Bridle Path Home for sale

[charlene]

it was 16 million..now listed at 10.8..

as one of the most technologically sophisticated residences in Canada sits on two acres, includes more amenities than most modern health clubs, and stunning contemporary design courtesy of TAS DesignBuild.


there's a slideshow feature: (not my cuppa as a home but quite remarkable nonetheless)
http://flickr.com/photos/prestigeliv...7606215995997/

On the left side at this link there are articles about it and video as well:
http://www.traveldiscountnow.com/83t...d=17&Itemid=31

[Cathy]

I'd sure hate to be the person who'd have to keep all those windows clean.

Cathy

[charlene]

that was my first thought too..doesn't look like there's any little kids living there..imagine dog nose prints all over those windows!
lol

[geodeticman.5]

Char - There is a really, really neat house here in the foothills outside of Golden, Colo., (home of Coors Beer - factory lunchpail town... & college town both.. odd mix - Colo. School of Mines - - hardest Engineering and earthsciences Univ. in Colorado, & mining of course, too).

The house is owned, & designed by a person famous in my field y'all will groan about if I wag on map-wise - so I'll only say what a newspaper-blurb or obit would say about him if - God-forbid, he were to pass. Hal Shelton, inventor of modern (key designation, vs original) method of coulor shaded-relief 3D appearing maps in natural colour as seen on the ground from a somewhat lower flying plane - generally under 20,000 feet - when away from our notorius 52 x 14,000 ft, mtns, anyway....

Well, he was commissioned in WWII to develop , or better said - enhance the method, ofthis type of map - for military lower-flying planes initially, and then NOAA-FAA adopted the method for their series of nav charts for flying - kinds like pictorial color-shaded simulated 3-D from a straight overhead view - as pilots would view the ground. They then can navigate by the ground features when their instruments are out, or they do not have them - (VFR). Like my friend's twin-engine Cessna - we are...scattering ashes from it coming up ...

WELL THE WHOLE POINT - was Mr. Shelton's HOUSE in Golden - tucked a bit up in the foothils. It is astounding..... squared. I have always really liked, dreamed of....mountain homes with natural features built into them. There's a new pop craze among the Aspen - Telluride $$$ celeb and CEO crowd building this way NOW..... but he did it THEN.....

Now, people in Colo. and elsewhere in mountains - affluent areas in any event, will build "Log" homes - understatement - where they will retain firms to supply them with peeled. sanded, soaked with oils to avoid cracking, and varnished - whole tree trunks, spread base and major branches and all, and either build them into the house, or the house around them as the case may be, with immense diameter log/tree - cross members, beams, "trees" in the living room for no -apparent- reason - other than aesthetics sometimes, and, *********Rock Walls********** !!!!

Mr. Shelston's house is a progenitor of the concept to my knowledge, in that he built a house after he grew, uhm, affluent from his maps and scientific illustrations - "blow-ups" of scientific machines in a 'exploded' view - to show the inner workings of say, a new kind of pump or something. This area of his talent made him rich. But first and foremost, he is a schooled cartographer, and his work is in shows regionally, and in libraries at times, and it is staggeringly -wow- quality of hand-rendering. The process of maps has been *automated* by computer programs that do his thing the way he does for nationwide FAA airflight ground maps, but they are really works of art for science.

Back to his house - in adition to the earliest user I've heard of of the now popular "whole trees" in houses - all varnished and smooth, and holding floors up.... again is the stone. He built his house against an immense moss-rock granite cliff-face that was tall . wide, and close to straight up and down. It has some natural mini - sconces in it that act as shelves of sorts, and one that has had an amazing drilling done to form a foreplace chimney-flue from a Bonanza-size fireplace sconce in the rock, repleat with natural rock hearth protruding, and the drilled-down to the fireplace hearth chimney-shaft. Its one of a kind as far as I know.
There are knick-knacks all over the rock wall on little projections, Large paintings of the mountains he did hanging here and there- realize this rock wall is about 20 feet high in the house, on the North cool side, and maybe 30 - 35 feet wide, and forms an entire wall of the house as is.... amazing. The south face of the house is - you guessed it - for passive solar input, tall walls of windows not unlike the house in the thread subject here. That is what made me think of Hal's house. Visinting his house is a sort of *mecca* for every local "serious" cartographer, the equivalent of traveling to Star-fleet academy for Trek-nerds (like me) to see his work.... he is a genius. His house reflects it, too.

