The House

In 1889 the family bought four adjoining lots outright — thirty thousand square feet, purchased at once, while the ground this far west was still considered too far out to matter. The Victorian went up across the two centre lots in 1891. A second, smaller house went up on the north lot two years later for a member of the family, and the south lot has never been built on at all. Nobody here has ever had to buy anything back.

Jules' grandmother lived in the main house for most of her life and refused every offer to subdivide — for privacy, she said, though nobody entirely believed her. The north house fell out of use in her lifetime. By the time the estate reached Jules it was structurally past saving, and the only honest thing left to do was take it down.

Its land became garden. That is why there are walking paths that loop instead of arriving anywhere, and why a vertical greenhouse stands on ground that was never meant to hold a building again — it goes up rather than out, and every vegetable eaten in this house comes off twelve hundred square feet of it.

Jules restored the Victorian himself, slowly and unfashionably. Nothing was opened up that was not already open. The library became a studio around its own bookshelves rather than over them. The kitchen is the one room where comfort was allowed to win, and he will tell you exactly which arguments he lost. The loggia along the west face is the single thing he added, and the only one he refuses to apologise for.

Five people live here alongside him now. None of them arrived for the same reason, and the House has quietly rearranged itself around all six.