The Black House, otherwise known as Peacock Hill, photographed in Budget Living Magazine in 2003.
Fleischmanns, a village in Delaware County named for yeast magnates, is a Victorian-era junky's fantasy. The streets are lined with gingerbreaded and curlicued mansions, many of them lovingly restored, and this weekend they will be open to visitors on Sunday from 11am to 3pm.
Of the hamlet's painted ladies, the so-called "Black House" on Wagner Avenue is definitely its resident goth chick. In 2001, a couple of artists, Rob Pruitt and Jonathan Horowit, bought a 10-bedroom grande dame in town and remade it into an abode worthy of the Addams Family.
In addition to painting it jet black and remaming it "Peacock Hill," the couple decorated each room with the help of a troupe of artist friends with gothic touches, such as matching Jekyll and Hyde pillowcases and "Peacock Hill" toilet seats.
The stunt, which led to the sale of the property in 2004 (reportedly to an Al Gore presidential campaign operative), earned the pair a spread in Budget Living Magazine in 2003. (All the images in this post are from that article.)
Peacock Hill also earned Pruitt and Horowit a nasty review in the New York Times, which called the house and its interior artworks and Gothic-kitsch agglomerations "insular and self-congratulatory" in 2003.
Not every building in Fleischmanns is in great shape, but that is going to change in the next two years, thanks to a New York Main Street Program grant won for the village by the MARK Project, which is part of a $900,000 grant package the nonprofit just secured for Roxbury, the town of Middletown, and the town of Andes.
