Yesterday afternoon, I took a walk around Charlestown with my camera. I walked along the Mystic, from the Charlestown High School playing fields down to the Navy Yard, taking photos of everything and anything that caught my attention (which is a lot).
After a couple hours of walking and shooting, my camera warned that battery exhaustion was imminent, so I started making my way home. Instead of back-tracking, I decided to walk by the Bunker Hill Monument — an omnipresent structure in the neighborhood. As I’m approaching Monument Square, I look a side street, and spot this:
I was stunned. A modern home in Charlestown? That seems as unlikely as one in Beacon HIll, what with all the Victorian brownstones and the historic gaslights in the neighborhood. On top of that, how have I not noticed it before? I’ve lived in Charlestown for almost two years, and I walk everywhere!
It’s a four-story, single-family home with a very open interior layout. There’s a balcony on each story, but they’re not carbon copies of the floor below. The first story is parallel with the road behind and the garage door, while the three above are angled to get the most of the morning light coming in over Boston Harbor. The fourth floor is set back further than the rest, providing additional privacy from what is presumably the master suite.
Intrigued and impressed, I just had to see what the front of this house looked like. When I curled around the block, what I found was not dramatically different from what the rest of the neighborhood looks like.
You’d be forgiven for thinking this was just another renovated brownstone. The metallic cladding on the dormer is the only giveaway that there’s anything different beyond the historic facade.
The renovation looks to be about 80-90% done. It looks like some interior details and finishing touches — a light at the front door, doorbell, and the like — are all that are needed.
Someone came out of a house a few doors down. I asked him if knew who owned the house, and he told me someone from a block or so away bought the house, but wasn’t sure who. He said the entire house was demolished, save the front facade. I asked a local realtor and found out the owner is a local business owner and his wife, lifelong Bostonians.
The house is beautiful, and incredibly unique for Boston. Yet for all of it’s modern updates, it blends in with the surrounding neighborhood very well. I’d love to get a walkthrough of the home when it’s finished. If that happens, you know I’ll be sharing with you.
What do you think? Does this home fit in with what you picture Charlestown — or Boston — to be? Can you see a street of modern brownstones being built, or is it just a one-off idea?
