158 Pine St - $325,000

The Essentials

A classic two-bedroom downtown townhome, all dressed up in pale finery to set off better the oak floors and the light pouring in. A front porch on which to muse, and a back garden in which to hide away.

The Bigger Picture

I have always liked this colourful row of brick townhomes, west of Division St on Pine, next to a pretty scruffy little triangular park, and maybe a hundred yards from the Memorial Centre grounds, with its freshly re-opened splash pad and its Sunday market.

Of course, it wasn’t long ago that Division St was a border of sorts. People wanting the McBurney Park neighbourhood, or the Fruit Belt, would wag a finger at the idea of moving west of Division. In the same way, not much more than a dozen years ago Raglan Rd was as far north as many people seemed willing to move. And then all of a sudden it was Pine St. And now we’re selling homes in just a few days on Russell St north of Stephen, and the Kingscourt market is one of the hottest in the city. The old ideas of where people want to buy houses seem nearly quaint, so quickly have the chains moved. And nowadays everything within walking distance of downtown is popular. It’s more about price and character and parking and potential, than it is specific address.

158 Pine St reminds me of a trip I took on the train to Halifax a good few years ago. I don’t know where I was, exactly, but there were long rows of flat-roofed townhomes set next to the sidewalk not far from the water, and they seemed tall to me, pushed up into the sky by all the drama inside. They were grimy in their way, as if the salt air had given them a crust, and I wanted to move in and live there. I’ve thought about them often.

There are a few clapboard houses at the western end of Markland St that strike me the same way. But I have a softness for brick homes like these on Pine. The kid in me, the punk, sees them as more real somehow, more solid. I don’t know exactly how I came by that belief, only that it is probably rooted in the Oxford housing estates I grew up on. There was no money, and my mum counted the potatoes every Monday, but I felt safe at home. We are what we were.

158 Pine was built in 1910. Modest row housing out from the centre of town back then, convenient to the famers’ fields and the inner harbour, the main road out of town. Nowadays, though, it’s much more central to what’s important. If you work downtown you’ll likely walk. I have friends there, and sell houses up and down the street.  The city has grown around 158 Pine, the fruit around a seed.

It’s a classic two-bedroom home: living room, then dining room, with a kitchen at the back. You know the routine. But perhaps not how bright it’s going to feel when you walk in. The ceilings seem high and the pale walls seem far off, the floor plan just that little bit more open. The oak strip floors could have been laid yesterday. And the front porch (I’d be out there all summer) is full-width and gloriously open to the elements. There is a polished slate floor in the kitchen, and the white cabinets are reflected in that floor as softly as if they were clouds above some becalmed  night harbour. 

The main bedroom is at the front of the house above that porch, and is a quietly glammy sort of room, perhaps because it’s bigger than you expect. Often two bedrooms will be squeezed into the front of a house like this. There’s a pretty engineered hardwood on this floor, and it’s a good choice, sympathetic to the oak down below. And there’s a big soaker tub in the bathroom. It wouldn’t be right to say that the second floor sprawls, exactly, but there is a pleasant roominess to proceedings, a sense that everything is in its right place, and nothing has been simply jammed in here for the sake of numbers. 

The garden is private and maintenance-free nearly, with a luxurious amount of pea gravel poured in at some point. It doesn’t take much imagination to think yourself in France, a little courtyard there, with olive trees wrapped around the hillside beyond the tall fences. The birds in the trees with their rich French accents.

There’s a right-of-way beyond that back fence, by the way, and it runs west to the park. No one has bothered to clear it because everyone parks out there at the end, and has done for years. Why would you park in your garden, unless you had to?

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The full iGuide tour is right here. And the plan is to review any offers on Thursday. 

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