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My family moved into this Lexington, Massachusetts house in 1954. This was after living in California for 9 years then two towns in Connecticut. When we settled here, I was enrolled in my 4th fourth grade! We lived here for eight years, then a month before my 12th grade, we moved to another town. Over the years, I often drove by this house and often took photos, as seen below. I remember the mortgage was $90.00 a month. I have two old photos to show a little bit of comparison in the kitchen. Fast forward to 2023 when I stopped by and met the new owners who gave me a tour.
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| I had to show a 1968 boyfriend the house. |
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More recent photos.  In January 2020, my husband and I went by and took the above picture. And it was after this, I decided to google the address for any type of information. Surprisingly, it was just sold on December 30, 2019! And, there were 30 photos online! What a difference 60 years makes. Even though there were a lot of changes, I could still remember how it used to look. The below photos were taken by a real estate company.  Left front, three-season porch.  The living room still had the same shape. |
Living room from another angle.
Formal dining room, with built-in china cabinet.
The kitchen with a formal dining room is shown on the left.
The coats are in the phone and coat room. The door on the right is to the bathroom. The kitchen unit is exactly what we used. My two old photos were dated 1956 and 1958.
The shelves by the window were original to our old house, as shown below.
Staircase to the 3rd floor. There were four large bedrooms on the 2nd floor, and possibly two upstairs because the attic was huge.
The basement still had the old wood paneling I remember.
The house had two bathrooms.
Two photos of the back in 2020 don't look like this now.
Fast forward to September 2023. I had thought many times to stop by and give the new owners three old photocopies. The house is not out of my when when I go twice a year to Lahey Medical Center in Lexington. On this particular Sunday, it was a mild sunny September day. As I approached the house, my nerves disappeared, so I parked and went to ring the bell, and when a nice-looking man answered, talked as quickly as I could so he wouldn't think I was selling something. My photos were in my hand and I simply said, "I used to live his about 60 years ago, and I thought you might enjoy seeing these pictures." Well, his wife heard me and quickly came to the door to meet me and see the photos. The rest is history. We chatted a good hour and they insisted on showing me what they had done to the house, and it didn't look anything like what I had just posted. Quite a few walls were torn down, the stairs to the attic were moved to another part of the 2nd floor, and the list went on and on. The backyard is completely done over. His one regret was they couldn't keep the china cabinet, the contractor didn't like it.
I'm in awe with all this, and as we stood at the front door, for me to leave, I said, if you ever have to downsize, you'll have a big project. To which they said, they had just done it in their previous house. They offered me to take photos, but I declined.