Centers And Squares
Welcome to Centers and Squares
As a Cambridge real estate agent, the city squares of Cambridge, Somerville and Medford and the town centers of Arlington, Watertown and Belmont, Massachusetts are my home turf. And as a lifelong New Englander who’s lived within twenty miles of Boston most of my life, I can introduce you to other nearby towns as we search for your new home. If you’re planning to sell your home in Cambridge, MA or nearby you’ll find plenty of info about the home selling process here too. Questions? Send me an email or call me at 617-504-1737.
Art House In Arlington
Art car owner has an art house in Arlington
Don’t miss today’s Boston Globe which, in a cover story in G titled “House of Mirth: Quirky by Design”, profiles an amazing house in Arlington, MA. Turns out, owner Rebecca Perlo, whose art car I’ve spotted more than once, has an art house.
The Jason Heights mansard Victorian, known locally as “the purple house” according to the Globe, is awash in art, color, and quirkiness – it’s awesome. More than a dozen photographs accompany the article and I’ll bet twice as many wouldn’t be enough to document the delights that await inside the purple, red and green house. From the Where the Wild Things Are murals to the fishtank toilet, the house is a wall to wall celebration of creativity.
Nowadays, when almost every house looks like the next, and decorating cliches abound, Perlo’s house is a rare treat. And since I’m firmly in the camp of more is more this is my kind of house. Pick up a copy of the Globe and be prepared to be amazed.
East Cambridge Houses For Sale
Inventory has been tight all year but it looks like one sliver of the Cambridge real estate opened up a bit this weekend. Four new listings for East Cambridge houses for sale priced between $450,000 and $600,00 came on the market this week. Cambridge real estate buyers hoping to find a condo or single family house near Kendall Square, Boston and MIT have some good choices this weekend.
Somerville and Cambridge houses in this price range have been selling quickly, more often than not with multiple offers. Cambridge and Somerville single family houses with asking prices between $450,000 and $600,000 that were listed recently were on the market an average of only 17 days. In fact, more than half sold within one week.
Here are the newly listed houses for sale in East Cambridge:
47 Harding Street, Cambridge has two bedrooms, two baths, and a rarity for East Cambridge – two parking spaces. It’s listed for $459,900.
125.5 Spring Street, Cambridge is a restored Cape with three bedrooms, two baths, and a nicely landscaped patio / garden. It’s new to the market at $460,000.
209 Hurley Street, Cambridge was a wonderful surprise when we saw it on tour on Wednesday. It’s tucked away off the street and a 2005 renovation resulted in a house as modern as can be. It has two bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and a fenced in yard with patio for $487,000.
4 Dickinson Street, Cambridge has three bedrooms, 1.5 baths, one parking space, a fireplace in the living room, and a landscaped yard with patio. It’s priced at $599,000.
East Cambridge provides great access to Kendall Square, MIT, the Charles River and Boston. It’s an architecturally rich neighborhood growing ever more popular with real estate buyers. Let’s see what the weekend brings for the newly listed East Cambridge houses for sale. I’m betting it’s a busy weekend!
Click on the small photos below for more information and additional photos of these East Cambridge single family houses.
Garden Tour Season
It's Garden Tour - and Lilacs - Season
The lilacs in my yard have been out for over a week. Like most everything else, they’re early this year with this topsy-turvy up-is-down weather we’ve been experiencing.
I know they’re early because Lilac Sunday is held every year at the Arnold Arboretum on Mothers Day. And Mum doesn’t get her day for two more weeks.
It seems that gardeners won’t have to worry that things haven’t bloomed by the time this year’s garden tours roll around. I finally had a moment to update the garden tours page here so you can check out the upcoming Massachusetts garden tours in 2012. The list seems a bit shorter – putting together house or garden tours is a huge undertaking for the groups that put them on. Some have discontinued their tours, others have opted for an every other year schedule.
A garden tour is an opportunity to get new ideas for your yard and garden, to see private outside spaces that you otherwise wouldn’t, or just a great way to enjoy a spring or summer day. Not to mention – your ticket purchase benefits local libraries, historical societies, museums, etc.
Two-Family House for Sale in Cambridgeport
1-3 Rockingham Place Cambridge MA
It’s tour day! Happily it looks like a great day weather-wise for our tour. Our tours this time of year are a bit of a marathon and this weather suits me much better than the 80+ degrees that the runners faced on Monday.
I’m most excited today to introduce 1-3 Rockingham Place to my coworkers. My colleague, Allan Rikhi, and I have listed this big two-family house in the Cambridgeport neighborhood of Cambridge. It’s a beauty and bound to be popular.
1-3 Rockingham Place has a five-room apartment on the first floor. Upstairs is huge with nine rooms, including three bedrooms. two studies and a spacious family room. The house is filled with light and the upstairs decks have amazing views. Outside there are two separate patio areas, garden beds, fruit trees, mature shrubs, and parking. It’s truly an urban oasis.
This is the neighborhood where my father grew up – in fact the house our family owned for eighty years abuts the yard at 1-3 Rockingham Place. It’s a great place to live in a neighborhood filled with Victorian houses. The Charles River is around the corner, Magazine Beach is nearby, there’s a playground and ball field down the block, you can walk over the bridge to BU as my Dad did, and nowadays Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, etc. are close by.
