There’s one thing that most Charlestown residents and visitors agree upon: parking in Chucktown is horrendous. One can drive around in circles for what feels like hours in search of a spot, an accepted annoyance that makes one home for sale at Orchard Hill Condominiums particularly unusual — and particularly desirable. Not only does the condo have two parking spots (one garage and one open), but it has two guest parking spaces, as well.
“It’s almost unheard of,” says the condo’s listing agent Candice Macoul. This Charlestown resident, who doesn’t have a parking spot to call her own, speaks from bitter daily experience. “We all rush home from work trying to get a spot. To have guest parking too, this is very rare,” she adds.
Orchard Hill Condominiums is a 26-unit building at the top of Bunker Hill Street. It was built in the late 1800s as a school house and converted into homes in the mid-1990s.
“It was St. Francis de Sales school, it’s opposite St. Francis de Sales church,” Macoul says. “It’s on the historic register, so the exterior was carefully renovated with the original features. Also, Orchard Hill sits at the highest point in the whole of the city of Boston,” Macoul adds. “It has beautiful views. This home is at the back of the building, which is quieter and it has such beautiful light.”
The property’s location is rife with historic neighborhood features — it sits near the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill (which, though a Pyrrhic victory for the British, set the stage for the American Revolution) and is also just steps from nearby Doherty Playground.
“This is the last park that Olmsted created,” Macoul says. (That would be Frederick Law Olmsted, architect of Boston’s Emerald Necklace and New York’s Central Park.) “And the building is called Orchard Hill because it was once the site of an apple orchard.”
Rich history and parking to spare? We’re sold.
