Interior, antique inter urban suburbia. It's a thing.

 

There is a wonderful, older neighborhood to the north of the University of Texas at Austin campus called Hyde Park. So many of the original 1940s and 1950s cottages and small houses are still standing having resisted the desire on the part of developers and their nouveau riche clientele to tear them down and replace them with grotesque and oversized white box mansions with black trim. That's not to say that these smaller, 800 to 1200 square foot dwellings are inexpensive. Far from it. Like most close-in properties in Austin they range from about $700K to $1.2K, depending on the lot size. Because that's what real estate developers and investors are most interested in. The house is just something to deal with. Within days of most closings in the neighborhoods to the west of campus the bulldozers show up and the house is scraped off the lot and disposed of. Then construction starts and the "new and improved" replacement. 

Somehow Hyde Park has developed some sort of partial immunity against reckless and stupid re-development. People in this neighborhood tend to buy houses out of nostalgia (and no little measure of good taste...) and the desire to renovate them (maintaining the original footprint) and make them into comfortable and more modern homes. 

I love walking through that neighborhood. The expression of ownership is sweet and seems wholesome. Not a "show off" exercise but the desire to make something quite comfortable for the long term. 

Today I took a break from Thanksgiving and driving between cities and just walked. I'd driven over to the neighborhood to have a Cuban sandwich at my favorite local sandwich shop, New World Deli. Afterwards it seemed the right thing to do to walk from independent bookshop to independent bookshop and to savor the quiet charm and visual soothing of a neighborhood not at odds with itself.

I also got reacquainted with the comfortable, teutonic Leica SL and the old, R series 35-70mm zoom lens. A quiet and pleasant postprandrial stroll with a reliable and chatty camera as an aid to paying attention. 

Hope your Thanksgiving went well...