Most everybody has seen at the very least certainly one of these but few have any thought what they’re known as. It’s known as a Widow’s Stroll, a railed rooftop platform regularly discovered on nineteenth century North American properties. A preferred romantic delusion holds that the platform was used to look at vessels at sea. The identify comes from the wives of mariners, who would watch for his or her spouses’ return, usually in useless because the ocean took the lives of the mariners, leaving the ladies widows.
Widow’s walks are the truth is a regular ornamental function extremely popular throughout the peak of the Age of Sail in lots of North American coastal communities. Pictured are six widow walks on 4 land-based properties, 1 boat home & 1 enterprise all inside a block or two overlooking the ocean. In the event you look intently, you may see that certainly one of them beneath constructed for the Curry Mansion has a feminine manikin full with spyglass atop their stroll portraying a spouse in search of her husbands return from the ocean. (to be trustworthy, the manikin seems rather a lot like Micheal Jackson!) 🙂
I’ve personally discovered roughly 18 of those round Key West with the perfect seen examples posted in your enjoyment. So the subsequent time you see certainly one of these rooftop adornments you may impress your folks by appropriately naming it “Widow’s Stroll” together with an correct rationalization of their goal.
