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Victorian House for sale in NY

House is for sale

"PAINTED LADY"

5 minute walk from the Hudson River, 17 miles south of downtown Albany, NY

Three-story, 3300 square feet, 18 rooms. One full bath, 2 halves. Currently two bedrooms, but a couple other rooms could be bedrooms --- and there is the whole third floor to be redone if you want to --- 7 rooms currently as unheated storage. Full basement under most of the house. On half an acre, additional adjacent acre available.

History of New Baltimore Victorian house

Built about 1874. Victorian Era, in fact. The builder was a man named Wickes, who had a coal and lumber business in the little port town of New Baltimore. Annoyingly, this results in their being no fireplaces in the house. In those mid-Victorian times, you showed off your affluence by central-heating with coal and eschewing rustic plebian fireplaces. This was probably the manor house of the hamlet, likely with a commanding view of the river and docks --- lots of woods in the way of the view now. You can just glimpse the river from the third floor windows in the winter when the leaves are down --- but you can also see away off to the east probably to Massachusetts.

In the kitchen, which is a later add-on (1880s?), there is a dutch oven about five feet high. Current owners heated part of the house with a wood burning fireplace insert placed there until the heating system was completed. It is now where the stove sits. The chimney up from there is restored and functional. Basically you'd want to put a stove hood in and vent it up the chimney.

In the dining room

Mrs. Wickes lived in the house into the '30s. At some point it was a boarding house. A wing was added to the south side with several rooms. Some time later this wing was destroyed, by fire or wind, nobody seems sure. A cement foundation remains there, outside the dining room windows --- nice place for a rose garden.

From the '40s on the house was owned by a family, and later by their son, into the late 1980s. The building fell into general disrepair during that period and was eventually abandoned and sold to the current owners in 1989.

Sometimes the building was divided into 3 flats. There are the remains of an old kitchen on the third floor --- looks '40s or '50s in style. Or perhaps this reflects 3rd-floor Victorian servants' quarters. In one old photo there is a fellow driving a horse and wagon in a corn field next to the house, and a maid with a baby in a second-storey window. The dining room features a storage closet, and above this is a smaller cabinet with a locked door. Victorian manor-dwellers apparently kept their liquor there, along with the assumption that the servants were short, or unambitious, or couldn't find the key. Might have been short --- the stairway from the dining room features treads on which anyone with shoe sizes under 6 would have been comfortable.

Victorian house for sale - continued on page 2 >>

 

More photos of Victorian house for sale coming shortly