Pride of Place
It’s just a dozen years old, but this big bayfront home is right at home in an historic Ventnor neighborhood.
Exterior front view
T
he rambling house on Somerset Avenue in Ventnor looks as if it’s anchored this corner for a century. But take a quick glance inside — at the elevator, 50-amp car charger, heated floors — and it’s clear the place was built with contemporary comforts in mind. Custom-designed and built in 2005, the three-bedroom, 4.5bath waterfront house in historic St. Leonard’s Tract fits right in among its stately neighbors (some homes here date back to the early 1900s). With fieldstone exterior walls, weathered shingles, solid cherry and Spanish cedar doors and multiple decks, the house has a grandeur that is not at all haughty. A stunning, mature weeping willow and fragrant magnolia tree grace the brick walkway, which features an inlaid sundial. Everything about this setting says, “Welcome home.” Sporting Life “The whole first floor was meant for entertaining,” says Jillian Kinderman of Mark Arbeit and Co., the Margate realtor that represents the $1.595 million home. The rough-and-ready lower level, with its Vermont slate watermark floors and casual furnishings, includes not only a full wet bar but an indoor gas-lit fire pit with a suspended copper hood. 16
Holiday 2017 |
LIFESTYLE
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This relaxing space overlooks the outdoor pool area, with seating capacity for dozens of guests. The pool and deck in turn overlook the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway or ICW, a 1,090-mile nautical highway where boaters cruise in leisurely fashion from Canada to Florida. And there in the distance is the Atlantic City skyline, with its turning windmills and glittering pleasure domes reflected in the bay. Day to night and season to season, it’s an enviable view. “On holidays, you’re in the perfect place to see the fireworks in Atlantic City,” says Kinderman. “But the best place to see them is upstairs” — because this home actually has an old-fashioned widow’s walk, a rare and charming feature seldom seen even in vintage homes outside coastal New England. With four boat slips and four sturdy floating docks, the home on the corner of a cul-de-sac supports an active lifestyle of swimming, sailing, kayaking and other water sports. But if your idea of paradise is to cozy up in a deck chair and watch the clouds roll by, there may be no more pleasant place to do it than right here. On a recent visit, barely a sound could be heard beyond the putt-putt of a passing motorboat and the occasional shrilling of a seabird.