How many people can lay-claim to their house having a whole rock small cliff-face as one wall, and entire trees and giant peeled logs built in structurally - with the requisite Navajo blankets and etc. flung over the mezzanine-like 2nd-story level, that opens down to the main "Yellowstone-lodge" living room. Its on a scale thats hard to associate the word house with... When my Dad retired from NASA and built his dream mountain home high-up, he did some of Mr. Shelton's ideas... on a reserved scale.. But he did build a 35 -foot tall moss-rock fireplace-hearth-chimney of indigenous rock from the property....that is to say he retained a mason to do it that specialized. Its pretty cool. Sad he lost the house to medical expense when he incurred unique needs from Parkinson's before he died. But hat house was really neat - fun to spend my senior year of high-school living in - my own mountain behind the house to walk up after school, etc.

Yup some people have some really amazing homes - Char the one you show is beautiful, and made me think of Shelton's from the windows.

I'd shudder to guess what Shelton's would sell for.

Thanks for letting me babble-on , on a fun subject. I want a rock-wall and real tree house some day - for the aesthetics, not the prestige - could not give a rats patoot as Char said, about that.

~geo steve

[geodeticman.5]

LOL - I said Gord-forbid - if he were to pass - about Hal Shelton in the tome above....entirely my accident. I would never deify Gord, even in jest. Gotta admit it is funny though. I also said Gordon, Colo., at first ( as opposed to corrected Golden, Colo.) but I caught that while typing. Did not see the other til posting. LOL... hoo boy.

Guess a guy can't help but have Gord on the mind in this forum, huh ?
~ geo steve

[charlene]

http://books.google.ca/books?id=dNGr...sult#PPA155,M1

and article about Google Earth/Shelton
http://www.mountaincartography.org/p...03_Drachal.pdf

http://hansvandermaarel.wordpress.co...-of-the-world/

http://www.reliefshading.com/

very interesting stuff! it certainly would have made my old geography classes much more interesting!

[charlene]

aerial view of home and Bridle Path neighbourhood:zoom in..
http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&q=8...-8&sa=N&tab=wl

Don't know if I'd want to live in a house with so many windows...or only windows:
http://www.preservationnation.org/tr...ass-house.html

[Cathy]

Even the shower has windows. And I don't see any shades. I'm way too modest to live in that house.

Cathy

[Cathy]

Char, I'd hate to see those windows after my neice, Sopie, visited. My living room windows have her nose, lips, finger prints all over them as I type this. Time to go get the Windex.

Cathy

[geodeticman.5]

Char - Thank you so much for expressing the interest in my Hal Shelton's house post as a springboard. And please - for any readers presently looking at THIS post reply, as I will make a few comments on the subject of Shelton's work ( map-making on 3-D looking natural colour cartography) if the subject matter is of no interest to you, or boring, I understand and suggest just skip the rest of my post here.....BUT.... out of respect for the time and effort CHAR went to to follow-up and check-out my citing Shelton - his work, and his house per the thread subject - of amazing houses....I am happily obliged to respond on what she took the time to study and look-up in searches on google on Shelton, and finding much of interest.

That is to say from above Char, the house post I made of Shelton's and as a de rigeur mention I had to make of the famous man that own(ed) it, your choice to use it as a springboard to your foray into the world ( no pun intended) of my professional passion Char, - of numerical (math-based versus artistic) cartography by looking up Shelton's work and finding these sites and papers that include so many professional heros of mine, the listings of cartographic scientists reads like on of my favoute textbooks.

