1 and 3 Alpha Ave., Toronto
What: Two Victorian Mews houses joined together to create a family home in Toronto's historic Cabbagetown neighbourhood. Built circa 1887, the heritage property offers four bedrooms and two-and-a-half bathrooms on a 70-by-29-foot lot.
Asking price: $985,000
Taxes: $4,950.20 (2010)
Agent: Chestnut Park (Jill and Bill Parlee)
There's a whiff of the poetic surrounding a house located on a street called Alpha.
The word means first one or beginning, which is appropriate given the property's origins as a starter home for William Bromely, a builder and plasterer who created the Alpha house as a two-storey Mansard-roof house that was originally only 14-feet wide.
But that definition extends also to the home's more recent owner, a woman described as a natural born leader by those who knew her, an Alpha female.
Barrie Chavel was her name, and before dying last year from brain and lung cancer, she enjoyed the reputation as a trailblazer in her Cabbagetown neighbourhood for having turned two adjacent narrow townhouses into a more expansive family home in which to raise her two sons.
Her transformation project was a lifelong passion and project, started before the first of her boys was born 38 years ago and ending last autumn with her untimely death at age 67.
She originally owned only the house at 1 Alpha, purchasing it in the late sixties with her then husband, the artist David Chavel, a faculty member of the Ontario College of Art and Design since 1968.
The house was small, but big enough for her family which then consisted of just one child, James, now a 38-year old architect.
The arrival of second son, Matthew, in 1974, prompted the couple to purchase the house next door in search of more space in which to raise a family.
"They took out low bearing walls on the lower and upper levels and put in steel beams to join the houses up," says Matthew, 36, a contractor by profession.
"They also replaced windows and doors and took out a staircase. Basically, they renovated the whole thing, top to bottom."
The marriage broke up when Matthew was a toddler, with dad moving out but mom staying put.
The house she felt was hers, and she was rebuilding it in her own image: eclectic, vibrant, warm to the touch.
"She was very good at putting together compositions of things, be it paintings on a wall or making an elevation look appealing by way of colour, or detail," recalls younger son Matthew Chavel who grew up in his mother's house.
"I don't want to say she wanted to make things look artistic, that sounds cheesy. She wanted things to look nice. The entire house was created as an extension of her own style."
Some of that style she inherited from her own mother, an interior designer who inspired her to study environmental design at OCAD.
But while trained in design -- evident in the harmonious way she blended antique furniture with pieces of contemporary art, for instance -- Ms. Chavel never practiced the craft professionally, becoming instead a civil servant in the employ of the City of Toronto.
She was in charge of public relations for the Ataratiri project of subsidized housing planned for the West Don Lands, a venture eventually written off in the early 1990s as being too costly.
"She was great at that job because she was naturally extremely social, always having parties, which is partly why this house looks the way it does: It was made for entertaining," explains her son.
"It was a fun place to grow up."
The social hub was the kitchen, which in this house is located, unusually, in the basement which Ms. Chavel had lowered as part of her renovation.
There, she installed a wood-burning fireplace that burned brightly throughout the winters, drawing family and friends to sit around the hearth enjoying one of Ms. Chavel's famous Sunday lamb dinners.
"She was a big Julia Child fan," says her son. "She wanted a French kitchen that would have made Julia proud."
The floor is covered in reclaimed brick whose lacquered finish reflects the light pouring through a series of ceiling-level windows, overhead.
The windows look out over a fenced in rear garden where Ms. Chavel's guests would retire in summer months, to enjoy the flowers she had lushly planted there alongside such curios as an antique tombstone embedded into the patio stone.
While the monument notes the tragic passing of a small child, circa 1800, its presence in this lovingly tended garden serves more as a memento to Ms. Chavel, a woman whose great style and generosity of spirit lives on in her home.
"She loved this house," says Matthew.
"She always said she'd live here until she died. And she did."