Word: pleuthner
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...town, in turn, has shown its fist. Starting back in 1967, the township has served Owner Walter K. Pleuthner, 83, with legal papers ordering him to demolish the house. Local officials believe a succession of small fires have damaged the structure so much that it is "dangerous and unsafe." Pleuthner contends that the fires only "mellowed" his home's great oak beams, answers each suit with delaying tactics or countersuit. When officials threatened to bulldoze the structure last month, Pleuthner's lawyer won a temporary restraining order. Said he: "Scarsdale doesn't like it because it doesn...
Wealthy Paupers. The house does have a few defenders. One of Pleuthner's neighbors, Architect Oscar de Bogdan, recalls that when the house was built in 1922, "it was a terrific showplace around here-one of the most authentic replicas of a 16th century English country manor." Says Dr. Margaret Archer, another neighbor: "Even now, the place looks like a collage. It has a crazy charm." Then she adds wistfully, "Everything else looks the same around here...
...Pleuthner himself is no less eccentric than his home. Wheezing and bent with age, he is nonetheless chipper and determined as a bright sparrow. A practicing architect since 1906, he has some 50 lavish country residences to his credit, including his own beleaguered castle. Lately he has returned to his second vocation of artist (he exhibited in the great 1913 Armory Show in New York). Although the fire in 1963 forced him to move to a rented apartment, the house remains his studio, without running water or electricity...
Paintings cover the walls and ceilings, and still Pleuthner doodles on. The dial of his bathroom scales shows a baby's face. He answers legal documents with pastel scrawls on colored construction paper. Recently, and with a little embarrassment, his lawyer turned the town's official notices over to the courts complete with an emblazoned DON'T TREAD ON ME and coiled snake -Pleuthner's art work and heartfelt response. Cocking his head, he says: "The people in Scarsdale may be wealthy, but esthetically, they're paupers...
Good Promotion. One of the most practical methods, suggests Pleuthner, is to glamorize the regular Sunday services between the great church festivals of Christmas and Easter by dedicating them to special groups and purposes. Examples: Founders' Day Sunday ("Why not honor those families that founded your church?"); Good Neighbor Sunday (special letters of invitation from the minister to all members of the neighborhood) ; Medical Sunday ("Reserve the front pews for families of doctors or nurses"); Flower Sunday ("when due tribute is paid to God for His gift of flowers to our world...