At least it isn’t Tuscan….Most of the house is just spectacular! The sunroom had me swooning. Thanks for sharing it!

That's perhaps the most beautiful street in Philadelphia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delancey_Place

I bought a Powerball ticket today and thought, ”Where would I live if I won?”

This answers that!

Wow, it’s stunning. I love everything about this beauty. And I love Philly — have spent a lot of time there.

Thank you! Hope no one gets an offer in before tonight. :D

That kitchen works just fine for me. With a house that gorgeous, I would hope to stay out of the kitchen.

The kitchen ticks boxes in terms of quality except the lighting is bad, but it is so different from the rest of the house. If any of you saw Gloria Vanderbilt's apartment (actually a really modest 2 BR apt with dining room) her kitchen was also very utilitarian--expensive but utilitarian-- and the rest of the apartment was pure over the top GV.

I would never go into that kitchen if I visited that house. I like the rest of the house, however, but the kitchen is definitely not inviting, but then I do not think it was meant to be. It is also a stark contrast to the rest of the house. I really do not like the white cabinets in that kitchen - I think that is what is putting me off. Bleach birch or bleached maple would look much better and also go with the rest of the house better.

That kitchen will never be the heart of the home with a cozy eating space and was never intended to be as mentioned above. But it wouldn't take much to make it more inviting even if only for the person cooking - some color on the counters, a window treatment, a backsplash, a rug and a comfortable stool to sit in while waiting for the oven timer or for one friend to sit and have a drink with you while you work. But that's not really important in the scheme of the house I guess.

Beautiful house... the solarium is sublime. Agree, the kitchen is underwhelming.

Adore the spider web transoms.

It' hard for me to imagine someone who does not want a space for cooking with family and guests. Do they have 24/7 kitchen help? because 0/7 is how often I'd want to use that kitchen.

I totally get a catering kitchen, but at a redundancy, not instead of the OTK.

I'm reminded a bit of a very opulent home where the owner had a sign in the kitchen that said "life is too short to cook for other people." I get it not everyone likes to cook, but that seems like an extreme sentiment! On top of that to feel strongly enough to hang a sign to that effect? I find that downright bizarre.

It's interesting because we looked at a house of this size, newer (turn of 20th c.) colonial revival-beaux arts with the kitchen in the basement and a warming kitchen off the dining room. The house was built for service, with two secondary staircases and obvious staff bedrooms etc, and only a formal dining room for eating. It was obvious that the elderly last tenant of the house had moved into just about three rooms of the very large house, a bedroom, a sitting room and the kitchen, and they probably ended up sitting in the basement kitchen a fair amount of the time with whoever was working for them at that time and the kitchen was really bleak. It was probably state of the art 1950s early 60s utilitarian based upon the various appliances and warming drawers in the warming kitchen/butler's pantry off the dining room. I just had a hard time thinking about staff carrying trays of food up the winding kind of treacherous servant stairs from the kitchen most of the way through the 20th c. just like it was the Edwardian age.

I like the kitchen. It's got a window over the sink and both the sink and stove are along walls with contiguous counter in between. It can be made more friendly.

What's with the blue painted floor(s)? I don't mind it, but it's unexpected.

There is nothing particularly wrong with the kitchen--except the lighting-its just so clearly on a different level than the rest of the house, and it was built in an age where many houses have kitchens that actually are to the point of being overly designed and over elaborate compared to the rest of the house.

Bunny,

I don't think it's so much that it's the world's worst kitchen, it's that someone had put tremendous thought and effort and style into the home, except for the kitchen.

A house like this would probably have painted floors upstairs at some point in its earlier history. The main rooms would have had narrow strips of carpet sewn together and tacked around the edges or narrow strips directly tacked to the floor with blue tacks. Some of the floors may have had Venetian carpet just like they have on the steps now, as an all over treatment but the main floors probably would have had an elaborate and bright pattern by the 1850s when this house was built. I am pretty sure varnished floors were not really a thing yet (I know they weren't in the 1830s-40s houses I lived in), they were bare wood with carpet, if they could afford it, or paint.

The original floors in the house I lived in, on the floor I lived in were brown paint or raw wood and I found narrow strips of grass carpet, kind of like sisal carpet, some tacks still on the edges, in the attic. I lived on the 3rd and 4th floor so I lived in one primary bedroom (floor was painted) and the box rooms or maid's rooms (the bits we could see here were raw.

Even the bathrooms are only minimally styled (the same vase of flowers, the same two towels). At least there is a coffee maker and something on the wall in the kitchen. I wonder if, when people are actually living there, if there is a little more life in the kitchen.

Mtn, I get that. I went straight to the kitchen and didn't really consider it in the context of the rest of the house. It's just that I've seen so many really nice houses with sinks or stoves on an island or across the aisle from one another, or no window over the sink.