Yesterday when I stopped by Rockingham Place I daydreamed about how the neighborhood used to be in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Growing up, my dad played baseball with the Rockingham Sox. Billy Harris, who used to live in 1-3 Rockingham Place was on the team. My aunt Irene who grew up around the corner on Granite Street remembers visiting the Harris’s house at Christmas time every year for a party.
It’s time for new memories to be made at 1-3 Rockingham Place. Call me if you’d like more information or would like to schedule a time to see this lovely home.
Raised Garden Beds Talk at the Somerville Garden Club
Raised Garden Beds in a Community Garden in Cambridge
Raised garden beds are popular with backyard farmers and gardeners in Somerville and Cambridge. In a talk at the Somerville Garden Club on Wednesday evening, Jesse Banhazl will talk about raised garden beds as well as other options for growing produce in limited space – on roofs, on porches, or in small urban backyards.
Jesse Banhazl is owner and co-founder of Green City Growers, a Somerville-based business that helps to bring organic produce gardens to homes, schools and businesses.
The Somerville Garden club meeting and lecture is free and open to the public. There is parking available or you can take the T to Davis Square and walk up Holland Street.
What: Raised Garden Beds Talk at the Somerville Garden Club meeting
When: Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Where: Tufts Administration Bldg., 167 Holland St, Somerville MA
Home Renovation Books
Updating Classic America - Home Renovation Books from The Taunton Press
Home Renovation Books Growing up, my family’s first house was a classic Cape reproduction built in the early 1960s. These postwar houses – the ranches, split-levels and particularly the Capes built in new subdivisions in towns close to Cambridge – have fairly predictable floor plans. Often these floor plans don’t jibe with today’s real estate buyers’ expectations.
That’s one of the reasons I love seeing these now 50+ years old houses. Some have changed little and I can walk in and know just what room to expect at every turn. Others have been transformed by new owners and it’s always fun to see how home renovation projects have updated these mid-century houses.
Are you hoping to buy a single family? Or perhaps you’ve lived in one for some time and are dreaming of renovating. If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration four home renovation books from The Taunton Press in their Updating Classic America series are worth picking up:
Capes: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling and Building New by Jane Gitlin
Colonials: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling and Building New by Matthew Schoenherr
Ranches: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling and Building New by Louis Wasserman and M. Caren Connolly
Bungalows: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling and Building New by Louis Wasserman and M. Caren Connolly
I guess you’re on your own when it comes to tweaking a split-level! Each book is lavishly illustrated with photographs and filled with stories about houses that have been thoughtfully updated and reworked. While there are plenty of postwar houses (except of course in the bungalow book) in these pages, earlier houses are included as well. Home owners and home buyers will find loads of ideas in these beautiful books.
Early Spring Blooms
Bradford Pears Line Boston Ave in Medford
A Boston Globe article on March 27th quoted scientists’ remarks about the early plants and blossoms we’re seeing this spring after the winter that wasn’t. They expressed concern about the plants blooming far earlier than ever before – and called “this year’s blossoming one of the earliest in 140 years of recordkeeping.”
I decided to check on the dates of some of my spring photos and posts. Sure enough, my daffodil photos from years past are dated April 20th and yet our garden is full of them now. The photo above shows the trees that line some of Medford’s streets each spring. Boston Ave. in spring is a corridor of white blossoms.
My post about the trees on Boston Ave a couple of years ago came out on April 10th. This year, the trees -they’re Bradford pears – have already been in full bloom for at least a week or more.
You really have to wonder what’s going to happen long term to our New England plants and trees. In the short term we better keep our fingers crossed that we don’t get any snow this spring. The devastation caused by the last snowstorm when leaves were on the trees is sadly all too evident any time you drive on local highways and see the broken trees that still line the road.
Cambridge and Somerville Houses on Tour
Tercentenary Sign Tells the Story of Gerry's Landing
On our tour of new Somerville and Cambridge real estate listings this week we saw a number of very nice townhouses new to the market with Coldwell Banker agents. We get our exercise on Wednesdays – sometimes every condo is on the top floor – this week it seemed we were up and down 3 or 4 floors at every stop.
Some of what we saw included:
- A Bell & Fandetti townhouse at 7 Dana Place listed for $849,000. This was the nicest Bell Fandetti townhouses I’ve seen – some smart modifications and the decor and colors played off the original features beautifully.
- A Mid-Cambridge townhouse at 324 Harvard Street had 1700 s.f. and garage parking and was priced at $820,000
- A 1980s two-bedroom townhouse with parking at 11 Bolton Street in Somerville near Inman Square was listed for $349,000.
- A townhouse at 33 Weston Ave in Teele Square, Somerville had gorgeous views across the school field behind the complex and was listed for $719,000.
The photo above is from last week’s tour. I always wanted to know the story behind Gerry’s Landing and here it is on one of Cambridge’s tercentenary signs. We passed the sign on our way to tour a very charming house at 8 Gerry’s Landing in Cambridge’s Coolidge Hill neighborhood that came on the market for $935,000.
You can search for Cambridge and Somerville townhouses for sale or click on a photo below for additional photos and more information about the townhouses we saw on tour this week.
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