A look from the West in Brookline villa
If you think the sun shines brighter halfway up Fisher Avenue in Brookline, there's good reason.
Sitting among the other historic Fisher Hill homes, including oversized classic Colonials, Queen Annes and Tudors, is a West Coast escape — the Mediterranean-style villa at 166 Fisher Ave.
The beautiful home, which was built in a Spanish style with elements of Italian Renaissance architecture, is now on the market for $4.9 million.
The creamy stucco home would stand out if it weren't hidden behind a matching wall that surrounds the property. Topped with a low-pitched hipped roof covered in scale-like tiles and dormers, the home is set apart by its triple-arched second-floor balcony and a porch protruding far out from the home's center.
Surprisingly, the inside of the massive house is decorated in a familiar Colonial revival style, with a central staircase and period mill work: wainscoting, crown moldings, pilasters, keystone archways, and coffered ceilings.
“I bought this place to entertain,” said the owner of 10 years, Jonathan Crutchley.
After living in Jamaica Plain for 28 years, Crutchley said, he found his old place too small to host a company Christmas party.
“I couldn't fit all my employees in the house,” Crutchley said this week, while sitting near the living room fireplace that is adorned with an intricately carved marble mantel.
“Here, I can fit 200 guests from here to the dining room,” he said.
The place also has pools, two of them: An oval in-ground one outside that's embellished like a Greek temple and another that's heated (up to 100 degrees) and indoors.
Though he likes to throw parties, Crutchley, who runs several dating websites, has so meticulously preserved the century-old home's conservative décor that you feel kind of bare walking inside without wearing a blazer. This is especially true in the formal dining room with its white panels and moldings and wafflelike coffered ceiling that contrasts with walls of red. The wide staircase in the foyer painted with murals is just as stately, with its dark-wood banister supported by rows of closely lined white spiral columns, and an overhanging chandelier.
There are two places, however, that come down to Earth, and they're not the elegant bedrooms on the second floor or the first-floor library covered in oak. One is a third-floor room that's done up as a tribute to Tom Brady, with Brady and New England Patriots-decorated pillows, pictures, reclining chair and Tiffany-style lamp. The other is a sunken entertainment room on the ground floor that looks like a teenager's hideaway.
But now, the nearly 11,000-square-foot house that holds 11 bedrooms and 10 total bathrooms is getting a bit much for Crutchley, who's looking to scale back.
“Now,” he said, “I'm doing less entertaining.”
Cathy Marotta of Gibson Sotheby's International Realty is handling the sale: 617-947-1069.