House of the week: A three-bedroom rowhouse near the penitentiary in Fairmount for $650,000

For Bev Keith, it was a bike ride home.

Keith, a teacher, had lived on the Main Line for 30 years and raised her children there into adulthood.

But she had loved living in the city as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, and now, it was 2017 and time to go back.

So one day she hopped on her bike, rode into Philadelphia, and scouted out neighborhoods. Fairmount, especially the area around the old Eastern State Penitentiary, caught her fancy.

“I liked the porches, and it was community-friendly,” she recalled.

For the next few years, she did serious remodeling of her 1,572-square-foot home, with the penitentiary and its European-walled-city feel as a theme. Neighborhood lore says that her house and some nearby were once a barracks for prison guards.

“I gutted everything,” she said. She widened the front door opening and windows to create a better view, put an en suite bedroom on the second floor, added a roof deck, and exposed as much of the original brick and stone as possible.

But now, after downsizing and moving to Society Hill to be closer to friends, she is putting the three-bedroom, 2½-bath house on the market.

There is a marble gas fireplace in the living room, which adjoins the dining area and chef’s kitchen, and a spacious patio off the kitchen.

In addition to the primary bedroom, the second level has two full bathrooms, one with heated flooring, Restoration Hardware fixtures, a walk-in shower, and free-standing tub.

The third floor has two additional bedrooms and a bathroom with a walk-in shower.

There is also a wet bar, and the roof deck offers 360-degree views of the city.

The basement is partially finished, and there are an Aquasana water filtration system, dual-zoned heating and cooling, and a roof with state-of-the-art beams for longevity.

The house is listed by Shaina Levin of Coldwell Banker Realty for $650,000.