Brookline beauty just glows
VICTORIAN RETAINS 19TH-CENTURY CHARM
You only have to enter the towering blue Victorian at 52 High St. in Brookline to see how much the owner loves the place.
Inside the entrance is a scaled-down, wooden model of the historic home, a tribute to its classic Second Empire architecture. And just this week, the owner had a longtime family friend take photographs of the house to “memorialize” it.
“I've lived my whole adult life here,” said Kay Bourne, an arts writer and editor, who moved into the home in 1961, and is now selling it for $1.6 million.
“It's been a wonderful house,” she said. “Anybody who comes in here has felt its warmth.”
It's easy to see why the house is so treasured. The place is like a museum piece. Built in 1861, the same year the Civil War began, it still retains much of its old glory. Almost a textbook example of a home of its style, the house is topped with a black mansard roof with dormer windows and fish-scale shingles, and just underneath are white eaves with decorative brackets and dentil moldings. The tall windows on the first and second floors are flanked by black shutters.
And Bourne is right. The house does give off a kind of warmth, especially in the late afternoon when yellow light reflects off the oak floors and high walls in the living and dining rooms. Inside, just as on the outside, the place retains many of its antique details: The curvaceous crown moldings, heavy marble fireplace with the ornate wrought iron decorations, bay window with built-in seats, and top-floor dormers. But it's also a big house with six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a spacious kitchen, a partially finished basement, a three-season sunroom, and more than 3,100 square-feet of living space.
The home is in good shape, too, and appears move-in ready. This, said real estate agent Chobee Hoy, is because Bourne's family made upgrades about a decade ago.
“They did an amazing amount of work bringing it into this century,” Hoy said.