"A New York Treasure" --Village Voice

Where & When: Game 23

Greetings, and welcome to another episode of Where & When, the game that makes you think, “Hmm, that must have been nice back in the day” or something similar to that.  Well, the Hot Stove is burning bright this winter and we haven’t even gotten to the Winter Meetings yet.  Nothing much else going on in New York except us; we’re the next hottest game in town, folks! At least we like to think it is, and our hungry regulars like to keep us relevant during a down year for New York in general.  So while we sweat by the wood burner and wonder WWJZD and how sternly Boras is frowning on the way to the bank, let us ponder the graceful ornaments of these interesting structures:

rhinelandergardens

This pic was taken about 20 years before the houses were taken down and twenty years before a very iconic Chevy rolled off the assembly lines of GM plants.  There were similar, but less-ornamental structures around the block that were both either owned or named after one of the old New York land-owning families of old.  It is said that quite a few famous artists and authors lived rather bohemian lifestyles here during its existence.  Today, you would never notice the remnants of these buildings unless you were close enough to have lunch (or take part in a flea market perhaps), but some things in the picture still survive.  You can use all of these clues to find the correct answer, plus if you’re feeling empirical you can tell us a little about the designer of the houses and a couple of other designs he had done in his day that also remain to this day.
A (dare I say) rare mix of our favorite stuff for the first person to post the correct answers below, and an Old Philly for the rest of us (though I’m not entirely sure I’m being fair this time around)… feel free to post your thoughts, invite your family and friends and tease each other over this one; it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.  You can also discuss other elements in this picture for a bonus.  I’ll check back in the afternoon as usual and throughout the morning if need be.  Enjoy the game!

[Photo Credit: Berenice Abbot and Ephemeral New York]

11 comments

1 rbj   ~  Dec 5, 2013 10:12 am

Oh jeez, got it.

Iconic Chevy, I was thinking the Corvette, which first came out in 1953, 20 years before would put it in the neighborhood of the photo. The car on the right does match the time period, interesting to note that Sheffield Farms was still making deliveries by horse drawn carriage.

2 Chyll Will   ~  Dec 5, 2013 10:23 am

[1] Err, more iconic than that; the Corvette has the advantage of still being made to this day while this was known for the one particular year. It symbolizes the decade, I'll say...

3 Chyll Will   ~  Dec 5, 2013 10:47 am

Welp, I knew if I started boasting about our game that it would be on the day most people wouldn't show up >;)

4 Shaun P.   ~  Dec 5, 2013 12:09 pm

[3] The problem isn't being here Chyll, it's having the time to figure it out! :)

At least for me.

5 TheGreenMan   ~  Dec 5, 2013 1:01 pm

Ugh...did a search for the Unadilla Apartments (that building is still standing!), and I wound up on the picture source page. Sigh. So I'll leave the guesswork to the rest of the crew.

PS - I did guess the year before I saw the photo credit. Mostly from your clue about the famous Chevy.

6 rbj   ~  Dec 5, 2013 1:57 pm

[5] That's what I did as well. As long as we're not clicking on the photo credit it's fine. I actually didn't even look at the photo credit at the start.

7 Chyll Will   ~  Dec 5, 2013 3:00 pm

Yeah, I knew this would be a problem; I normally try to avoid the pictures that are easy to trace or give away the photo credit to easy in Google, but I had limited options at hand at the time. I will be adding a bonus game tomorrow, which I promise will be harder to detect.

8 RIYank   ~  Dec 5, 2013 3:08 pm

Damn, late today -- I had endless meetings between 10 and 2:30. Ugh. (If only I had brought an iPad with me I could have been having much more fun doing When & Where!)

So, um, the url of your picture is a bit of a giveaway. You usually change the name of the file to "whenandwhere23" or something, but I guess you forgot -- when I opened the pic in a new window it just kind of shouted at me.

I still don't know what the iconic Chevy is. Maybe it's just as well I didn't have much time today. Sigh.

9 Chyll Will   ~  Dec 5, 2013 3:32 pm

Yeah, might as well tell you; the answer is Rhinelander Gardens, c. 1937, the year it was torn down was thus 1957, as in...

10 rbj   ~  Dec 5, 2013 4:30 pm

[8] Jeez, I didn't even notice that about the picture.

Unadilla was the key.

11 Chyll Will   ~  Dec 5, 2013 9:26 pm

[8] The pic might have been reset. Sorry about that...

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"This ain't football. We do this every day."
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