When Julia Child, nearing 90, announced that she was relocating from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to her home state of California in 2001, a three-member team from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History rushed to visit her home. Their initial goal was modest: ask the larger-than-life chef to donate a few items from the kitchen that had served as a set for several of her popular TV shows for its permanent food exhibition. However, the moment they stepped into the legendary room, they knew they wanted it all.

“The kitchen revealed so much about Julia and her message,” Paula Johnson, a curator with a special interest in the intersection of food and culture, told Yankee Magazine in 2015. “We talked with her about 5 million visitors coming through to see this, and she said yes to the American people.”

A few months later, her entire 14-by-20-foot kitchen and more than 1,200 objects in 55 crates and boxes—including her Garland range, copper pots, knives, marrow scoops, and a painting of cats and asparagus—arrived at the museum, where the reassembled workspace is one of the most popular displays.

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Child passed away in 2004, but her legacy lives on at the historic Cambridge home that once held her famous kitchen. Listed with Gail Roberts, Ed Feijo & Team at Coldwell Banker Realty for $6.475 million, the house now has a sleekly modernized culinary space instead of Julia’s memorable pegboard walls. Other remnants of her presence remain, though—in the lush garden she and her husband, Paul, planted decades ago, as well as a wide porte cochère where she parked and unloaded her groceries after trips to the market.

The Childs acquired the lilac-hued, 1889 residence on a quarter-acre near Harvard Yard in 1956, moving in full-time in 1961 after Paul retired from the U.S. Foreign Service. They went on to share the roughly 6,300-square-foot spread for almost four decades until Paul’s passing in 1994. Julia eventually gifted the six-bedroom, six-bath home to her alma mater, Smith College, which sold the property to fund a new campus center. After a developer overhauled the residence, it last changed hands in 2009 for $3.7 million.

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Updates to the three-story estate include professionally landscaped grounds spotlighted by an expansive brick patio framed by a stone wall. The kitchen features premium Poggenpohl cabinetry, marble countertops, dual dishwashers, and a breakfast nook. The butler’s pantry—where Paul once mixed evening martinis—now doubles as a caterer’s kitchen, while a formal living and dining area opens through French doors to an intimate sitting room anchored by a gas fireplace and built-in bookshelves.

Four bedrooms on the second floor include a primary suite with a fireplace, a private balcony, a walk-in closet with built-in cabinetry and pocket doors, and a private bath. There are two more potential bedrooms on the uppermost level, one with a fireplace, plus a built-in workstation, while a finished walk-out basement holds exercise and wine rooms, laundry and storage space, and a half-bath.

The property, which recently had an official historical plaque honoring the culinary icon installed on its grounds by the city, joins another home with ties to Child that is currently up for sale. In August, Four Oaks—the historic California estate in Montecito where she filmed her 12-episode PBS series Dinner at Julia’s—listed for just under $22 million.

Click here for more photos of the Cambridge residence.

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  Wendy Bowman

  Wendy Bowman is a real estate writer at Robb Report. Before that, she was a freelancer for Modern Luxury and several other media outlets, where she primarily covered luxury properties for…

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