The “Maude” House

I am a true television aficionado, even when it comes to series that were before my time, like Soap, which began airing just a few months after I was born.  Yet when fellow stalker Brad emailed back in August 2017 asking if I knew the whereabouts of the home belonging to Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur) and her husband, Walter (Bill Macy), on Maude, I was at a loss.  Sure, I’d heard of the 1970s sitcom, but had never so much as seen even a portion of an episode.  Regardless, I accepted the challenge of IDing the place, which Brad informed me was said to be in Tuckahoe, New York, and was only seen in Maude’s opening and closing credits.  After some unsuccessful digging, though, I pushed the hunt to the back burner and promptly forgot about it.  Flash forward to June 9th of this year.  Brad wrote to me once again inquiring if I had ever managed to find the Maude house.  Coincidentally, my friend Owen had just embarked upon a massive endeavor to pinpoint all of the key yet-to-be-found locations from popular television shows that aired from the early 1970s through the early 1990s.  I emailed him to see if Maude was included on his list.  It wasn’t, but he was kind enough to look into the matter for me and, on June 10th, just one day later, wrote back with an address!  The Findlay residence from Maude can be found at 1011 Harvard Avenue North in Claremont.

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How did he do it, you ask?  I asked the same thing!  As it turns out, a curb led him to the location.  But first, while viewing the opening credits, Owen spotted an address number of “101” above Maude and Walter’s front door, something I had failed to notice during any of my searches for the place!

As he explained, “Because some of the intro was filmed in NY — and there are 100 blocks there — I started looking in Tuckahoe.  I was coming up empty, and I was starting to wonder if a fourth digit was hidden behind the tree branches, so I turned my focus to that very distinctive curb, which I had never seen before.”  He’s talking about the unique curb with embedded stonework visible in the screen capture below.

Owen next headed over to Google and performed a slew of different keyword searches.  One finally led him to page 111 of the book Claremont (Images of America), which detailed the city’s unique stone curbs typically referred to as “elephant toes.”  The curb pictured in the tome indeed resembled the one visible in the Maude credits.  Owen furthered, “I pretty much knew right away that I was on the right track.  I did a “Maude Claremont” Google search and quickly found this page.  The answer presented itself at the very bottom of the replies section, thanks to a Mark Z.  Mystery solved.  P.S. If you blog about this place — and you should blog about this place — I’d mention those ‘elephant toes’!  I think that’s such an elephant-astic description of that curb style.”  Your wish is my command, Owen!

I was dismayed to find the place undergoing a renovation when I showed up to stalk it a few weeks later.

At least the fabulous elephant toes were still intact and visible, though!

Despite the extensive scaffolding, certain elements of the house are still recognizable.  At the time Maude was filmed, the front porch was screened in, giving it quite a different look, but as you can see, the fluted pillars, rock wall flanking the front steps, and peak-roofed portico all remain the same.

Thankfully, Google Street View provides us with some pre-renovation imagery of the home that shows some additional matching detail.

As Owen noted, “The crumbling portion at the corner of the driveway that is visible in the opening credits is still like that!  Love it!”

  

The residence appears throughout both the opening and closing credits of Maude, which ran on CBS from 1972 through 1978.

The American Foursquare-style property was originally designed in 1905 for land developer and Claremont pioneer C.C. Johnson.  It is one of the city’s oldest houses.  In real life, it boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2,920 square feet, coved ceilings, crown moldings, a tiled wood-burning fireplace, a formal dining room, and 3 lots totaling 0.48 acres.  The pad last sold in March 2018 for $1.2 million.  A real estate listing from the time even mentions the home’s use on Maude!

Only the exterior of the property appeared on the series.  The interior of the Findlay home was just a set, built first at CBS Television City and then at Metromedia Square, the two studios where Maude was lensed.

As you can see in the MLS images as compared to the screen captures above and below, the set does not resemble the inside of the actual house in the slightest.  Maude’s home boasted a much more open floor plan than that of the Claremont residence.  You can check out some more interior images of 1011 Harvard here.

Per the plans submitted to the Claremont Architectural Commission, only the rear of the home is being significantly altered during the renovation.  Here’s hoping that when all is said and done the front is left largely intact for stalkers to enjoy for years to come.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Brad for asking me to find this location and to my friend Owen for tracking it down! 

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Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The Findlay house from Maude is located at 1011 Harvard Avenue North in Claremont.