You can buy Julia Child’s house — but not her kitchen

For $6.475 million, you can live in Julia Child’s longtime Cambridge home. You just can’t cook in Julia Child’s kitchen.

Child lived in the house for roughly four decades and filmed several of her later television shows there, including “In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs” and “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home.” But when she left Cambridge in 2001, she donated her famous kitchen — pegboard walls, towering countertops and all — to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where it remains on display.

The soft-purple 1889 house, tucked along a tree-lined street a few blocks from Harvard Yard, spans 6,321 square feet, with six bedrooms and six bathrooms. The sleek, white kitchen has since been thoroughly modernized, with marble countertops and a six-burner cooktop. 

But there are still plenty of remnants of Child.

Many of the plants in the garden were planted by Julia and her husband, Paul. The home’s porte cochère once sheltered her Volkswagen after trips to the market. And in the butler’s pantry, where Paul once stood making martinis, there is now, as the Boston Globe notes, “further Poggenpohl cabinetry, Sub-Zero refrigeration, and a beverage cooler.”

“The feel of her is still in there,” listing agent Ed Feijo told the Globe.

Cambridge seems to agree. The City Council voted this summer to install a historical marker at Child’s former home, formally recognizing its place in the city’s history.

I tried to view the listing myself, but at publication time, the site seemed to be down — perhaps crashed under the weight of people, like me, trying to virtually snoop through Julia Child’s old hallways.