I’m moving out of the area and selling my home of the last 20 years. I hope someone finds this place and loves it as much as I have.

Google “1 Front Street, Unit 7, Northampton, Ma” for listings.

Grove Hill Mansion was built in 1880 to be the home for the manager of the local silk mill. A hundred years later the mansion was renovated into seven condominiums each with unique rooms and floor plans. About 20 years ago I bought the condo at the top of the mansion.

You enter the mansion with a view of the grand main foyer and the impressive stairway up to the 2nd floor landing.

A final private stairway leads to the entrance of unit 7. On entering the unit, the Master Bedroom with half-bath is on the right. In the bedroom a large window door up a 3 step staircase leads to a small balcony/landing at the top of a four story spiral fire escape. There’s a view of the mansion’s swimming pool and the Holyoke Mountains in the near distance.

On the same floor is the Living Room with 20 foot ceilings and a giant ornate multi-window skylight. Also on this main level is the Dining Room, the Kitchen, and my office, which was originally designed to be the mansion’s chapel (I read in an old article that the manager of the silk mill used the chapel as a billiards room). Next to the full Bathroom is a small stairway that goes 5 steps down to a large 2nd Bedroom with a South-facing horizontal-pivot window in a slanting wall. This second bedroom has a refurbished antique free-standing stove that we got from the wonderful Richard and Sara over at Good Time Stove Company. From the Dining Room a door opens to the laundry closet, and another door leads to a stair way to the attic storage. That stairway then continues up to a trapdoor on the Rooftop Deck (a great way to get large items up to the Tower).

The Kitchen has a small balcony that overlooks the entrance to the house and the front yard. A Spiral Staircase in the kitchen leads up two stories to the Tower Room. Half-way up that stairway is a door to a very large storage area that sits just under the Tower. Not long after I moved in, I hired Bob Walker at Construct Associates to transform the formally open gazebo-like tower into an enclosed space. Bob did an amazing job of building the Spiral Staircase and keeping the renovation of the tower in align with the architectural look of the mansion. While working on the renovation we realized that the space above the tower was a very large (12′ x 12′) pyramid shaped room that we turned into an amazingly quiet meditation room.

The Tower has eleven large windows and a glass door to the Rooftop Deck. The views of the Pioneer Valley are spectacular. You can see eagles, owls and other birds in the treetops around the tower. The Rooftop Deck is a great place to watch 4th of July fireworks at nearby Look Park. A ladder stair in the Tower leads to the Pyramid Room with it’s mostly-original colored glass windows facing the four cardinal directions.

I admit I have spent a lot of my time in my office, but as it is probably my favorite room in the house, it has made hours of work much more pleasant. Not only is it beautiful, but it’s practical as well. There are two deep built-in storage cabinets next to the windows, and two very long storage areas (4′ x 17′!) that run the length of each side of the room, all with carved wooden doors. To make the unit comfortable in any weather for me and my musical instruments and my computer equipment, I had a mini-split AC/Heating system installed with wall-mounted panels in the Office, Living Room and Master Bedroom. Most of the year, the central heating furnace, with a separate zone for the Tower, provides a very comfortable even temperature. In the summer, usually the whole unit can be quickly aired out by opening a window in the tower at the top of the building, and opening the large pivot window in the studio at the bottom of the condo.

The space in this apartment always feels comfortable and intimate, and you get a distinctly different feel on the five different levels. The Studio (bedroom 2) is on a 5 step level below the main floor of the apartment. Above the main floor is the large storage attic, with an additional storage area half-way up the Spiral Stair. Above the attic is the Tower Room and Roof Deck, and above the Tower is the Pyramid Room.

Honestly, for the first several years that I lived here, every time I came into the mansion’s grand foyer, I would smile and think, “Do I really live here?” It’s a magnificent house.

Grove Hill Mansion is on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
Check out the Mansion’s Wikipedia Page