No, no, NO! In nearly all cases, just take the money, and don’t look back, especially when they’re paying you millions and millions *. Hell, I’d help them off-load the bulldozer (on my way back from the bank), if they needed it.
Ok, so I’m on record as not giving a [gosh-darned] if someone tears down a house, but sometimes…well, maybe once in awhile it does seem a little sad.
Here’s a good example:
17 Meadowcroft Lane, a really great old (but completely updated) 1930’s english manor, now vanished.
Check out the photos, see what you think.
* Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe I hold the record for Greenwich’s most expensive tear-down!
17 Meadowcroft, now a pile of rocks, baking in the sun. On the other hand, the buyers paid $9.391M ($491,000 over ask), so they are entitled to do what they want, n’est-ce pas?
Greenwich Bored And Razed 
I usually hate it when people complain about tear downs, making a dumb comment about how if a house was good enough to raise a fine family one generation ago it should be good enough now, and calling somebody who wants a house with modern amenities nouveau riche, etc. All that being said, Meadowcroft used to be one of my favorite streets in mid-country. Seeing some of the new construction there makes me want to cry. I guess I am a hypocrite, but god some of those new houses on Meadowcroft are ugly.
Agree, Anonymous on June 3, 2013 at 11:14 AM. I drove down Meadowcroft yesterday afternoon to have a look at the demolition site. The remaining mountain of debris is representative of the steady decline in civility and good taste that has manifested itself in our town for the past few decades. Some of the new structures on Meadowcroft appear to have been designed by architects of the Northern New Jersey/20th Century Russian school.
The Romanian school:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2106131/Pickpockets-palaces-The-Romanian-mansions-built-targeting-UK-commuters.html
Should make a documentary about the changing of the guard here in Greenwich: No country for old WASPs
I do think you must really have meant “fugly”.
Truly heartbreaking to see this formerly beautiful road turned into an avenue of bad taste. Embarrassing to our town.
I have nothing against new construction, even 10,000 sq ft new construction, just not the examples on this street.
uwgb:
I pretty much agree with all of you about the new look of Meadowcroft, as do most brokers I know. Still, I wonder what the locals thought back around 1940, when, by then, a lot of beautiful meadows had been dug up in order to build “giant” pseudo-English manors? We all got used to those places, as the decades passed, and they came to seem “normal”. Perhaps these latest examples will age as gracefully?
The diplomat of the Fountain family.
Old Meadowcroft:
http://lucindaw.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/happy-mothers-day-olive/
Well as people are cross linking Meadowcroft posts to your brothers blog, what do you make of the accepted offer on the nice place on the corner of Meadowcroft and Grahampton asking 13.75MM. I recall you liked this place a while back.
Anon:
You are correct! I’ll be posting on this after I exit this infernal treadmill.