West Philly condo proves perfect for downsizing and the pandemic

Liz Campion, a Realtor, was her own most demanding client. For nine years, she searched for “just the right flat” where she and her husband, Larry Motyka, could be empty nesters.

Campion wanted to stay in the West Philadelphia neighborhood where she had lived all her life. The future home had to be spacious enough to accommodate the couple’s 10-foot dining table and their collection of work by local artists. It would need south-facing windows, hardwood floors, and a decent kitchen, and be dog-friendly and within walking distance of restaurants, cultural institutions, and St. Francis De Sales, their parish church.

In 2007, Campion had an opportunity to buy a three-bedroom, three-bath, 2,022-square-foot condo that met her criteria in Garden Court. The stylish six-story brick complex, built in the 1920s, features two courtyards with koi ponds, an indoor pool, a gym, and other amenities.

Campion and Motyka purchased the condo but initially rented it out. With their son Michael and daughter Katie still at home, they were not ready to give up their big house on Springfield Avenue.

Then, in 2016, Campion was diagnosed with cancer and underwent treatment.

“It was time to move,” she said. “The apartment was a haven when I was at my sickest. The elevator brought me to my floor when stairs felt insurmountable. The apartment laundry was critical to my emotional survival.”

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The two guest bedrooms with their own baths, she said, “enabled helpful beloveds to visit without impinging on our privacy or my need to rest.”

The apartment’s tan-and-black kitchen had been renovated by previous owners, but the two larger bathrooms still have original Art Deco leaded glass windows and milk glass wall-cladding. A small bath and bedroom were meant as servants quarters in bigger apartments at Garden Court when it was completed as a rental residence in 1929. The building became a condominium in 1995.

The apartment was a good place for Campion to convalesce from her illness and is a good place to be during a pandemic, she said. She and her husband are working from home in their library. Campion continues to work as a Realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach. Motyka, an immunologist with Siemens Healthineers, is on a team developing diagnostic tests for COVID-19.

In nice weather, the couple can read on the condo balcony or sit on a bench in the leafy courtyard with Brad Pitt, their black pit bull. With more friends getting vaccinated, they can invite more people to join them for meals at their long dining table. Guests are often startled when they look up from their plates. In place of a ceiling medallion is a square painting of four young women, each of a different race, by Philadelphia artist Robin Gresham-Chin, a former neighbor. While Campion has other Gresham-Chin paintings on the walls, she fastened this one to the ceiling to form a base for a porcelain and brass chandelier.

Arranged on the dining room walls are 15 linoleum block prints of wild animals by the late Eugene Feldman. Four more prints hang in the living room. Campion purchased the work as well as other art and the oriental rugs in the apartment at annual auctions sponsored by the University City Arts League.

Over the years, she has acquired furniture such as the deep blue Victorian settee and deep pink living room chairs from friends or clients who were downsizing. The dining table was once a reading table in the Bryn Mawr College library. Campion found a dark-stained armoire in the trash. It had been disassembled and looked like a discarded pile of wood. She persuaded her husband to carry it home and put it back together.

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Campion, 65, and Motyka, 61, met at her 30th birthday party at the home of her sister, Tina Hoffman, on Larchwood Avenue. Motyka, then a postdoctoral student at Penn, was renting space next door in what had been Campion’s childhood home. “Larry was sleeping in my old bedroom,” she said.

Thirty-five years later, the couple are still in the neighborhood and planning to stay.

“Ours is a great home for aging in place,” Campion said.

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