By: Kyle Xu
From the top of the hills of Union City, a town just across the Hudson River, immigrants and artists have gazed at glimpses of the sea and skyline.
However, these spectacular views went relatively unnoticed, so the prices were cheap enough to allow two shifting roads down the edge of a cliff – Mountain Road and Manhattan Avenue. These roads boasted a potential spot to settle, especially because of the view. And for some time, this area lived peacefully until 2005 – when investors started to bid for the houses.
To this day, those houses are still standing there, rotting from all sorts of natural damage. They will never never be the same.
Mountain Road and Manhattan Avenue were filled with sculptors and painters – like the Beaux-Arts sculptor, Raffaele Menconi. He co-owned a 13-room mansion on Mountain Road and had designed the flagpole bases at the New York Public Library. Charles Harris, a painter, and Olive Kooken, a sculptor, lived in a house just up the road.
But the community also remained home to the photographer Bonnie Berger, who owned a three-family brick house and ran a shop down the hill.
“It was an amazing place to grow up,” said Ms. Berger, 45. The mother and daughter lived on the first floor of the brick house. “We had a great backyard. My mom had vegetable gardens. We had hammocks, and a turtle was living there. It was a little oasis. We could see the fireworks every year. It was pretty unique.”
In 2005, a group of investors offered Bonnie Berger $1.7 million to buy the house, and Berger, who had bought the house for $130,000, couldn’t refuse.
Investors started to take over Mountain Road and Manhattan Avenue. Between 2005 to 2009, the investors bought 12 contiguous properties on the beautiful cliff – for between $360,00 to $6.5 million.
However, for reasons no one is aware of, nothing has happened to the properties since they were bought. Instead, they have suffered from fires, intruders, and pretty much everything else. This was hard to believe, for such a promising and potential neighborhood.
A petition to raze the houses in 2015 was even offered by Kate Sparrow, a Mountain Road home occupier, saying, “These buildings are a fire hazard, an eyesore, reduce our property values, and give Union City a disgusting presentation.” She only got 33 signatures.
“I think the city would like housing developed on that property, but in a way that is sensitive to the existing neighborhood and the cliffs itself,” Mr. Spatz said, “developing something that wouldn’t block views to the people live to the west of the property, but also be sensitive to the Palisades.” The investors had not submitted formal plans for a project to the city.
Ms. Berger, who sat in her backyard as a child and watched the fireworks shoot into the sky from the Hudson River, cried, thinking about her home that would never be the same.