You Can Own Harriet the Spy's Fictional Home for $5 Million

Want to bring your childhood literary fantasies to life? Instead of pulling a Claudia Kincaid and hiding out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can now purchase the classic Upper East Side brownstone in Manhattan that reportedly inspired the fictional residence of Harriet the Spy, the New York Post reports.

Nostalgia (and an Upper East Side zip code) comes with a price. According to the Post, the townhouse is selling for around $5 million. The 3000-square-foot, four-story townhouse sits on the southwest corner of East 87th Street and East End Avenue, a few blocks from where Harriet the Spy author Louise Fitzhugh lived and wrote her classic children’s novel.

Fitzhugh’s book tells the story of an 11-year-old aspiring writer named Harriet Welsch who records detailed (and sometimes brutally honest) observations of her classmates and friends in a notebook. She lives in an old brownstone with her busy parents and a nanny, Ole Golly. The home is described as located on “East Eighty-seventh Street in Manhattan," and Harriet’s tiny bathroom looks out over a park across the street. According to realtors, this description places the young spy's house at 558 East 87th Street.

Built in the 1880s, the Queen Anne-style brownstone has 5 bedrooms, 3½ bathrooms, and plenty of quirky, old-fashioned features like a dumbwaiter and built-in bookshelves on every floor (perfect for stashing spy notebooks). It also boasts views of Gracie Mansion and the East River, and has a windowed eat-in kitchen with plenty of counter space to make tomato sandwiches. Check out a few pictures below.

All photos courtesy of The Corcoran Group. 

[h/t New York Post]