200 Patrick St - Sold

The Essentials

A three-bedroom Inner Harbour home fashioned from granite, with a finished basement and detached garage.

The Bigger Picture

I’m not sure what it is about the granite that excites me so much. In the early days of this odd career, I sold a similar house on Mowat, opposite the woods, and it felt like my birthday each of the few days it stuck around on the market.

Some of it, I’m sure, has to do with the fact that as a teenager in England, in the months before we moved to Canada, I was studying the Canadian Shield in geography class, and the effects of glaciation on a landscape. The wearing away of softer rocks. And when I arrived, I took great solace in being able to recognize the erratics out in the fields, in the moraines and eskers running parallel to the road, and in dropping feet first into the sorta sad excuses for caves up on Centreville Road.

Granite, with its essential glitter, its hard, sharp face (often pink north of Kingston), seemed to embody the resilience I felt I needed to make it in this new-to-me country.

So maybe I do know what it is that excites me, now that I give it a minute.

I am also impressed by the idea that these mostly modest stone homes will outlive everything around them. Even if the mortar falls away, and all the interior fixings, I like to think that the essential structure will remain in place, like some haven cobbled together in Minecraft. They are homes that will never fail you.

200 Patrick was built in 1948, so this is, what, it’s 73rd birthday? The floor plan is standard and by that I mean pleasingly familiar. The trim is dark and pretty, the hardwood floors in the living and dining rooms have been stained that way too. It’s a brooding, serious sort of palette but the light fairly floods in and balances things, as does the lovely arch, which seems as elegant to me as any mathematical proof, some star stitched dead centre into the night sky.

The basement is finished, and that’s what distinguishes the house from many in the neighbourhood. The bedrock in these parts climbs and dives like a kids’ rollercoaster. Some of us have nothing under the floorboards but dirt, the odd pale stretch of scraped limestone. But 200 Patrick has proper living space and the way it’s set up now — as a master bedroom and ensuite — seems absolutely perfect.

There is even a garage, and if I thought I could steal that, wheel it over a few blocks to my place, I surely would. And next to the garage, tucked away with a backdrop of old trees, is a stony sort of patio garden that if you strung with lights and populated with picnic tables, you could rent out for photo shoots. The craft brewers and the taco joints would claim your hardscrabble aesthetic for themselves

The full iGuide is right here. And the realtor.ca listing is here.

The plan is to review any offers on Monday March 29. And the sellers would prefer a three-month closing.