This home is in the Spring Hill historic district in the center of Somerville, about five miles from downtown Boston. It is less than a mile from the T stop and commuter rail at Porter Square, in Cambridge, and slightly more than a mile from Harvard Square. The building was converted into apartments in 1980 and became a condominium in 1997. Joe Perry, the lead guitarist of Aerosmith, lived in this unit before it went condo.
Size: 2,852 square feet
Price per square foot: $489
Indoors: The three-story apartment incorporates the former principal’s office as well as a grand, bifurcated staircase made of Douglas fir that originally served the whole building and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The staircase starts on the main level, opposite the front door, and rises toward a wall with an approximately 20-foot-high Palladian window, dividing and twisting as it approaches the long second-floor landing. This landing serves as the dining area.
At one end is a newly renovated kitchen with a breakfast nook; at the other, a living room with built-in bookshelves. Both rooms have views of the Boston skyline.
Two bedrooms and a bathroom with a limestone floor and a whirlpool tub are on the main level. A second staircase descends to a bright lower level with a master bedroom, a bathroom with heated floors, a media/sitting room and a separate dining area with a wet bar.
Outdoor space: Unique in the building, the unit has a private backyard reached from the lower level. The owners couldn’t bear to throw out the basketball hoop that remains from the schoolhouse era. Two-car parking also comes with the home.
This steeply gabled house, known as the Peary Homestead, is in Columbia County, about three miles north of the center of Germantown. It is about 10 minutes from the city of Hudson, N.Y., and two hours from the George Washington Bridge in Manhattan. A landing on the Hudson River where a boat can be kept is about a five-minute drive away.
Size: 3,000 square feet
Price per square foot: $467
Indoors: Tucked under a portico at the top of a bluestone terrace, the formal front entrance opens to a foyer with a staircase.
To the left is the living room with six windows and a fireplace. To the right is a square dining room with white-painted woodwork and a coffered ceiling.
The adjacent white-tiled kitchen has a partition that blocks views of the central work area, with its copper sink and Viking oven. A second copper sink is positioned under a window that looks into a mudroom. Nearby are a small laundry room, a powder room with a stone-pedestal sink and a windowed area connected to the dining room, which currently holds an upright piano.
Beyond the kitchen is a lofty solarium with exposed ceiling trusses, heated marble floors and a Haddonstone fireplace. One set of French doors leads from the solarium to a long, vine-covered pergola with stone-top tables and an obelisk; another opens to an herb garden with a pair of espaliered trees and a fountain.
The second floor has a master suite and a pair of guest rooms that share a bathroom. A mezzanine, reachable by ladder, runs above the hallway on this level, incorporating space below the gable.
Outdoor space: The 3.31-acre property has gardens, lawns, a lap pool, a lily pond, willows, fruit trees and even ruins (of a stone house that once stood on the property). Guest quarters are on the second floor of the carriage house, under a slanted wood ceiling. There is also a garden shed with a greenhouse.
