I began my walk at the corner of 4th Street and Winona street, by Central Park, the bright sunny morning of April 11th. I had just left the Weitz, backpack in tow, and was looking forward to spending some time outside. I actually chose this route because I knew it was close to the Weitz. I’ve probably spent more time in that building than any other at Carleton, besides my dorm. I’m there just about every day of the week, so I’ve seen many of the houses around it in passing, or even from the window of the music department office where I work. But when I’m passing through the neighborhood, I tend to have somewhere to be, and I don’t bother to stop and linger. I’m also almost always listening to music, even when I’m just on the way to class, or sitting alone in my room. I almost always have headphones in. So I thought it would be good to actually notice the houses that are, for all intents and purposes, basically my neighbors.
The first house I passed as I headed down Winona street towards 5th was actually, to my surprise, one I remembered. Not for the house itself — it’s pretty nondescript. But when you walk down the sidewalk a little bit, past the driveway, you find this strange little shed:
It often, as you can see, has a little seasonal decoration or flowerpot in front of it. It has little windows and a tiny door with a lock on it. But I have no idea what it is! It seems too awkwardly small to be a shed — how would you put anything inside? I think I would barely fit through the door. At first I thought it might be a chicken coop, but I’ve (sadly) never seen any chickens around it. It seems too small to even be a child’s playhouse. When I was walking back towards the end of my walk, I noticed someone eating in the backyard of this house. Alas, I did not ask them what their mystery structure is for.
Something this walk made clear to me is that I feel a bit awkward staring at people’s houses. It’s one thing to do so from the safety of a car, or even while walking briskly past, but I was walking quite slowly up and down the streets, writing in a notebook, and I felt a bit suspicious. The awkward angle of that last photo might show you that I was also a bit scared to take photos. I felt like I would get in trouble. Not sure why — I didn’t actually see very many people at all, aside from some workers replacing shingles on a roof later on, and one person who looked like they might be college-age but I’d never seen before, who said “hi” to me by the funeral home.
So most of my photos are… not great. If you squint at this one, you might be able to see the dinosaur skeleton lawn ornament on the yard next door to the mystery shed:
I quite like it.
As I turned down 5th street, I couldn’t help but notice how big the lots were. In theory, I had just walked a block (from 4th to 5th), but I had only passed two houses. I think it’s true of many of the houses around Carleton, but there really is so much space between the houses. It’s quite different from my neighborhood at home, where we have front yards and back yards, but your next door neighbor is pretty close on either side.
Right now, the big yards of Northfield are in that ugly stage between the new growth of spring and the snow of winter. I saw a lot of dead leaves and muddy patches, but not much green. When I did notice a patch of small purplish flowers growing by one of the houses on 5th, between Winona and College St, I got excited enough to take a picture.
After a quick google, I think these are Scilla siberica, but they might also be Scilla chionodoxa, AKA Glory-of-the-snow (which is, objectively, a much more exciting name than “Siberian squill”). Although commonly planted as groundcover, neither of these species is native to the United States. Siberica has apparently become invasive in some areas of the US, which does put a bit of a damper on my springtime joy.
At least the weather was lovely. As I turned up College St. from 5th for my first “spur,” I noticed just how warm the sun was. There’s a house on that street with some tall conifers in its front yard, casting thick shade on the sidewalk that made me notice the absence of leaves on all the other trees. For the most part, I had been walking past fairly young, deciduous trees, which hadn’t begun to sprout leaves. The shade cast by the conifers gave that small section of the sidewalk in front of the house its own distinct boundaries.
Across the street from the house with the conifers was a bright blue house. It was on this spur that I also encountered the first brick house on my route. Before then, almost all the houses had been covered in siding, or some other none-brick substitute that I couldn’t name. I think of siding as aesthetically American, although I don’t have any real justification other than that’s what my mom told me. This area of Northfield certainly supports her hypothesis: I passed a rainbow of painted siding, but only two or three brick homes.
Many of the homes with siding have artful details, varying their designs part of the way up with decorative wooden shingles, or protruding wooden arches supporting the eaves. As I continued back down 5th street, I passed a series of rather lovely old houses that featured some of those lovely little details — but one of the houses was getting work done on the roof, so I was a bit worried that it would look weird to take a photo. I did do my best to record the dates that these houses were built: the three I passed between College St. and Union all had little plaques displaying their construction dates, 1878, 1902, and 1889 (although I didn’t get the best look at that, so it might have actually been 1898). Some of the occupants seemed to lean into that antiquity, with lace curtains on all the windows. I’m not sure who built the homes, but they’re huge, with at least three floors and enough windows in interesting places that it seems like there could be more floors hiding in between.
