1901 Dixon Road, Dixon Hill, Baltimore
Hot House: Mini Georgian-style house with five bedrooms and three and a half baths, 3,000 square feet on 1.1 acres. Asking price: $775,000.
What: Dixon Hill is one of those neighborhoods that abound in Baltimore – both tucked away, but close to everything. Just off of Smith Avenue, Dixon Hill is home to numerous elaborate Victorian homes, Carpenter Gothic, shingle “cottages”, and even a few octagonal houses. This late 19th-century neighborhood is known as a suburban village in the city limits.
The house is a deceptive mini-Georgian, laid out in an H shape. Oddly, from the front, it looks a bit like a simple Cape Cod cottage, but as you move around it, it unfolds to reveal its size, more than 3,000 square feet, plus a garage. On either side of the H, there are two rooms, and at the center bar, there is one large room, all combining to make an open, airy house, filled with light. One of the first two rooms could be a ground-floor bedroom, and the other would work beautifully as a home office. On either side of the center room, there are terraces accessed by pairs of French doors. One terrace is shady and the other is sunny.
On the second floor, there are, again, sets of two rooms at either end of the H. Each of the two bedrooms shares a bathroom. In the middle bar, there is a large sitting room with windows all along the long side and a beautiful bead-board wood ceiling. The second floor is accessed by both a front and back staircase.
The ground floor of the house contains a drive-in garage, accessed from the home’s driveway. The grounds of this house contain old-growth trees and bushes, and measure just over an acre of land. The gardens are mature and provide the bones of additional gardening and planting.
Where: Dixon Road is the main road through Dixon Hill in Mt. Washington. It’s on the south side of Smith Avenue and leads to an enclave of early turn-of-last-century houses. It’s a ten-minute walk to the village of Mt. Washington and the light rail, and just a few minutes more to the Whole Foods/Meadowbrook complex. Mt. Washington Elementary School is close by and it is one of the top-ranked schools in Baltimore.
Final Appraisal: This brick house, built in the early 1920s, is deceptive in its size and looks. Although it looks like a simple Cape Cod, it’s really a mini-Georgian. It looks like one story, but it’s really three, including the basement and garage. Dixon Hill is a close-knit neighborhood, originally built as an entrepreneurial project by the architect, Thomas Dixon. The listing for the house is here.