I intended to truly add to the "amazing house" idea with my post, and was indeed enamoured of Hal Shelton's house - as amazing and groundbreaking as his professional work. Visiting his house was an event of a lifetime - he held a map and scientific illustration informal easel-presentation show in his home for peer-review (an honour indeed, and such humility academically on Shelton's part) to be included in "local cartographers and topographic engineers" (early federal term for geodetic and cartographic Surveyors), where he offered tea, a house tour, and, a fire-side talk to the adulating attendees.

LOL- well, adulating I was myself anyway, amidst more reserved and erudite experienced cartographers and academicians at the time. Versus me, a 2nd round of later-in life college just 4 years prior (1986) ( and third paper-chase since....groan), I qualified in the group as a wide-eyed and naive new kid on the geodetic/cartographic block in the area.

It was all I could do to not digress to a sufferin' sycophant meeting a professional legend that was in all my cartographic textbooks, and works on historical surveys of the American West - Powell, Hayden, et al earlier, and mid 1900's post depression - Shelton - who as you found is indeed a world-renowned physiographer - and when you are even placed in the company of the Swiss surveyors' cartographic work in a paper, or are even more so- cited by them , as was Shelton , and travel from Switzerland (where topographic surveying and relief cartography was born, and taken to a very high science, and in some cases - art; both...with Shelton) to Golden, Colorado, to engage in professional debate over technique - yes , Hal is/was indeed a world-class progenitor and genius in his work.

Char - I am apreciative of the readers being able to chose to appreciate a singularly fascinating thinking person's (yours) read in the hyperlinks you chose quite well on both Shelton, and the subject in general.

To seperate the man (Shelton) from his work, the subject (physiographic shaded relief),
and further from his HOUSE, which was as amazing as the man, would be a travesty in deference to what now I feel is an elegy to him ,sadly, as passed away, a personal hero, (why do mine keep dying?). I will avoid my post growing elegiac - if readers will allow me to use the apt but odd word one more time, as most appropriate now.

Short work of commenting on your well-thought-out links to Shelton references would be as follows for me, as you looked at deep waters in mapping Char, and some comment back would be in order, in excess would be presumptuous, which I wish to avoid.

The NACIS Journal white paper by Patterson/Kelso pointed out a favoured concept to me that Shelton held as a goal in physiographic relief maps - was stated to be "giving the map reader the sense of smelling the mountain [air] [on the summit]" - and to give the map reader the further sensory experience of "[being able to] hear the wind [on the summit]" in regards to his pursuit of perfection when working in Nevada as a USGS Topographic Engineer, and their relief rendering techniques. Ambitious indeed.

Jenny, Raber et al in the website on "Relief Shading" - was a very useful site for delving into several aspects of mapping, and indeed Shelton's models of what has been called historically "plastic" shading - in plastic's alternate sense.

Dr. Drachal of Warsaw is a world-renowned photogrammetric engineer/cartographer from the school of numerical cartography - utilizing math (nowadays) to pack into programs that make use of the rich model Shelton et al contributed varying schemes to , such as the "HSC CONE" - I mentioned in another thread- one I use in selecting color-gradient for elevation change - as the ground/rock/glaciers/ etc apear from both oblique views (at an angle), and orthogonal (from straight overhead) - as was/is the preferred method for airplane navigational map aids, such as Shelton's well-known long association with Jeppeson, an aviation -mapping and utility company that Hal did piece work for for years.
By American standards and language. Dr. Drachal makes a no-doubt unintentional misnomer when he refers to "physiognamy" - versus "physiography" and/or physiommetry"
I believe that was either a matter of translation from Polish, or perhaps the national scientific convention for the term. Interesting. Also the case with "chorographic" maps,
in the USA the term is "choroplethic" maps - dual-theme complexity in multi-hued maps, in short.

Also, to my astonishment, Dr. Drachel, himslef a respected and world-renowned cartographer and photogrammetrist, spoke of "oddly, Shelton's work had no following..."[sic] Oh sh** - that would be blaspheme in this North America and a good deal of European, Australia, the U.K, and a multitude of non former Soviet blocs.
Shelton is taught in USA's first book of Cartography taught in almost every University program on Surveying, Geodetic Engineering, Cartography, GIS, etc. - "Elements of Cartography" - now I believe in 8th edition now, by Arthur H. Robinson. I studied the 4th edition in college 1st round, and it was to the 7th edition in my 3rd round.

