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Hit by a fire while being brought back to life, a piece of London’s real estate history – a heritage, Victorian-era mansion in the heart of downtown – is up for sale.
The 2½-storey-residence at 496 Waterloo St., across the street from Central secondary school, has long been considered one of the core’s most remarkable properties. It’s listed at $600,000.
Built in 1893, in what was then deemed London’s most prestigious neighbourhood, the property was home for many years to local doctors’ practices.
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In 2006, it was designated as a heritage property for being “a good representation of Queen Anne residential architecture,” with red-brick exterior, a wrap-around veranda and top tower with a conical roof and finial.
Since 2015, the property owner – who declined to be interviewed for this story – had done extensive work to restore the home to its past glory, said Justin Konikow, co-founder of Prime Real Estate Brokerage, who’s managing the property listing.
Wood more than 100 years old from church pews had been used to restore the mansion’s front doors, for example.
All the house’s stonework was repointed, while the outside columns were custom-made and restored.
For more modern details, a pool with an overflow knife edge – meaning the water sits at the same level as the pool deck to create a mirror surface effect – was added in the backyard.
“When I was consulting on it, what I thought was super-interesting was the owner did such a good job extracting the value from all the heritage components by not just looking at the Heritage Act and saying, ‘OK, I can go to Lowe’s or I can get this to match,’ ” Konikow said.
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“They really went into the history of the property, found materials and wood and tiles and brought it into the property to put together what was going to be the final product.”
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But then, tragedy struck.
Shortly after 9 a.m. on Feb. 23, 2023, fire broke out in the upper level, significantly damaging the home and derailing sale plans.
“We were looking to list it for the spring market” last year, Konikow said. “The fire dramatically . . . put an entire stop to that third level.”
“It was almost done from a timeline perspective,” he said.
Fire crews quickly doused the flames, sparing the rest of the house, but causing significant water damage, since repaired.
The property still needs some more renovation work, but the owner has decided to sell it as is.
“We looked at the marketplace and we looked at what it could take to renovate a property like this, what it would it be worth when it’s done, so we priced it at a range where we knew it would generate a really good amount of interest,” Konikow said.
And it appears to have worked, with the property being shown more than 30 times after just two days on the market, he said.
How much it would cost to finish renovating the place would largely depend on what a potential buyer wants to do with it, Konikow said.
But the house comes to market at “the best” time, when significant work has has been done to revitalize the core and highrise tower construction poised to bring new life to downtown.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to own a piece of London history,” Konikow said.
jjuha@postmedia.com
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