CAPE MAY — As the season heats up on Cape Island, the opportunities for home-ownership are also ready to bloom for the right person.
In the case of the home at 526 Elmira St., the right person is someone who’d like a spacious, easy, comfortable home with an attached in-law suite or rental apartment, just a block from the bustling heart of the Historic District.
Elmira Street is one of the most fascinating streets in town, due to the way it changes drastically block by block. At the eastern end, Elmira is directly opposite the shopping complex at Lafayette and Ocean, surrounded by dining, museums, galleries, and boutiques as well as Washington Street Mall.
One block later, it’s a purely residential area abutting the nature preserve around Cape May Creek. Just past the creek, Elmira Street leaves the bird-filled wilderness to become a residential street again, this time in West Cape May, drenched in small-town charm.
As the only way to hop neighborhoods without battling crowds, Elmira has been referred to as the secret bat-cave entrance, the “back way” and the bike route for decades. These nicknames completely ignore the fact that it is its own little neighborhood, blessed by two extremes: the quiet natural beauty surrounding the creek and the easily walkable distance to almost everything one could want on the island, from beaches to groceries, fine dining to the Lima Bean Festival.
(Sci-fi obsessed local kids in the ’80s used to call it The Wormhole, since it was the fastest way to travel between two very different worlds, but that name never caught on with the adults.)
The home is a simple enough two-story that has been transformed over the years into a snug, nest-like retreat. Privacy is paramount, so the street view is mostly taken up by the upper balcony over a spacious two-car garage.
The wide driveway also has room for two cars, but everything is surrounded by flowers, decorative details and what seems like miles of crisp white railings and fences, punctuated by flowering shrubs and mature trees for even more privacy.
It’s a welcoming entrance, but one that ultimately reveals nothing of the house inside. For that, one must either climb the gently sloping stairs up to the main entrance or enter through the garage and take the elevator up to the main floor, where the heart of the home awaits.
Once up the stairs, the center of the home is found where the kitchen, dining and living rooms are arranged to be easily open to each other while remaining clearly defined zones.
These surprisingly spacious rooms share the same hardwood floors and color scheme: the backsplash and island tile are blue and white and a yellow-and-white coffee bar brings the most necessary pieces of the kitchen into the dining room.
Obviously created for entertaining, this space is right where the elevator opens, as well, meaning guests do not have to wander anywhere they shouldn’t be once exiting the lift.
A full bathroom is located just off the kitchen, for guests or for use by the resident of the large bedroom just down the hall.
This would be the primary bedroom if not for the creation, sometime since the home was built in 1988, of a primary suite on the other side of the house. This second bedroom is exceptionally large, with stained-glass windows and two double-door closets.
The primary suite is unusual, to put it mildly. The actual bedroom is accessed by a central sitting room with dramatically tiled floors and a TV. The bedroom is behind this room, completely surrounded by windows overlooking the incredibly private backyard.
To rejoin the rest of the house, one passes through that tiled sitting room, into another room currently used as a home office, where closets wait behind mirrored doors, and a full bathroom has windows on the side of the home just above the custom tile of the shower/tub. A vintage door with leaded glass opens to the hallway and the rest of the home.
The third and final bedroom (and bathroom) are in the in-law or rental suite on the ground floor, behind the large garage. This little nook is reached by taking the stairs down from the entry porch or by traveling through the cavernous storage space on the ground floor.
This little apartment does not have a full kitchen, but it does have a cute kitchenette with sink and microwave, another good-sized bedroom with double closets and a living room with more custom tile-work and space for relaxing.
The front door of this unit opens to a paved courtyard that leads to the landscaped backyard or up the stairs to the main entrance of the home.
Next to this small apartment is the laundry and utility room, so someone with mobility issues can still do all they need to with relative ease, and then take the elevator upstairs for meals and company. (Or they can walk down the street to the nearly endless dining options within three blocks of the door.)
This home is listed at 2,115 square feet but seems larger due to the flexibility of the spaces.
The backyard boasts a screened-in dining pavilion, an enclosed place for grilling, an outdoor shower and a grassy inner sanctum for games, littles and relaxation. It is almost completely private, its one advantage over the lovely front deck overlooking Elmira Street.
This space faces almost due east but is shaded from the morning sun after about 9 or 10 a.m. when the heat starts to be a factor. That space was perfectly designed for afternoon parties and people-watching, although the crowds are significantly reduced here — and always will be, one would hope.
The most fascinating space is perhaps the paved area beneath the side entry porch and staircase, surrounded by lattice. This area is big enough for bicycle or kayak storage, mysterious enough for grandkids to be drawn to it and practical as a year-round flexible workspace.
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best, and it’s entirely possible that some interested party will tour this home, for sale for the first time in 16 years, and realize that space in particular solves a lot of problems for them.
