House of the week: A six-bedroom Queen Anne Victorian home in Lansdowne for $524,900

The house had been vacant for years, and Kaaron Ruza joked that “I was the only one crazy enough to buy it.”

It was a six-bedroom, 2½-bath Queen Anne Victorian house in Lansdowne, built in 1890, and with so many intriguing details that Ruza said dinner guests would need a long time just to look over the place after arriving.

“I’m an antique-aholic,” she said. “I needed a house for my teacups.”

A retired chief nuclear technologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Ruza bought it in 1984 and moved in with her mother, the roominess letting them live their own lives.

When she hired a contractor to work on the property’s carriage house, she ended up marrying him.

Now with both her husband and mother gone, she said it’s time to move on, settling in Central Pennsylvania to be with family.

The three-story house has 4,463 square feet of living space and circular windows, gabled roofs, a turret, and a wraparound porch.

The entryway leads to a staircase with ornate walnut railing, and the first floor has twin parlors, each with coved ceilings.

The dining room has heavy moldings and functional pocket doors, and the kitchen has direct access to a laundry room/pantry and the rear deck.

A “turret room” on the second floor can serve as a bedroom, office, or reading room.

There are three other bedrooms on the second floor, one of which now serves as a sitting room.

The third floor has a second kitchen, a full bath, a bedroom, and a family room/guest room with sleeper sofa. It could serve as an in-law suite.

There is a carriage house with room to park two cars and an upper level that could serve as an office or fitness center.

The house has gas heat from a new heater.

The house is listed by Miriam Mosquera-Martinez of Elfant Wissahickon-Chestnut Hill for $524,900.