Real Estate

Home of the Week: Clinton mansion offers chance at rental income

The property includes a two-bedroom apartment that could welcome your in-laws or tenants.

By John R. Ellement

March 8, 2023

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Email

Home of the Week: 43 Cedar St., Clinton

$739,900

Style Italianate

Year built Circa 1850

Square feet 5,354

Bedrooms 6

Baths 5 full

Water/Sewer Public

Taxes $8,006 (2023)

Thankfully, Alanson Chace defied convention.

While many influential people like Chace built staid Federalist-style homes in the mid-19th century, Chace turned to Italianate design and its belvedere. The Chace Mansion was relocated to a half-acre-plus lot on Cedar Street in the late 1800s, and its current owners have spent a decade revitalizing it, including refurbishing that signature third-floor feature.

The belvedere’s wood floor and walls are a clean white, a contrast to the unpainted ceiling with exposed beams. But the draws of this 144-square-foot room are the windows: There are three on every wall, and each is crowned with an arch. The views are nonstop.

But we need to work our way to the top first. The house has a 36-foot-wide farmer’s porch with four columns. The front door is a bright and inviting salmon that opens to a 25-foot-long, 9-foot-wide foyer. A stairway with mahogany railings, original to the home, curves upward on the left. The stair treads and railings are painted an attractive gray. The foyer décor includes original windows hung like historic photographs.

The entrances to the 400-square-foot formal living room and the 256-square-foot family room are located across the foyer from each other. The living room has three windows, including one in the front of the house, and a carved white marble fireplace that’s purely decorative. The family room also features a decorative white marble fireplace, as well as crown molding and windows on two walls.

At the rear of the family room, a doorway leads to a side entrance hallway that also serves as the entry point to a dining room with bright blue walls and a butler’s pantry. The 192-square-foot dining room offers a bay window bump-out with views of the driveway and side yard. Reflecting the decentralized way homes were heated in the 1900s, it has a decorative fireplace with dark marble.

The wide-plank flooring in these rooms is pine original to the home.

This level also offers an updated eat-in kitchen, a full bath, and a mudroom — the latter accessed via the side porch.

The breakfast area in the kitchen is 189 square feet delineated by a rustic-looking light fixture of Edison light bulbs suspended from a repurposed basement beam. A table with seating for six sits underneath the arrangement. The kitchen, updated in 2016, has a 7-foot-long concrete-topped peninsula with seating for three. A trio of pendant lights hangs above the stove, and two arched windows add natural light to the mix.

A concrete-topped island sits at the heart of the kitchen under another repurposed basement beam with Edison bulbs. The appliances are stainless steel, including the Verona 5 gas stove with a pot filler. The Shaker-style cabinets with bead board fronts are soft-close and white, and the sink is a farmhouse.

A few feet away, one finds a full bath behind a pocket door. It has a single vanity with a marble counter that is original to the house — you can see where Chace’s son carved his initials into the underside. The shower is a Fiberglas insert behind a curtain.

The flooring in the kitchen, mudroom, and bath is ceramic tile with a rustic gray wood appearance.

The stairwell in the front hallway leads to the primary suite, a secondary suite, and a bedroom with a sink. The secondary suite (256 square feet) holds a full bath with a claw-foot tub, pedestal porcelain sink, and wide-plank pine flooring.

The primary suite occupies half of the top floor, in part because the owners converted a bedroom into a 208-square-foot walk-in closet with custom shelving and an island. The suite’s bedroom area (256 square feet) sits in front of the house and has a closet and the original wide-plank pine flooring.

The en-suite bath features vinyl-plank flooring with radiant heat, a cast-iron claw-foot bathtub, a dual vanity topped with quartz, and a marble shower with a seat and a rain shower head.

The house is being sold as a single-family with a 1,000-square-foot in-law apartment (two bedrooms, two baths, and a kitchen). The agent is also marketing it as a legal two-family, with the apartment fetching $1,800 a month in rent. The two-story unit includes a private deck and private fenced-in yard.

A single-car garage is at the rear of the house, accessed by driving on the back lawn.

The basement has a part-dirt, part-concrete floor. Mass Save recently installed a moisture barrier on the dirt side.

Joanna King of Tangney Properties in Worcester is the listing agent.

Follow John R. Ellement on Twitter @JREbosglobe. Send listings to [email protected]. Please note: We do not feature unfurnished homes and will not respond to submissions we won’t pursue.