avenue all the way down to Charles Street, in the village–-a five mile journey.  The move was a rescue.  The farmhouse was about to be demolished, because it was in the way of a new building plan.  [Editor’s note: I guess everything has always sucked]  I live in the Village, and I thought I’d walk over and see the house––see how it was standing up to its first night away from its birth site… But when I stepped up on the sidewalk on the northeast corner of Hudson and Charles Street I saw the house.  It was up in the air, a ghost shape, at the end of the block, on the northeast corner of Charles Street and Greenwich Street.  The eastern wall of the farmhouse is painted a dark color, but the front wall, facing Charles Street, is white, and as I approached it I got a sidewise glimmer of it that defined the whole tiny structure.  It was a very tiny house––much smaller than I had expected.  That must have been a very small farmer who built it.”

I actually heard this extract when I was on a walking tour of Maeve Brennan’s Greenwich Village one afternoon when I was dead tired and my fingers were covered were grease from McDonald’s fries.  As they say: nothing charming stays.  But on the other hand, an article in NY Mag recently covered the “co-buying” trend, so if a very tiny family would like to team up with my very tiny family (two people and two cats) and purchase this little abode at the bargain price of $20 million, contact Siobhan––she’ll know what to do.

Dwarfed!