25 WELLINGTON ST - $1,495,000
The Essentials
An altogether grand, and absurdly pretty, and vanishingly rare, limestone home in the heart of downtown Kingston.
Any offers will be reviewed on Thursday March 26 at 4 pm.
The Bigger Picture
At difficult moments, when all the screens teem with disaster, the world can seem to be crumbling. It feels that nothing will last, and we should despair for the children, and the remaining trees. But hold up! 25 Wellington St, 175 years young, give or take, as well as full-blooded and wholly magnificent, is here to prove this position premature. Built in 1851 by English-Canadian architect John Grist, this two and a half storey limestone home (with a board and batten addition at the rear) is a short block from City Park, and two from Lake Ontario. You’re right downtown, between the market square and the university and the hospitals. This is the property’s first appearance on the market since 1963. There are three fireplaces (one in the largest of the four second-floor bedrooms), and a “horsewalk” - an interior alleyway intended to permit a horse to be moved into long-gone rear stables. There is a window on the landing between floors so large that one could open it and launch a shuttle. The formal living and dining room have unreachable ceilings and are unfathomably spacious; the walls thicker than western redwood. Countless plans have been hatched in these majestic rooms, and jokes delivered both clever and thoughtless; kids have been shushed, and countless courtships proposed and dissolved. Much laughter here, then, and undoubtedly a few tears too. Life packed right into the lath and plaster. The modern addition contains a main-floor bedroom (we’re up to five now), and a bathroom (that makes three), as well as a breakfast room longer than the Brighton Pier. On the finished third floor you might install a guest suite, or hobby room, a cinema, or bed-sit. The lot is L-shaped, having merged way back with an old property that exits onto Lower Union. There is parking, and a walkway and garden like something out of Waugh. You expect Anthony Hopkins to appear in a suit. It is hard to know where to stop. I wrote some of the words on-site, a radiator ticking faintly, and I felt strongly that I was being offered a new, more hopeful way of thinking about the world, an impossibly rare blend of history and convenience. My feeling is you should move for it, if that’s possible for you. But who knows, a century from now it may be sold again, so sure, why not wait?
The Virtual Tour
The Gallery
The Floor Plans
