Omg. What is the neighborhood like? Why is it so cheap?

525k for that?!? The price must be wrong. It's simply beautiful, and with new kitchen, new bathroom...that price can't be correct. Can it? Thanks for the link. It is indeed a joy to look at.

Wow. I wonder if it was once a church.

Thank you so much for posting! I love old homes and this one is just fabulous!

Maybe sold to a family member? Divorce?

The price does reflect the neighborhood, although even for a house in its location it seems a bit low. But according to my friend, houses in her neighborhood usually sell for half of what they would go for a mile or two down the road in West Mt. Airy, as opposed to Germantown.

Maybe a Philadelphia-savvy reader here will know more.

I believe the home may have been a rectory for the church on that corner, but I am not sure. She says it is in the same style and stone.

Crime rate ?

Parts of the general neighborhood are terrible. A few blocks may be fine, and then a the next block may have a house or two in shell condition and their may be a stripped car on the street. There's not good infrastructure that's walkable. No good supermarket, no chain-type convenience stores, just independent ones that are probably a crap shoot. You must have a car to live here and it has a high likelihood of being broken into. The Germantown/Mount Airy area is all sort of like this: some great houses and great neighborhoods next to marginal or actually dangerous neighborhoods.

Thanks for the explanation, pal

What a fantastic home for such a low price. Would be impossible in my state to find such beauty in any neighborhood in such great condition. The arches are magnificent.

The property notes do indicate a two car garage, which is a savior in such a transitional neighborhood.

Pal hit it right on nose. It remember when that neighborhood flourished. Many family members lived there.

I love all the windows and the architectural details. The furnishings fit the house and even though the kitchen has been redone the details of the island bridge the gap between the more updated kitchen and the bones of the house. That's what i like about this house - the true bones of the house were always kept in mind.

Very pretty. Thanks for sharing. I'm glad I can see it through rose colored glasses and not in its natural habitat. But, wow, that is cheap!

What a beautiful house! It looks like a fairytale castle on the outside. :-)

The interior and exterior are so harmonious.

Beautiful. The traditional furnishings are the icing on this elegant cake, imo.

The kitchen, though, made me laugh. We've been house hunting, and all the homes we've seen had newly painted stark white cabinets, as if a coat of white was slapped on to "update" the kitchen. I wondered if the stager or owner did the same thing here.

I lived in the suburbs of Philly for 10 years in the 80's. It was so sad to see such great neighborhoods get trashed.

I am packing my bags! I want that house...no matter what type of neighborhood it is in. :)

What's up with all the mirrors? And, it was kind of a let down when you get to the kitchen. I love a white kitchen, but NO to those cabinets. Small, too.

My friend's house, which is a couple of blocks from this one, has a much smaller kitchen--I've seen larger kitchens in apartments, really, despite the size of the house, because the kitchen wasn't planned for eating in or entertaining--just the cook standing at the stove, I guess.

Another couple of homes we've been in in that area do have larger kitchens but they are mostly achieved through additions, if I recall them rightly.

It is a beauty. Philadelphia has so many lovely old homes, and if this was located a mile to the west, the price would be a great deal higher. That neighborhood is sketchy. Philadelphia public schools are horrible and I bet the owners sent their kids to private school -- another huge expense.

Some neighborhoods with beautiful old homes in the city have seen a revival, in fact many have. I doubt this one will anytime soon.

It is a lovely place and I wish it could be picked up and put somewhere else.

There are so many homes in so many cities like this....breaks my heart. All those beautiful details impossible to duplicate today. Just sad.

That is lovely. As I was scrolling through I found myself, like I do with any larger home, wondering how I would manage to clean it all, lol.

WOW! That is one INCREDIBLE home! I am in love! However, I know about gorgeous homes in dangerous areas and it is not worth being scared of a drive by shooting or robbery all of the time.

Newhomebuilder,I was thinking the same thing about the mirrors! They have so many large, thin framed mirrors everywhere. Wonder if they are in the mirror biz? lol

The mirrors remind me of the type in The House of Mirrors at amusement parks. :)

I almost cried when I saw what the new uncaring owners had done to so many prominent old Philly neighborhoods. The first owners took so much pride in their houses. The new owners just trashed them. I'm sure the crime rate is high there with the wrong kind of people moving in.

It's such a beautiful place. On the outside it's like an Episcopal church with the red doors, but inside there's nothing church-like about it inside.

I did a little Google street view stroll down the street and it doesn't seem to be that bad a neighborhood to me. Perhaps it's fallen a bit, but there are lots of nice houses and it's all leafy.

I would live with it, put up 12 ft razor-wire-capped fence and security dogs if need be. That is a dream house, and the grounds are beautiful as well.
Casey

Street view can be tricky: on some views the immediate environs of my neighborhood look like they would be dangerous, and you can go in to dangerous neighborhoods on street view that look kind of charming.

There are streets in South Philadelphia that look lousy on street view that are extremely safe because of the closeness of the residents, but they are not at all attractive.

Someone posted a lovely home in the very same neighborhood about a year ago. I have such a soft spot for this area!

When my parents were first dating, my Dad would drive by these wonderful old homes and promised my Mom one some day (we ended up in the leafy burbs instead). When I was in grad school my BF lived in a frathouse in this area. And when, in my early 20s, I got an apartment with my best friend from junior high, it was in a grand old 1920s-era apartment complex in this area. We had a huge apartment with old leaded windows and a stone juliet balcony. I recall us saying we would never live in such splendor again, and for a long time that was true! We used to wander around through the streets and look at the old estates, a hobby we called "house drooling".

I've long since moved away, but when I was looking for a home in the NYC burbs, I was attracted once again to places that had the same feel, the same turn of the century development, the same tree lined streets.

I've often wondered why the area was never gentrified, while (to me) far less comely neighbors such as Manayunk have been (as far as I understand). Maybe the smaller more modest housing stock in Manayunk is more doable for young people to move in and gentrify? These older larger homes, long since chopped up into apartments, are too costly for pioneers perhaps. Or maybe because Manayunk may have been working class, but was always safe?

This is interesting, what Pal said about the neighborhood. I checked 'area vibes' and it gets good ratings except for crime.

It gets A+ for amenities, and F for crime. See other rankings at the link below. How sad that this gorgeous home and yard is in a location that I think would frighten some of us.

Here is a link that might be useful: areavibes for this address

At first glance it was a nice house but actually looking at each room, it's not much of an 1856 house. Take all the furnishings out and what is left? An interior just like any other house. The kitchen. White paint on 1980 cabinets. Updated! I'd love to get my hands on it and about a million dollars to use on it. The grounds are better than average.

I can only imagine what that house costs to heat.

My mother's family migrated in a northwest pattern in the 19th and early 20th c.

My great-grandparents grew up around 10th-11 Streets above Girard Avenue, which was all demolished, built as projects, then leveled, now mixed public housing.

My grandmother was born in a house that's now part of a parking lot for the Liacoras Center at Temple.

My mother was born in a house that still stands a block off Chew Avenue at the Junction of Germantown and Mount Airy. Parts of the family lived in Germantown houses similar to the one shown or plainer but not smaller until the late 70s as the neighborhood collapsed around them, and others moved on to Chestnut Hill, Overbrook, Merion and Villanova. My mother's family moved to a farm near Lansdale and then to Virginia.

You can "drive" most of these areas on Google and find historic pictures of many of them on Phillyhistory.org.