Robinson is no lightweight - he has a favoured and famous map projection named after him - often the gatefold map of the world in many high-end atlases , rounded developed cylindrical projection, as Drachel favoured, implying the world is not rectangular - as the ubiquitous (Gerardus) Mercator map does - comically distorting extreme latitude landforms - such as northern Siberia, the famous case of Greenland versus Iceland distortion, etc. Mercator - the map most shown in the media of the world - if rectangular , is made stricly for navigation - not geo-political or other uses.

Its use for navv'ing is un-paralleled, no pun intended, as its standard parallels are set at 40 degrees north as south, which is taught as a case for the Eurocentric view of the world at the time of his devloping the math of the projection in Germany, where the 40th parallel goes right through - by choice, and hence limits the distortion the most at that latititude. By coincidence, it goes right through Boulder Colorado,not far from Shelton's home, eg the source of the name of "Baseline road" in Boulder - combined with 40 degrees being the PlSS Survey system (sections, townships, 40 acres, etc.) abscissa (East-to-west) reference line intersecting with, and for, the 6th Principal meridian in Hebron Nebraska, from which all "STR" - (section, township, and range) land descriptions originate as a point 0,0, for the multi-state usage of one of several baseline and Principle meridian combinations in the US, escepting the colonial states, where metes-and-bounds still prevail. Essentially, from Ohio (where it was tested and developed) and westward.

Safe to say above, that Shelton's technique is heavily in use throughout a great portion of the world, and certainly America. WWII Air Force defense app's, and Jeppeson Aerial Maps stand by it. Nuff said.

Tom Pattersons "FlexProjector" - ostensibly to be a ground-breaking world-wide shaded relief model and projection specificaly for shaded relief, is not without rife precedent, no matter how great it is, and it looks great, but there are numerous projections well-suited and in use to this task since the advent of Remote Sensing by Satellite. The USGS Terra-Mapper project is just one, major example in use prior to this admittedly wel-done useful model Patterson espouses.

Thank you Char, for being the first corfidite to (admittedly, surprisingly....) show interest and find something OF interest in response to one of my enthusiastic waxing's on mapping, and without finding fault in SOMETHING I said... when I am citing it (mapping) wherever it seems to have a hook. Hal Shelton's house in this case, and I wish you all could see that house.......wow.....


~geo steve



I am deeply saddened to learn in one of the works/papers/googles you did on Shelton revealed that he died in 2004. I would have heard of this in my workplace, but that year I was deep in the thick of the earlier multitude of surgeries I had and lost track for a few years of breaking news in cartography/geodesy/surveying.

Your open-minded interest in shaded relief/Shelton was a demonstration of what I was taught is a Hallmark of "The inquisitive mind" - a sign of intellect. You get my "Professional Admiration Award" for the month !

Originally Posted by Cathy

Char, I'd hate to see those windows after my neice, Sopie, visited. My living room windows have her nose, lips, finger prints all over them as I type this. Time to go get the Windex.

Cathy

Might as well do a booger check around the house too while you're at it.

yeah Geo, Shelton was pretty amazing and I remember that book from my cartography class in college.

[charlene]

I was always fond of geography class and field trips where we had to map/draw elevations of places in Toronto and areas around town .. I can sit with an atlas for hours..I love the GOOGLE earth sort of thing too.. quite amazing to think of the dedication and hours spent to do the work required to map the earth and under the seas..amazing.

[geodeticman.5]

Podunklander - cool that you took cartography in college.... colleagues abound under my very nose, and I don't even know it - besides the 5 or so total admitted mappers in the forum. Thanks for the comment. LOL normally when I mention mapping, I get an odd silence.... in the thread....- thought I had learned my lesson.

