545 BAGOT Street

This handsome end unit red-brick townhouse in the Inner Harbour is a block from the river and a ten-minute walk from The Screening Room. The Elm Cafe and Pizza Monster are maybe a minute away. None of that matters, of course, if you can't bring yourself to leave the house. I move through these renovated and so-lovely rooms with a reverence, as if I've stumbled upon a secular chapel at the end of a hike through towering firs. Which is odd, given the distinctly urban setting, but there is, I swear, a serenity to this one, a sense of good energies lavished for more than a century. I like particularly the angle of the south wall in the living and the dining room, the way the house widens towards the back, as if leading you into better understandings. I like the half step up into a kitchen that feels lifted from the Cotswolds, as does the skinny sunroom where you sit with your true love or your newspaper. I like, because I can be practical too, the fact that the furnace and AC were installed just last year. There used to be four bedrooms but one has been converted into a splendid laundry, with enough built-in storage to hide treasures. One of the remaining three has a mat set at the centre of the floor and the idea is that you sit there and meditate, I think, or contort yourself into shapes I haven't managed in a decade. I'd wander instead, taking in the spa bathroom, the dark-framed windows and the sound of rain on the metal roof. I might build up into that attic somewhere down the road, just to access the view it would likely provide of the water, the swans in formation heading south from dark forest. Parking is by permit ($12/mth) and there's always a spot at the door.