Noticed this article in an old appliance dealer mag.
Central vacuum systems were trendy in the 60s, but never widespread. When we lived at the top of the hill in Manhattan, a rich prof built a new house next to ours. He had Euro connections and owned the first Squareback I’d ever seen, brought directly from Germany.
This L-shaped house doesn’t look large from the front, but it was a HUGE house with all sorts of special features including central vacuum. The back side looked out over a vast view of the Wildcat Valley, with decks and sliding doors all around. The daylight basement included a fallout shelter, fully equipped for nuclear disaster. The sewer line on that street went eastward toward downtown, and our house was the end of the line at that time. The pipe was at its limit for safe sloping when it reached our house, so the new downhill house needed to push its sewage up to reach the top end of the pipe. The new house had a tank under the garage that held the sewage for pumping. I must admit this part doesn’t make sense now that I think of it, but the tank and the pump were definitely there! It would have been much easier to run a pipe directly down the cliff to the west, since an existing large sewer line was down there. I used to tightrope-walk on the pipe where it crossed Wildcat Creek.**
While looking at that area in Googlestreets, I checked the house that had been ours. At the top of this picture you can see the stone retaining wall my father built with my “help”, along with the stone walk to the back stairway.
From the bottom of that stairway I often climbed down the steep hill to explore Sunset Park and environs, including the Polistra townsite nearby. On this overview, X is our house, Y is the rich prof’s house, and Polistra is at the bottom of the cliff. The top view doesn’t show the altitude. (Wilmar, which curves down the steep hill, was built later.)
This topo map shows the slopes more clearly.
The last time I visited Manhattan in the 80s, the park was securely fenced on all sides. No exploration allowed.
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** I was a bold explorer. If there was a creek or an abandoned building or a machine that needed to be explored, I was in it. The boldness disappeared around age 14, possibly with puberty. This little stunt turned out to be the measurement for the switch. I had walked across the pipe several times in one summer, enjoying it each time. The next summer I tried it and couldn’t tolerate it. Boldness was gone.
Polistra's Mill 