I’d like to cast myself as a trendsetter, out there ahead of the curve, but I’m not the first down this path. Since buying the Alton apartment, I keep running into people who have come back after spending most of their adult years in places like Tahoe, Virginia Beach and – yes – New York City. For Penny Schmidt, whose father had been an art professor at Principia College 10 miles upriver, the impetus was 9/11. She shuttered her art gallery in mid-town Manhattan, encountering the same disbelief from her friends as I did mine, and sought sanctuary in Alton. In no time at all, she was a partner in the development of Mississippi Landing, Soho-style lofts in an early 20th century building with 12-foot ceilings, exposed brick and incredible river views.
When I interviewed her in 2007 for a New York Times story -- Residential Conversions Revitalize River Town, I was tempted to follow her lead. The sale of my Lincoln Towers studio apartment might have even bought me two luxury lofts! But once the article was completed, I went on to the next assignment, this one in Panama, and imaged what it would be like to live in one of those lovely old Canal Zone houses.
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