I now know that the only way it is interesting in the least to people who don't love maps and atlases, or had cart in college now is to be sure there is a germane "hook" to the thread subject. This case was very gratifying, but I was saddened to learn of Shelton's passing .

Its weird when you meet a personal or professional hero, then hear of their death - its a different kind of less traumatic feeling than a loved one, but still leaves you kind of mildly numb for a few minutes, and lost in thought with memories of that person for a little while.

His wife was (is) a very charming woman, I should see if she is still around, and living in the "tree cliff" house. It'd be strange - kind of like living in the Ponderosa house in Bonanza by yourself, but with a Yellowstone Lodge on one wall.

~geo steve

[geodeticman.5]

Char - I didn't know you were a maps/atlas lover too ! - Yes, getting engrossed in an atlas is predictably a favourite pastime of mine - I am in fact a bit .....er... obsessive about it, not unhealthy mind you , but I like to....... smell the pages.... of -older- atlases - with linen paper..... go ahead and eye possible exits if you want...but its nothing weird now.... LOL I just love them.....the way a good map smells at dawn....it smells like victory lol j/k....

no its like being able to go to the country, or that little town out in b.f. Egypt... you can imagine the trip in a good atlas or map. And as Shelton said - "hear the wind" and "smell the mountain air" from a good shaded relief map. An amazing amount of every-day road maps , etc., show very faintly a crude form of shaded relief derived from remote sensing sattelite imagery, and say so in the legend i.e. "landform relief from photogrammetric methods" or "LANDSAT imagery-derived" ( very out of date) .

At that level, really is just the faintest of underlay for a road-map commonly to simply indicate that "there are hills/mountains in this area" , useful info to say the least. But in one of Shelton's works, or in rare cases when I am really fortunate in my work - I can "smell the mountain air" and I would add to the metaphors "feel the mountains on the map" - when it looks so strikingly full of terrain and rugosities that you are actually compelled to run your hand over the flat map page - that is when I know I have rendered relief well, using Shelton algorithms etc.

I would like very much to "take topo" around the hill I assume Gord's Rosedale mansion is on from read descriptions.

I wonder, Char - how much is Gord's house worth ? The answer is I am sure quite personal, and disrespectful of me to ask... I'll withdraw the question LOL. just knowing you and your real estate connections...... nah we should let him keep it private i 'spect...ya think...? One safe comment to make would be that no doubt, as long as he has had the Rosedale mansion, he no doubt got it for a comparitive song years ago, and its value now probably makes even him groan at tax time LOL

geo steve

[Sundreme]

Looks way to post modern. It has no warmth, no coziness. It doesn't even look like a home to me, more like an office building. Its so different then his old home, with those big turrets. I can't imagine Gord was ever comfortble in that sterile looking house.

[charlene]

It's not Gord's house, but a house in his neighbourhood..

Originally Posted by Sundreme

Looks way to post modern. It has no warmth, no coziness. It doesn't even look like a home to me, more like an office building. Its so different then his old home, with those big turrets. I can't imagine Gord was ever comfortble in that sterile looking house.

[jj]

lol, yeah if it were the GL house it wouldn't be in the small talk section

actually, regardless, it's still too big (and ugly, imo) to be in small talk

neat stuff about the mapping...it boggles my mind when i think of early explorers and the refinement of maps over the years...and now GPS, lol

add me to the atlas (and big old globe) lover list...as a young'n, if it wasn't an atlas that i fell asleep browsing, it was a letter/volume of an encyclopedia, anyhow, someone then suggested i switch to perhaps reading some fiction...so I switched to reading Encyclopedia Brown novels, oh well

char, you're going east...when i was there looking at the maritime coastlines and cabot trail it always made me think of the power of glaciers and evolving land formations over the millennia...or the intriguing, annual shifting of Sable Island...hey, wasn't this a Bridle Path thread, lol

[charlene]

James, you must notice the power of glaciers everytime you head to and from work and pass the escarpment out by Milton and extending down towards the Niagara area....I was explaining to a friend a couple of weeks ago what the formation was..

