A tad pricey, but I'd buy it in a heartbeat (so don’t forget to hit my donation button to the right)

I went with Gideon on a lightning tour of Caroline McNally’s new listing at 380 North Street, yesterday, priced at $28.5 million — I don’t think I’ve seen a finer house in all my years in this racket. Designed by Mark Finlay and custom built by Hobbs for these owners in 2008 (Caroline McNally grew up here, which must have been nice), every room is just about perfect; Finlay has the ability that I haven’t seen except in Alex Kaali-Nagy designs, to build rooms that feel right-sized for humans: no matter how large a particular room is, and there are several of them here, they all still manage to feel comfortable and inviting. Too many of the Greenwich mega-mansions I’ve been in over the years are really just Costco warehouses with expensive wallpaper. Not this house.

Hobbs always builds a fine house, but they’ve outdone themselves here: beautiful moldings and finishes, antique oak flooring, solid doors, and quality windows that those of us on Anderson budgets would never recognize.

Gideon tells me that Hobbs, like a number of top builders will, for a fee, come back to a house they’ve built and bring it back to its original perfection; I don’t know whether it was Hobbs who did that work here, but someone did; I initially mistook this for new construction, not an 18-year-old house, because it looks and feels as fresh as the day it was built, which, at this price, I suppose it had better.

And then there’s the view: the house is on the top of the hill, high enough to offer a sweeping view of Long Island Sound, the Stamford skyline, and maybe the Manhattan skyline as well (if not, a stealthy nighttime visit to the neighbor’s yard by your gardner armed with some tree poison would do the trick).

12,00 square feet, 5+ acres, fabulous property. The pictures at the link don’t capture how magnificent this place is; yf you look at them, you’ll probably react as I did: yeah, yeah, very nice, but I’ve seen essentially the same pictures of every other house priced from $10 million up. But this one is better than those, and that’s not the fault of the photographer, it’s just that the house has to be walked through and felt to really appreciate what;s here, and I don’t believe any photograph can capture that.

I’ve ever gushed about a house before, and almost certainly won’t do so again – it would ruin my image as a curmudgeon — but this one is truly very, very special.