That is quite spectacular. The interior design suits the architecture nicely. I like almost everything (the trompe l'oeil bathroom was not pleasing to me). It's what my house wishes it could be (I have the 1910 middle class version of some of those architectural details).

If I could afford a house like that, I would have staff, so the kitchen wouldn't bother me.

I would need something in between this and the overwrought kitchen that some of these houses have. One thing I noticed beside the fluorescent box is the Level one granite. This is the sort of granite that is expected in our location in new construction rentals.

Actually there is another house on this block that has trompe l'oeil in a powder room: it is painted as a tent and through openings and raised flaps you can see a landscape including the ancestal country estate the owner grew up on. That house also had a ballroom. It was in poor condition when the owner bought it, there were trees growing in the ballroom and pigeons living on the top floor. The previous owners had lived in genteel poverty in smaller and smaller portions of the house for some decades, is what I had heard.

Besides the granite, the shaker cabinets. I think a kitchen in this house would have slab fronts, wouldn’t it? Easier to clean. I can’t get over the single fluorescent fixture. I mean, even my house also has a light over the sink.

If I could afford a house like that, I would have staff, so the kitchen wouldn't bother me.

Amen to that. I only learned to cook because I had children. When the children are not around, then I basically don't cook. The occasional cooking or baking project can be amusing, but that's the extent of it for me.

PS If it were my kitchen, I would make it sleek and modern. I do like for everything to look nice ;-)

Swoon, I love most everything about this house. If I had the means to live there I would not be cooking my own meals.

Love the location and the house. Way back when, relatives lived on Delancey. I remember going in town and running around Rittenhouse Square and rubbing the goat statue and the lion. I hate cooking and except for that overhead light, the kitchen would suit me just fine.

Oh my gosh what a wonderful home. Agree that the kitchen is not friendly, but the rest is just wonderful. Just need to get a big lottery win and it is a go:).

The kitchen may be utilitarian, but lacks features I would consider necessary for a working kitchen -- as a kitchen where I would prepare meals.

As a short person -- really short as in less than 5' -- placement of a microwave above counter height is extremely problematic.

The rest of the residence is beautiful.

For a staff kitchen, I think it is a bit lacking for the reasons cited (and more), but it does have the requisite dual dishwashers.

Thanks for the post. I reminds me how much I like striped runners.

My parents lived almost directly across the street from this house from about 1947 to 1950. However, they lived in a very humble apartment over some doctors offices. My father had recently finished his medical residency. When I was a newborn, I came home to this block. One of the neighbors was Eugene Ormandy, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra at that time. I have vague memories of living there.

When I worked in center city Philadelphia, I would sometimes walk down this block and enjoy the beautiful homes.

The house my parents lived in was returned to a single family townhome at some point.

Hey, Cyn, we have crossed paths a couple of times. I think having your picture taken with that brass goat in Rittenhouse Square was mandatory for every center city kid! i will have to dig through old family photos and find one of me.

Beautiful home!!

I could live there. If someone left me a gazillion bucks.

@dedtired, as wealth disparity approaches and surpasses that of the 19th c. more and more of these return to single family houses. The wealth to maintain these as intact houses just didn't exist for most of the 20th century, so most of them became multi unit.

Very interesting. I would not have thought of that. I enjoy seeing the city again through your posts . Im so glad you’re back.

Thanks for sharing, @palimpsest. Such real estate listings never fail to bring me back down to earth. I keep falling in love with such architectural details and classic decor but they belong in houses WAY outside my budget. My first thought was similar to @Jilly. I need to win that lottery jackpot. :D Of course, it would help to buy a ticket. :P I wouldn't need to do much to that kitchen beyond the lighting and counter either. Actually, with that kind of money, I'd be tempted to paint the cabinets a different colour every year until they needed to be replaced.

On my screen, most of the wall colours were perfection and I loved the bathrooms. Timeless, so much of it. The blue dining room table didn't tickle my fancy but who cares. Lol I could live in this entry. :)

Tartan, I bought one ticket … only got one number right. Boo! I rarely buy lotto tickets, but walked by a machine at the grocery store yesterday. Thought, what the heck. :D

The gougework fireplaces are really nice, too. There are under $1M houses that have a lot of these details but they will be smaller and not nearly this pristine.

The house is absolutely a delicous feast for the eyes. And there are details like this.

Oh-oh-oh….for the love of TRIM!! Swoon! Those panel jambs! All that fluting! oh my! And all those gorgeous transoms!! 😍

Kitchen? what kitchen? 😂

Actually, it has the nice fridge & range….remove that fugly granite and box fixture…once i got used to not having an island I’d be fine. I’d just go waltzing around the rest of the house and forget all about islands and cooking….

Love that house! That traditional style is right up my alley!

I love that dining table with the more traditional chairs. I would have never thought such a combination could work, but it is smashing. That house could seduce me into becoming a city girl. I would have to buy a whole new wardrobe for it, though. I simply could not imagine traipsing around that house in my country mouse clothes.