319 BOWMAN AVENUE

Built in 1910 and meaningfully updated across the past decade, 319 North Bowman is a stone Colonial whose next chapter is about to begin. Set back from a quiet, tree-lined street on a level quarter-acre, the house has the graceful proportions and abundant natural light that defined an era of Main Line architecture and craftsmanship – and that almost no one builds today. The current owners describe the experience of walking into the foyer as the moment that, after fifteen years, still simply feels good. That is the right place to begin, because it is the experience the next owner will inherit. The family room, re-glazed in 2024 with custom Marvin windows, fills with light early and is where the family gathers for coffee. The kitchen, deliberately separated from the dining room so the work of cooking stays out of view, is finished in cherry cabinetry and granite, with a five-burner gas cooktop, new double wall oven and dishwasher (2025), and a layout generous enough for a desk alongside the family table. Beyond the kitchen, the level rear yard opens up: flat, private, framed by mature plantings refreshed with new landscape and walkway in 2023. The home has carried both ends of the entertaining spectrum – dinner parties in the bay-windowed dining room in winter, large summer barbecues across the flat rear lawn, game nights in the living room, quiet glasses of wine in front of the fireplace. The lower-level storeroom holds the supplies for any of it, and the guest room has rescued more than one short-notice visit. The primary suite, with its sitting area, has been a place to retreat at the end of a long week. The third floor – three additional bedrooms and a full bath – gave the children room to spread out and grow into. The fully finished lower level, rebuilt in 2024 with French drain, Drylock waterproofing, and sump pumps, now functions as gym, craft studio, and homework hideout. A great deal of the work that has gone into this house is invisible: the lower-level waterproofing, the new windows in the family room, the fixtures and fittings refreshed across every bathroom in 2025, the radiators sanded and repainted, the lighting replaced throughout, the custom window treatments. None of it announces itself, and all of it is the reason the house feels effortlessly current despite being 116 years old. Merion Station is a walking neighborhood in a way that few Main Line addresses still are. Merion Elementary is a short walk. The Merion SEPTA station puts Center City within twenty minutes. Narberth – its restaurants, its shops, its Dickens Festival in December – is a stroll. So is the Barnes Foundation Arboretum and the wooded grounds of Saint Josephs University. Lower Merion School District serves the home: Merion Elementary, Bala Cynwyd Middle, Lower Merion High. Christmas lights along the eaves each December. French doors thrown open in spring. A foyer that, after fifteen years, still feels like coming home. The next chapter belongs to a family who will fill it the same way – room to spread out, room to grow, room to gather, in a community where the walk matters as much as the address.