198 Bagot ST - SOLD
The Essentials
A rather glorious Sydenham Ward 2.5 storey townhouse that dates to 1880 and features a family room where I insist the carriageway used to be. 2332 square feet of above-grade, stylish living space , four bedrooms and a loft up in the tree canopy. Pretty much across from the downtown library. A wonderful family home or a marvelous investment (it could be seven bedrooms with a weekend’s work).
The Bigger Picture
A few years ago I had client looking hard for a house in Sydenham Ward. He worked in a camera store downtown and intermittently for about five years and on his lunch hour, we’d meet out front of a new listing and wonder whether this might be the one. Eventually he upped and moved to Ottawa. It wasn’t that he was absurdly picky, or even that he had given up. It was just that perfect houses are hard to come by. And Charlie had time to wait for the right one.
I enjoyed our appointments, and liked quite a bit some of the houses he rejected. But I respected his choices, and truth is, this new listing at 198 Bagot would have been too big for him. It was just him and his girlfriend, and this is most decidedly a family house. But I was thinking this morning about how he would surely have appreciated the house. We’d have walked the couple of blocks back to the store still talking about it.
I looked up the history of the address. A different building, a boarding house, was located on the site until about 1890. Then a brick-fronted double-house was built, and sometime between 1915 and 1924 I read that a carport was installed (I’d assumed it was an original carriageway and still think that’s a possibility). Sometime in the 1960s a business had its storefront here. After more than a century of regular change, it finally settled into the single family home you have before you today.
Those changes are written fascinatingly into the interior. I wonder now whether some of the decidedly mid-century stylings, particularly at the entrance and in the family room, date to those business days (a Swedish architect was involved, goes the story, and I’ll try to find out more). And whether the covered sunroom on the second floor was there from the outset. I picture kids gathered there to watch the horses (and at the same time realise they probably didn’t give the animals a thought). I am fascinated by the wooden ceilings in some rooms, and by the strategic placement of fabulous windows. I adore the floor plan, and the painted brick and wood interior walls along the northern side of the house. I’ve never seen anything quite like them (and how I wish I got to say that more often about houses).
In some ways, despite all the goings on around it, the completely re-done kitchen is at the heart of this house. The quartz-topped island is big enough to camp on, and the gas fireplace and armchairs in there mean that lots of days you might not venture much deeper into the house than this really splendid room. When we were there for a chat the other morning I took a step to the left so that I could see the blossom tree in the yard through the glass back door, and that slight movement brought the world more into focus for me, synchronized whole orbits. Fair to say it can do the same for you.
It’s hard to know sometimes exactly where to end with the description and where to begin with the invitations, the come on bys. You need to know why you should book a showing, of course, and yet I want very much to leave some bits to your imagination. I see the house as a sort of gift, something I can watch you unwrap. It’s important not to tell everything too early.
But okay, let me just say in wrapping up (!) that there are four good bedrooms on the second floor, and a dreamy sort of loft on the third floor, all done up with skylights and a four-piece bathroom. It would surely make for the grandest of retreats. There is a deep garden too, and a parking spot out front for the quick getaways you make in the morning.
I feel here a bit like someone has started up the music and I’m being guided offstage. So fine, I’ll stop. It’s true that I can go on too long, and would, all day, about this place in particular. But now you have to call us.
