Julia Childs Boston-area home asks $6.47M where she filmed her shows and her flowers still grow

Julia Child’s former home of four decades — a late-19th-century residence just blocks from Harvard Yard — is on the market for $6.47 million.Child’s world-famous home kitchen was preserved and now stands in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.But this updated home still has her stamp — including her plantings in the irrigated, landscaped garden and Floribunda roses, Coldwell Banker’s Ed Feijo, who shares the listing with Coldwell’s Gail Roberts, told Gimme Shelter.

The listing was first reported on Boston.com.Child wasn’t just a national culinary treasure known for introducing the American home chefs to the delights of cooking butter-and-cream-rich, delicious French cuisine.She was also an American intelligence official working directly for General William J.

Donovan, the head of the OSS — the precursor to the CIA — in places including China and Sri Lanka during World War II.Her work included creating a synthetic chemical shark repellent to save sailors from shark attacks after ships and planes went down and to keep sharks from setting off underwater explosives intended to detonate German U-boats.The OSS is also where Julia McWilliams, born in California in 1912, met her husband, Paul Cushing Child.

In 1948, the couple moved to Paris, where Paul was posted with the State Department’s Information Service; that’s where she first discovered and studied French cooking.The couple returned to the US in 1961 after other foreign stints and bought this Cambridge residence.Built in 1889, it’s where Child filmed her TV shows, including “In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs” and “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home,” helping Americans learn to make the perfect omelet, quiche Lorraine and roast chicken, among other dishes.The sellers, who have declined to be named, bought the dwelling for $3.7 million in 2009, according to property records.Child lived in the home from 1961 to 2001, when she moved into a California retireme...