Stairway to heaven in South End
When you walk into 31 East Concord St. in the South End, your eyes will be drawn to an alluring form.
Tan and slender, she curves up and down this gorgeous five-floor row house, exuding a sense of grace and dominance, forming not only the home’s spine, but its soul. She’s the staircase and, heck, she looks pretty good for being 157 years old.
The stairs, of course, are just one of many attractions inside this Civil Warera Victorian home listed for $3.5 million. Set on a leafy street with a bricklined sidewalk, the home is immaculately restored and preserved. And — for this tightly crowded neighborhood where people will pay a million dollars for a small condo — it’s big.
“One of the things that drew me to this home was the size of the bedrooms,” said Terrell Jordan, who moved into the place with his partner, Justin Shaffer, after it was renovated in 2012. “You don’t feel like you’re cramming furniture into small rooms — it’s quite the opposite.”
As Jordan spoke, he was standing in the fourth-floor master suite, just between the huge master bathroom lined with basket weave marble and the spacious bedroom with bay windows, and painted in “Texas leather” brown with white trim.
But the bedrooms, all five of them and as handsome as they are, feel outshined by the common rooms of this 3,637-square-foot home. The living and dining rooms on the entrance level, for example, are open and grand, with luscious crown moldings and ceiling decorations lit by hanging crystal chandeliers. A marble fireplace — likely original to the home — sits as the centerpiece.
The recently renovated kitchen, which is also painted in a leathery brown, shuns the trend of white and glossy and goes with warm and dark, with granite countertops and wood cabinetry, in a look that complements the history of the house.
“You can see we’re not afraid of color,” said Jordan, as he pointed to the room’s walls, lit only by a wave of late afternoon sun coming in through the windows.
Downstairs has even more color, or, more precisely, darkness, as the family room has a wallpaper that looks like a pinstripe suit decorated with its shiny metal Art Deco-style light fixtures. The room flows into a wet bar, and a bedroom and bathroom are further down the hall.
Though the floor feels like it should be the basement, there’s surprisingly another level below that the couple have fashioned into a high-end workout gym with a luxurious bath with a frameless glass shower, and, again, with basket weave marble tiles on the wall.
“We tried to keep with the feel of the house,” said Jordan, as he showed off the room.
A place like this couldn’t justify its hefty price tag, however, without views. This home has them, on the roof deck. Up there, you can see much of the oldtimer South End neighbors, other brick Victorians and mansard roofs. Off in the distance, you can also see the Prudential and Clarendon towers, and, as did Jordan two days before he gave a tour of his place Thursday, you can spot some of Boston’s Fourth of July fireworks.