256 Cottage Street, Middletown, NY 10940

Come up the walk on an October afternoon and the whole yard is gold under that big tree. There are 0.28 acres here, flat and open, and all of it is yours, which is more ground than most addresses in this city ever come with. It is the kind of yard that ends up deciding how you spend your weekends. The best seat for all of it is the covered porch across the front. It sits deep on stone piers set in 1924, tucked far enough back that weather never reaches you, and it looks out over the full width of the lawn. On a January night you stand out there a minute before you go in. In the warm months you stop going in at all. The rooms are bright and newly painted, and the windows carry light through the downstairs all afternoon. One of the three bedrooms is on the main floor, which means there is always somewhere to put the person who stayed too late to drive home. That sounds like a small thing until the first time it happens, and then it turns into the reason people keep coming back. The...