Cooperstown, San Francisco or … Lawrence?

For those of us living just one winning Powerball ticket from personal fulfillment, the “Property Values” series on the New York Times‘ Web site is the hottest Internet porn going. This week, the Times undresses Lawrence with its eyes and pimps the house at right.

The price point in the latest roundup is $700,000. For a little less than three-quarters of a million dollars, a home shopper can get into a big Easter egg with a Tuscan-style kitchen in Cooperstown, New York; a San Francisco condo made of shiny, hard surfaces and sharp right angles; or the $715,000 house at 702 Louisiana in Lawrence, with its terrifying staircase and metric ton of carpeting to be ripped out.

Winner: Lawrence. The 124-year-old house, the Times says, still has a steel-doored safe room in the basement. Also? Transoms. And a one-bedroom guest house above the garage, where New Yorkers, charmed by Times writer Mike Powell’s description of the home’s location, will no doubt clamor to stay:

Old West Lawrence is a historic neighborhood about a mile north of the

University of Kansas. Residents are a mix of doctors, lawyers, business

owners and professors. This house, for example, was built in 1884 for a

jeweler, whose neighbors included Mayor George Collamore and Lucy Hobbs

Taylor, said to have been the nation’s first female dentist. The house

is five blocks from Massachusetts Street, a long commercial strip that

anchors Old West Lawrence and the city’s Downtown area.

Doctors, lawyers, business owners, professors — and maybe you, too, fellow carefree spender.

“It’s a slow market, and I’ve got a bunch of houses that are

expensive, but I think this one will sell in the next few months,”

listing agent Sean Williams says. The owners are considering an offer now.”

Williams, a KU graduate and Lawrence enthusiast who grew up in that neighborhood, is happy to rattle off historical details about the city and its houses. “The street [Louisiana] is way cool because of the eclectic architecture. People really do get out and walk around still, and the street has a highly pedigreed brain trust of owners,” he says. “The cocktail parties are really interesting.”