Kitty Corner

8/22/20 Maple Leaf neighborhood

This summer, I had wanted to continue my Maple Leaf architecture series more regularly, especially since I’ve been walking through the ‘hood so often. But it hasn’t been as easy as I had hoped. To see a house well, I like to stand directly across the street, but that means that if a pedestrian came by, I’d have to pull up my mask and quickly move out of the way. As infrequently as that happens in my quiet neighborhood, it still requires keeping one eye on the sidewalk instead of my sketch subject. (Ah, how simple the Before Times were!)

Second Avenue Northeast is the widest of the streets on my route, so it offered this opportunity: a house on a corner, and kitty-corner from it was a parked car that I could stand in front of, safe from both traffic and pedestrians. It’s a nice house, too – I think of it as a quintessential Maple Leaf Craftsman, probably from around the same era as our own.

Perhaps I looked strange sketching from that marginal area, but a couple of friendly nods and smiles came my way, so maybe strangeness is OK, especially in these strange times.