It’s Victoria Day So Let’s Look at Some Gorgeous Victorians For Sale

In Bizarro America — where everyday life is fairly similar, except the road signs are in kilometers, Thanksgiving is celebrated in October, and the elected leader looks more like a movie star than a reality TV host — today is Victoria Day. I’m speaking, of course, about Canada, where Queen Victoria’s May 24th birthday has been celebrated since 1845.

Not every Canadian province actively celebrates the holiday—Quebec, in particular, has a thorny history with the British monarchy. But in most parts of of Canada, Victoria Day is celebrated with fireworks, parades, and cases of beer, and the three-day weekend it creates is considered the unofficial kickoff to summer — much like Memorial Day in the United States.

Queen Victoria’s reign lasted more than 63 years, from 1837 until her death in 1901. Those were heady years in the history of Western industrialization—and the Victorian era also gave us some of the most beautiful homes in America.

We often think of Victorian architecture as its own style: Asked to imagine a Victorian house, you might conjure the “Painted Ladies” of San Francisco, or a grand home with a cone-topped turret and fancy decorative woodwork and flourishes. But Victorian architecture really refers to the time period it was built, not any one specific style. So while gingerbread houses in the Queen Anne revival style are considered Victorians, so too are Second Empire homes (think mansard roofs), or the brownstones of Brooklyn and Boston’s South End.

Anyway, we decided to celebrate Victoria Day in our own way: by gawking at some gorgeous Victorians for sale right now.

With big bay windows, wide pine floors, fireplaces, and high ceilings, this Second Empire home in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood is a stunner.

A late 19th-century boomtown, San Francisco is famously full of colorful Victorian rowhouses, like the Painted Ladies near Alamo Square. But even just a piece of one will cost you a pretty penny.

From pocket doors to intricate molding, there’s enough classic charm to go around in this enormous four-family brick Victorian. The owner’s unit has 14-foot ceilings and five fireplaces.

Not all Victorians are enormous. This colorful shotgun-style home in New Orleans shares many characteristics of its bigger gingerbread-style cousins.

If you live on the coast, the price of this elegant Ramsey Hill beauty will make you rethink your life choices. The whole neighborhood, especially Summit Ave., is lousy with Victorian architecture.

This Jersey Shore town is another treasure trove of Victorian architecture, with front porches perfect for summer sipping.

Bright colors and the warmth of pine floors—plus some quirky design choices—give this old home a youthful personality.

Despite modern updates like a sleek new kitchen and carriage house apartment, this home still has its six fireplaces, 12-foot ceilings, and lead stained glass windows.

The gingerbread cottages of Oak Bluffs have long greeted visitors to Martha’s Vineyard as they step off the ferry. This one is bigger and more modernized than most—for better or worse—but one can’t argue with ocean views from nearly every room.

Celebrate Victoria Day from your deck in downtown Toronto, in a glamorous Victorian rowhouse with all the fixings: 10-foot ceilings, coal-burning fireplace, and crown molding.