Perhaps a hundred and fifty years ago, city planners were kind enough to grant wonderful lot depth to the property owners on the north side of the 1900 block of Christian Street and pretty good depth to the owners on the south side of the 1900 block of Catharine Street. This was rather unkind to the property owners on both sides of the 1900 block of Webster Street, as they possess some of the shallowest properties in the neighborhood as a result.
When building a new construction home, you're ideally designing a home that goes back thirty-eight to forty feet in order to accommodate two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. The lot depth on this block varies between thirty and forty feet, and the math becomes challenging rather quickly. With homes needing rear yards, you can see the difficulty on the forty foot lots and how things become incredibly tricky for those thirty foot lots. Still, as this neighborhood has grown more and more desirable, developers have churned through most of this block over the last decade. Until recently, a few vacant lots remained. Not so much anymore.
Most recently, Lily Development bought the vacant lot at 1933 Webster St. and wasted little time in building a new home on this 14'x40' lot. It's currently under agreement at a list price of just under $500K.
Perhaps more interesting is the ongoing construction at 1918 Webster St., which has amazing windows on the first floor. This wasn't a vacant lot, rather it was a long-time rental property that was listed for sale for $275K last year. It doesn't look like it sold, so perhaps the owner of the property decided to redevelop the property instead of selling. We can't think of too many examples of floor to ceiling windows in new construction these days, and even though they'll be mostly covered by curtains they'll still provide some amazing natural light. On a block with a number of Graduate Hospital Specials, this home will probably stand out as the best looking home on the block.
And with FoCA continuing their efforts to make the Chester Arthur School around the corner a more attractive elementary school, we can see demand for homes on this block flourishing. Whether the homes are deep or not, people will make that trade if it means they can send their kids to a performing elementary school.