House of the week: A Spanish Colonial-style home in East Oak Lane for $625,000

On weekdays, Municipal Court Judge Nazario Jimenez could usually be found on the bench in Philadelphia.

But weekends and other times, he was lavishing attention on the six-bedroom, 3½-bath rare Spanish Colonial he bought in 1977 for himself, his wife, Carmen, and their large families.

“We had done a lot of house hunting,” recalled Carmen, a retired mental health counselor. “The owners opened up the house, and it just screamed, ‘This is what we want.’ ” So the couple moved from East Kensington.

But Nazario died last year, and Carmen, wanting to downsize, has moved to a condo in an over-55 development in Warwick Township, Bucks County.

The house was built around 1922 during the Spanish Colonial Revival movement, which launched at the Panama-California Exposition of 1915 and was popular in the United States in the 1940s.

The house combines local building materials such as Wissahickon schist and traditional elements. The clay-tiled roof, for example, is constructed of handmade green tiles dried over barrels.

Nazario spent countless hours accenting traditional features of the house, scraping paint from doors, moldings, and beams. This revealed hardwood floors with a mahogany inlay. The kitchen is linked to the mudroom/pantry by foundational Mexican tile, and Carrara marble was incorporated in a powder room renovation.

There is a formal dining room and a pool room in the basement, which is wired for sound. Bedrooms and full baths are on the second and third floors

There are Art Deco elements throughout, two murals by local artists, and the third floor features a sitting room with antique sconces.

Modern touches include a new water heater and a detached, one-car garage.

The Melrose Park regional rail station is a short walk away, with trains running through the city to the airport.

The 4,058-square-foot house is listed by Kelly McShain Tyree of Elfant Wissahickon-Chestnut Hill for $625,000.