City Chalet for Sale

The neighbourhood where I was raised was designed by the landscape firm of Frederick Law Olmsted, and one of their main tenets was letting the land speak and direct the building. My neighbourhood was filled with steep hills and deep valleys. In fact, our house had 24 steps leading up to the front door!

There are a series of four or five houses that hang from the edge of a hillside, overlooking a 100+ year old forest and a small stream. They are the chalet houses and everyone who’s lived in the area knows them. These houses were all built in 1905.And they don’t come up for sale very often, because the people who own them love them so much that they tend to stay for decades, rather than just years. They were designed by Edward Palmer of the firm Palmer Lamdin, who designed many of the more unique houses in the area. They are quirky and unusual, not your basic square brick four-over-four. Luckily, many of the original details remain, because these houses don’t change hand very often.

The house is cedar shake siding on a stone foundation. It is only accessible via a flight of stone stairs leading down from the road. It’s been neglected, which means that there are no ghastly updates. So you find the original glass-fronted pantry doors, and cupboards in the pantry.

One of the great things about this house is the screened porches like you see at the end of this room. I can personally attest to the fact that this part of the neighborhood is a good 5* to 10* cooler than any other part of the area in the summer, and being up in the treetops is a great feeling.

This is the porch from the outside. It looks like the house could do with a slap of paint and some sanding on the floors, which are probably original.