Gayle Petersen remembers carrying around a small newspaper ad for the Playhouse in her handbag for about a month in 1990 before she went to see it with her future husband.

At the time, the couple was considering marriage, but they “couldn’t decide where we were going to live,” she said.

Petersen was a widow with two children, and she already had a house in Newport, on Memorial Boulevard.

Her husband-to-be, Raymond Petersen, a trustee of the Hearst Corp., had real estate of his own, mainly in Connecticut, and he hadn’t spent a lot of time in Newport. But he thought he’d like to live in a house near the water.

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The Playhouse, at 294 Ocean Ave., was built in 1902 as the coach house, stable and boathouse for Wildacre, the estate next door, and it had been converted to a separate residence in the 1920s.

As soon as they arrived for their first visit to the property, Raymond Petersen was smitten with the location near a rocky inlet called Price’s Neck Cove, and the views of the Atlantic Ocean. “The owner had this lovely set of wicker on the front lawn,” Gayle Petersen said. “My husband sat there and looked at this magnificent view.”

And Gayle Petersen, who had been a decorating editor at Seventeen magazine for many years, thought the interior of the house was “magical.”

“I fell in love with it sort of immediately,” she said.

Still, they didn’t buy it immediately. “We had a lot of real estate. We were just trying to figure out where to live. We couldn’t really quite agree…”

After a lull, Petersen called his future bride on the telephone one day and told her, “I bought the Playhouse.”

“I almost fell off the chair,” Gayle Petersen said. Soon after, they decided to marry, and they later referred to the Playhouse as his wedding gift to her.

Did the Playhouse help seal the deal? “Well, it piqued my interest,” Petersen said with a laugh.

The year after they moved in, “we were hit by Hurricane Bob,” resulting in “a foot of saltwater in our first floor,” she recalled. “It was time to renovate. Changes included new grading “to make it much more safe if this was ever to happen again.”

Last year, Petersen was made a widow once again, and she put the Playhouse on the market as part of an effort to “simplify my life.” The property has an asking price of $3.65 million.

The Playhouse could use some cosmetics, but it is not a usual house, and Ocean Avenue is not a usual location.

Ocean Avenue and nearby Bellevue Avenue are home to Newport’s priciest estates.

“It will be a wonderful project for someone to fix up,” said listing agent Jay Serzan, of Gustave White Sotheby’s Newport office. “To get in this neighborhood for under $4 million, it is an opportunity.”

The Wildacre Estate was built in 1900 and 1901 for banker Albert Olmsted, half-brother of Frederick Law Olmsted, the legendary landscape architect who designed Central Park in New York.

In 1926, the Playhouse carriage house property was sold off from the Wildacre estate to Philadelphia socialite Lillian Newlin, and from 1926 to 1929, Irving Gill, the early modern architect who designed Wildacre, converted the Playhouse to a residence for Newlin.

Today, Wildacre is owned by Campbell Soup heiress Dorrance Hamilton, whose wealth has been estimated at $1 billion by Forbes magazine.

Owners of the Playhouse include former Newport Mayor Fred Alofsin.

Bordered by a curving section of Ocean Avenue, the Playhouse has an original arched stone carriage way from Ocean Avenue that has been used more recently as a private patio.

A distinctive dovecote wall faces the salt water cove.

The interior is open, with tall ceilings, giving the 3,171-square-foot house the feel of a larger residence. The second floor has a cathedral ceiling and a large stone fireplace.

There is an in-ground pool in the front yard and guest quarters in a garage.

“It needs a family to live in it,” Petersen said. “The nice thing about it is you feel it’s a very large piece of property … but it’s an easier place to maintain.”

The right buyer would be interested in “really reviving it,” Petersen said. That will likely be someone who appreciates the house’s history and character and who “wants the location.”

“It’s not for everyone,” she said.

The Playhouse at 294 Ocean Ave., Newport, is on the market for $3.65 million. Annual taxes are $30,159.46. For further information, contact Jay Serzan of Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty, (401) 848-6710, serzan@cox.net. How to submit a House of the Week

A different House of the Week appears each Saturday in the projoHomes section of The Providence Journal. The feature tells the story of the house and the people who have lived in it. If you would like us to consider a house for sale as a subject of this news feature, send a photo, information about the house and why it is of interest, to

Christine Dunn or Andy Smith,

75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902; fax (401) 277-8250; or e-mail pjhomes@projo.com. For more information, call Dunn: (401) 277-7913 or Smith: (401) 277-7262.

cdunn@projo.com