As I turned up Union street for my second “spur,” the houses got familiar once again. This is the start of the route I often take to Family Fare, so when I saw the house with the cage on the second floor balcony, I looked for what sort of animal it could possibly be for, like I always do. I didn’t have anymore success than usual, but my best theory is an indoor cat that wants fresh air time. I’ve never actually seen anyone use the balcony, though there seemed to be a remarkable number of balconies on the homes I passed on this walk. My familiarity with the route also means that I can say with at least a bit of confidence the weird purple streamers on this tree have been here for what seems like a year. I have no idea what they were for originally.
I also passed the first apartment building I’d seen on my walk, Union Street Apartments. It was made of brick, and very much a departure from the old-fashioned siding houses of most of the neighborhood. It does feel odd to have an entire apartment building on a lot that didn’t seem not much bigger than those of the neighboring houses.
When I turned back to 5th street, I approached the first of two churches on my route. This one, All Saints Episcopal Church, is built in generally the same style as the houses around it, all wooden siding. Blue seems to be a fairly popular color. I couldn’t quite decipher the stained glass, but if you look close at the picture, in the garden bed beneath it, you can just see the green shoots of what I think will be tulips.I think I might have seen the church’s gardener, closing a shed. But this isn’t the only garden they have. After rounding the corner from 5th onto Washington, I saw what looked like a big patch of brown grass with a sign on it. Upon inspection, this is apparently a prairie garden in progress.
A nice antidote to the Scilla, maybe?
Washington is a much busier street than the others I had been on so far, or at least a more public one — on the other side of the street, the business side of Northfield begins. The smell of Domino’s pizza drifted up the street to me — I don’t know who orders pizza at 11 in the morning, but I guess they were making it.
As I walked up Washington, I saw the second apartment building of my route, which is apparently called Benson apartments, although I only learned that from google just now. It didn’t seem to have a sign. It looked a bit newer than Union Street Apartments, although that might just be thanks to the color of the bricks. For some reason, yellow bricks just scream 60s to me (I’m looking at you, Watson Hall).
Speaking of yellow brick, the next building I encountered was Benson Funeral Home, which has always looked to me like a 60s bungalow that got turned into a funeral home. I’ve never actually seen anyone go in or out of this building.
On the corner by the funeral home, though, I saw the trace of some sort of activity. Given the presence of what looks like shattered fiberglass, I wondered if there might have been an accident here recently. It’s hard to tell how long the pieces have been here — the snow melting can sometimes reveal things that have been hidden under it all winter long.
The rest of the houses on Washington were distanced from the sidewalk by a hill and a retaining wall, which gave them a much more mysterious air than the houses on flat ground, even though they looked pretty much the same. This was also the first indication that made me realize I had in fact been walking over some elevation change. It was much more obvious when I turned up 3rd street towards First United Church. The hill wasn’t that big, but it was certainly noticeable.
Before I got to the church, I passed the little sign for the day care behind it. I guess it wasn’t nice enough for the kids to be outside yet, or maybe they weren’t in at the moment, since the yard outside was empty. I did see some colorful Christmas lights — not sure if those were left up from over the winter, or if they’re just year-round decoration.
After reading a bit of Max Hailperin’s blog, I couldn’t help but notice the gothic allusions in First United Church. It’s funny how the pointed windows have stuck around long past the time when they were structurally necessary — kind of like the mock-wattle-and-daub house that I had seen on the corner of College St. and 4th. When I reached Union Street, I turned right to walk past the church from another angle. I guess churches also like to have environmentally-friendly gardens, because I noticed another little sign on a brown patch of grass and dead leaves next to the First United parking lot. Apparently it’s a rain garden.
The house next to First United also had a sign, a banner which seemed to be a proud political statement. Actually, I remember seeing some signs that looked like almost the exact same design cropping up in my hometown after the 2016 election (and I live in Canada…). It wasn’t the only yard sign I saw. I saw one that proclaimed “This home composts,” one in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, another supporting Angie Craig, another advertising a contractor.
These signs were some of the only obvious details that told me anything about who lived on the streets that I was walking. As I said, I didn’t see many people (to be fair, it was a Monday morning). Few houses had anything lying around their yards that would give me any clue about the occupants, aside from the occasional quirky lawn ornament.
There was one exception to this rule, another house on my typical Family Fare route, which I passed for the second time as I headed down 4th street on my way back to the corner of Winona and 4th where I began. It’s a yellowish house on the corner of Union and 4th, and it always has a wide assortment of toys and knick-knacks in the front yard: a toy car, a barbeque, an gnome in an oddly suggestive lounging pose. I like it. It looks lived in.