I love globes.. I too was an encyclopedia reader..never retained much but I read a lot..
lol
I read The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew..never heard of Brown..

I'll think of you way back when on your honeymoon as we drive around NS and Cape Breton.

It is one butt ugly house..no warmth or personality to make you feel anyone lived there or even wanted company to come in..great hardwood floors tho..

[geodeticman.5]

You guys rock - expressing interest and knowledge and love of maps, atlases, history, etc..... Thanks for the positive response...

Oh - I knew that was not Gord's house..... I was only wonderin......about his.. in general..... so its a stone house ?

~geo steve

[charlene]

pretty sure the Lightfoot abode is bricks and mortar..

[geodeticman.5]

Thinking of Bridle (not Bridal!) paths around/beside homes in the thread subject house,
is it as common in other states corfidites are from as it is in Colorado to have bridal paths ?

Commonly, out here, they are very frequently found on ranches of all sizes, but one real-common case is the medium-sized parcels/tracts , commonly "aliquot"-parts such as "The Southeast 1/4 of the Southeast 1/4 of the Southwest 1/4 of the Southeast quarter of Section 17, T 3N. R. 69W, of the 6th P.M." being, in a theoretical perfect section, that does not exist,of 640 acres on the ground, in this case being broken-up in the aliquot description into 2.5 acres, a very common mini-ranchette parcel to be found in barely-rural fringe parcels to towns out here in Colorado, that such parcels are not only common out there (horse owners would know too) ?

Moreover, do they commonly have bridle paths bounding one or more legs of the tract edges ? Out here, such bridle paths are commonly, among the more thoughtful gentry, fringed with dual fences, set 6 - 10 feet
apart as, in fact bridle paths, often with either deeded easement for riding, or by common usage in excess of the local statute of limitations, de facto legal prescriptive easement. Curious...

~geo steve

Stated as straight-forward as I can re-think the Q, do other states you guys are familiar with have dual-fence riding paths between a lot of one-horse ranchettes ? Sure do in
horse-country Douglas County here.

[geodeticman.5]

Sundreme

re:

Looks way to post modern. It has no warmth, no coziness. It doesn't even look like a home to me, more like an office building. Its so different then his old home, with those big turrets. ......///

just a quick thought Sundreme, I was reading a downloaded chapter out of Trevanian's ( a pseudonym for author Rodney Whitaker) new book "The Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street" - set in 1840's France. I hold no knowledge or interest of either the era, in that area anyway, personally; but he is my favourite "airport novel" author, and I'll read anything he writes... AnyHOO, the reason for posting is in regard to the highlighted portion of your architectural-style comment of "looks way too post modern.....":

In the author's notes on painstakingly researching the book on the area of France - Paris' Garrets district, eg the "slums" where the book chronicles 4 young people growing up together as friends and tracks them through life, only to (predictably) meet up as adults. Well, excellent authour that Trevanian is, and VERY thorough in his research - sometimes 15 years in the case of a Western he penned.... POINT BEING - trusting his source for this purpose, it is simply interesting to note that in his words, architecturally, everything we associate with the term "modern", followed by post-modern(e), is in fact referring to Paris, France, in the 1840's, when the style of "modern" was born. I am NO student of architecture, armchair or otherwise, so I can't substantiate this without unwarranted time in the internet, so I was curious - do you know where when the term post-modern originated ? And was Trevanian/Whitaker correct regarding France and "Modern" architecture's birth ? Interesting.....

thx

[Patti]

Originally Posted by geodeticman.5

~geo steve

Stated as straight-forward as I can re-think the Q, do other states you guys are familiar with have dual-fence riding paths between a lot of one-horse ranchettes ? Sure do in
horse-country Douglas County here.

Hey ya geo steve, you live in a Douglas County? So do I, but in WI. I don't know about the horse riding paths though my neighbors have horses, I haven't ridden horses for many years. I did get into some mapping before, like Pam, had some classes. Had Intro to GIS, GPS, Aerial Photo Interpretation, (aced those) and hey Pam, I even had that awful lymes but I got it a few years before I did the internship field work.