We do not promise quiet, and we do not promise the garden

Two things this house cannot control

The elevated line is audible from the front of the house and it runs all night. The garden is out of use from December to the middle of April. A wedding for thirty-four assumes the garden is usable, and a wet Saturday in October is a party for sixteen indoors. None of that is a defect and all of it is better known in advance, which is why it is written on the pages that sell those things rather than in a footnote.

The elevated line

The elevated line. The elevated line runs above Roosevelt Avenue, four minutes' walk away, and it runs all night. It is audible from the front of the house and not from the loft.

The elevated line runs above Roosevelt Avenue and it is audible from the front of the house — the parlour's street bedroom hears it, the garden hears it faintly, and the loft faces the other way and does not. It runs all night. If a silent night matters more than anything else, the loft is the room and the back of the house is the side.

The three apartments do not hear it equally, and saying so plainly is more useful than leaving a guest to find out at eleven at night. The bay window is single-glazed on the inner sash, because the restoration kept the original frames — the front bedroom hears Roosevelt Avenue The quietest apartment in the house — it faces the roofline rather than the avenue Anybody choosing between apartments for a quiet stay should read that as a real difference between rooms in the same building, not as marketing language attached to whichever one happens to be available.

The garden, by season

It is a city garden behind a house in Queens, not a lawn in the country. The elevated line is four minutes' walk away and you can hear it. Between December and the middle of April the garden is closed, the furniture is in store and the terrace is swept but not heated.

The cheapest weeks of the year and the shortest minimum stay. It is cold, the garden is closed and the light on the garden level is poor. That is the whole reason it is cheaper.

Read the full facts — aspect, surface, seating and lighting — on the garden page, and the neighbourhood's own account of the elevated line and everything else nearby on the neighbourhood page.

What this means for an event

Thirty-four seated is the parlour and the garden together and it assumes the garden is usable. Indoors alone the house seats sixteen at the long table and about ten more at the garden-level table, in a different room. That is the number to plan a February wedding around.

The exact arithmetic behind that sentence, and what it means for a date in a month the garden might not cooperate, is its own piece: what thirty-four seated really means.

Booking with this in mind

Anybody for whom a silent night matters more than anything else should ask about the loft apartment, which faces the roofline rather than the avenue. Anybody planning a wedding or a gathering in a season the garden is not guaranteed should plan the indoor number as the real one and treat the garden as the bonus it is on a fair day, not the other way round.