Apparently people are completely obsessed with the house from the 1998 movie Practical Magic. It's not at all surprising, considering the romantic and mysterious home belongs to an intriguing family of witches, played by beautiful actresses, so it's all very seductive. The house itself, which Architectural Digest described as “Whimsigoth” had two components: The exterior, which it turns out was just a shell built on San Juan island in Washington (pretending to be New England) and the interior, which was created on a soundstage in LA with a little Hollywood Magic. The exterior of the house only existed for about 6 months, and as soon as the shooting wrapped it was all dismantled, which is terribly disappointing news to all the people who had fallen under its spell and really wanted to believe this was an actual house they could buy.
At this very moment, thousands of Millennials are pining for the kitchen and adjacent conservatory in the Practical Magic house, and they are waxing poetic about it all over Reddit! As I read through the comments, one reflected my own feelings about the house: “Only if someone else is in charge of cleaning it!” And the retort was, “If you’re a witch you can just use magic to clean!”
My older clients seem far less romantic about these kinds of houses, and overall they tend to want homes where everything functions well and doesn’t require much of their time and energy. It's my younger clients who tend more toward old and quirky, (i.e. “whimsigoth”). Maybe it’s because people who grew up in the mid 20th century had a romance around the modern and the future, and those who grew up around the millennium are romantic about the past, and possibly they are overly optimistic about the realities of home repairs. I certainly was when I bought my first house, which was built in 1908 and had charming leaded glass and an enormous furnace in the basement with ducting wrapped in asbestos, and a chimney that had been through one too many earthquakes. So I get why after a certain point in life one might prefer to spend time and money on something more fun than asbestos removal.
I currently have several families trying to figure out multi generational living solutions, as more homeowners now live with either their adult kids or aging parents. I guess the Practical Magic house is an example of multi-generational living, but a very charming kitchen is probably not enough to help older people get up several flights of stairs every day without actual magic. Maybe the practical part is a hidden elevator! And just like the filmmakers made us believe the inside and outside of this house were the same place, we hope we can make a single house, in a single place, satisfy wide rage of very specific tastes and needs of family members in very different life moments. Of course the real magic is finding a house that and lets us enjoy as much time as we can together, and maybe if you can make it practical for your mom to live with you, she’ll teach your kids to cook magically delicious things.
My older clients seem far less romantic about these kinds of houses, and overall they tend to want homes where everything functions well and doesn’t require much of their time and energy. It's my younger clients who tend more toward old and quirky, (i.e. “whimsigoth”). Maybe it’s because people who grew up in the mid 20th century had a romance around the modern and the future, and those who grew up around the millennium are romantic about the past, and possibly they are overly optimistic about the realities of home repairs. I certainly was when I bought my first house, which was built in 1908 and had charming leaded glass and an enormous furnace in the basement with ducting wrapped in asbestos, and a chimney that had been through one too many earthquakes. So I get why after a certain point in life one might prefer to spend time and money on something more fun than asbestos removal.
I currently have several families trying to figure out multi generational living solutions, as more homeowners now live with either their adult kids or aging parents. I guess the Practical Magic house is an example of multi-generational living, but a very charming kitchen is probably not enough to help older people get up several flights of stairs every day without actual magic. Maybe the practical part is a hidden elevator! And just like the filmmakers made us believe the inside and outside of this house were the same place, we hope we can make a single house, in a single place, satisfy wide rage of very specific tastes and needs of family members in very different life moments. Of course the real magic is finding a house that and lets us enjoy as much time as we can together, and maybe if you can make it practical for your mom to live with you, she’ll teach your kids to cook magically delicious things.
Footnotes:
1. I went down the rabbit hole and learned that the set designers were Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch, who went on to form design firm Roman and Williams, creating some incredible restaurants worth admiring!
2. I haven’t seen the sequel that just came out, but apparently they recreated the house on a studio backlot in London and you can watch this amazing tour of it here
