Recently I moved into a century old rowhouse. I discovered that
turning off the ceiling light in the small living room turned off
almost every wall outlet in the room as well. Someone with an EE
degree tried to fix it, but could not. He concluded it would
require taking out some wall to find the problem area. I don't
really want to do that.

I would like to leave the switch on at all times and replace the
light fixture (which is cheap and unattractive anyway) with
something I can turn off and on another way. I would prefer not
to have a pull chain hanging in the middle of the room. What are
my choices here? How can I turn such a light off and on remotely
and leave the outlets hot? And where do I look for such products?

Thanks in advance,
Phil