Historic Roslyn home lists for $999,999

Jessica Chin
The front of the Valentine-Losee house, a historic 1758 on sale for $999,999 (Photo courtesy of Linda Wohl).

A historic Roslyn house that was built around 1758 is on sale for $999,999. The house, which was restored in 1998 by the Roslyn Landmark Society, maintains much of its original style and is “old and charming,” one of its listing agents said.

Peggy and Roger Gerry, co-founders of the Roslyn Landmark Society, a historic preservation society, purchased the home, located at 117 East Broadway, in 1995. The home is set on 0.57 acres in the Roslyn Historic District, which the Gerrys helped create through their activism. The home is across the street from the Bryant Library and Gerry Park, named after the Gerry family.

“When you walk in, you would think you are in early times but all of the systems of the house are from 1998,” Linda Wohl of Daniel Gale Sotheby’s International Realty, one of the listing agents, said. “For example, the heating is from that time, the central air conditioning, the house is alarmed, the house has sprinklers.”

Allison George is the other listing agent.

The colonial-style house has three bedrooms upstairs with sloped outer walls, and two and a half bathrooms. The bathrooms, roof, windows, fireplaces, beams, ceilings, mantles and “various parts that were historically significant” were retained and restored, Wohl said.

A two-story room known as the “summer kitchen” that used to be disconnected from the house is now connected by a galley kitchen, Wohl said. The house has “wide plank floors, [five] stone fireplaces, fabulous antique beams original to the house, and a boxwood garden complete with a gazebo to entertain in,” she added.

In addition, the house also has a small library, “a detached two-car garage that was built, and not a part of the original property, which has a second floor that could be used as an artist’s studio or storage,” Wohl said.

The house is called the “Valentine-Losee” house after the two Roslyn families thought to have originally owned it. A 1997 tour guide published by the society says that certain documents indicate that the house was built in 1743 by John Valentine, although “nothing absolutely proves it.” James Losee purchased two parcels of land in May 1835, part of which may have included the Valentine-Losee house, the guide says.

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