He Bought an Attic for $50,000—Twenty Years Later, Neighbors Shut Up

Boston, 1998. The sticky summer evening breeze carried a mix of gardenia and sewer smell through every lane of the old row-house courts of Starling Court.

Walter Lawson had just signed a contract. It was only a few thin pages, but it had taken every cent he and his wife, Susan, had saved.

$50,000.

It bought a crumbling attic at the end of the court, perched on top of a three-story row house, the kind of place nobody would look at twice.