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Well, it's unclear whether or not it's the most haunted house of Queens, but 141-36 222nd Street seems that way. The NY Times has a big feature about the Victorian home that has fallen into disrepair, puzzling and captivating neighbors. There are a bunch of theories about who owns the house, and questions about whether or not someone is living there (maybe, though there's no electricity - but there is a bunker...maybe). The Times tried to do some investigating, contacting the Adult Protective Services (a caseworker couldn't get in), Department of Buildings, Department of Finance (the taxes are paid in cash!), to no resolution, though someone with the same name as the remaining son of the last seen owners works for the NYC Transit Authority. The house's mystique makes us think of Boo Radley from To Kill A Mockingbird, what with stories of infirm parents, an unseen son who doesn't want any part of the public eye.
This also reminds us of Corie and Alex's Officer's Row project in Brooklyn and Forgotten NY's neighborhood visits.
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What's the benefit of paying taxes on an abandoned property that keeps decreasing in value? Why not just sell it and be done with it? Unless..
There are dead bodies that would be discovered once the place gets torn down. The owner is paying for storage until he himself dies and is beyond the reach of justice.
For years I’ve passed by that house every day on the Long Island Railroad and wondered what and who the hell lives there…
Jmchez is right. Who knows what gore they’ll find in there once the authorities do a search. Severed heads? Wacky experiments?
To tell you the truth, with a little paint and some cleaning up, they can easily sell that house for quite a large chunk of change. It sits on a huge plot of land too.
Who cares if they find dead bodies inside... I'd buy it.
The owner, a city employee, may be using the the home as a mailing address because his job has a city residency requirement. That may be why he was less than thrilled when the Times called.
What I really liked about the article was the transparency of the reporter's methods. A careful reader can learn a lot about how to discover the name of a property owner, go from address to phone number, even order an historic photograph without without leaving the ketboard of your computer!
I agree with Kojak that a basic fix-up could turn this into a multi-million dollar property. But getting the boats out of the the yard, replacing rotted wooden windows, tearing down the fence, repairing the roof, painting a large facade, etc, could easily cost $50,000, $100,000, or more -- cash the present own may not have on hand. The owner would also be smart to lobby for Landmark status as well; this should not be a heavy lift and could add a significant premium to the sale price.
I admire the resourcefulness of Duckman's analysis, but the MTA is, alas, a state agency and imposes no residency requirement on its employees. Indeed, despite the repeated efforts of the goo-goos, few city agencies have residency rules. Elected officials, however, must live here.
I agree with Duckman that this shows what kind of lazy research the reporter did. In general, I think the NY Times reporters have gotten extremely lazy and bad, and this article is a perfect example. There's all this build up, and in the end the mystery isn't even solved; it's as if the reporter spent 36 hours on the story and then decided to move on, write it up, and get back to downloading music.
Good points, dude, unless this is not the last story the writer intends to write. Now that Oswald Bauer (God, even his name sounds fiendish, like a Nazi spy out of Dick Tracy or a Batman bad guy) has been exposed as the owner of the house and the mysterious boats, she (the crusading journalist) can dredge more information into the light of day... like how he's using the boats to haul the ghoulish results of his secret experiments out to the middle of Long Island Sound where they are dumped overboard... ooooooohhhhh wahahahahaha!