New House Case Study, No. 1

With a strong background in historic preservation, most of my architectural commissions involve improvements to existing houses or apartments.  It is a process that I enjoy, and I get great satisfaction from comparing successful "After" to the miserable "Before".  But I also design new houses.  Some of these new residences have not been realized, however.  Well, not yet anyway.  The Devoted Classicist thought readers might enjoy an occassional glimpse at these classic residential designs that will be place in the category New House Case Study.  A brief look will be presented on an infrequent basis, in no particular order, and arbitrarily numbered.  So here we go with the first, which we will call No. 1.

All of my houses, especially the new ones, have a strong connection to their landscape setting.  This house was designed to suit the site, a pie-shaped parcel in the curve of the road.  A former horse farm in a desirable area was being redeveloped for a variety of uses with this section being divided into small lots with houses close together.  This site was an exception, however, because it splayed so wide to the rear.  The small front was to be completely occupied by a circular motor court with the angled wings of the main block of the house embracing it, leaving a larger-than-usual gargen to be fully developed for the rear as the owners are avid gardeners.  The treeless pasture was essentially a blank slate.  All these perimeter parcels are walled, so the site would be essentially its own private setting despite the relatively small size.

The basic program for the house was similar of many in the suburbs.  There was to be four bedrooms with the Master being on the ground floor.  The square footage is about 2,700 square feet, not including a double garage.  The design intent was to provide a viable alternate to the typical subdivision house, offering studied proportions and scale for eye-pleasing, functional results at a competitive price.

The Best Southern Rooms

Although regular issues of "Southern Accents" magazine are no longer published, a special issue has been produced which they have called "The Best Southern Rooms, 135 of Our Most Beautiful Spaces".  One of my projects which was published in the magazine a few years ago partially reappears with the four rooms that follow.  Sadly, two of my favorite rooms of the house that were shown previously did not make the editorial cut this time;  I will include them in a future post, however.

I was planning an addition for the clients, recently married and living in the lady's charming 1920s house on a prominent corner lot on the boulevard of Belle Meade, the self-governing community to the west of Nashville.  A former owner had sold the rear garden, however, and set-back building lines for the corner severely restricted any addition.  When the house just two doors from the lady's close relative came on the market, it was decided to move instead of adding to the existing house as the new house had the required rooms for the growing young family and just needed some aesthetic improvements.  The new house was not new in age, but was a traditional, 1950s house, in the Leave-It-To-Beaver style with several extensive remodelings and additions over the years.  While it occupied a very large, desirable lot on a road of small estates, we were all suprised when the real estate transaction made the front page of the local newspaper;  the sale broke the county record for residential real estate.  (The area is full of houses much more lavish and attractive, but they were custom built and/or had not changed hands in years).

In the two story Entrance Stair Hall, I changed the staircase, but that is one of the spaces not included in this edition.  The Living Room, which is to the right of the entrance, stayed much as it was architecturally.  The Louis XV style chimneypiece was exisitng but in a very peculiar multi-colored marble which was faux painted to resemble limestone.  I designed a pair of large, comfortable upholstered chairs to flank the fireplace, but they are replaced in this photo with the Marshall Field models that were flanking the sofa opposite.  Hector Samada from my office hung the owner's collection of drawings.  The cabinet and table flanking the fireplace are Swedish antiques, just part of the owners' large collection.  In tandem with this project, I also helped them with their home in the equestrian community of Wellington, Florida, and we travelled to Stockholm to search for additional furnishings for the two projects.

In the adjacent Dining Room, a Swedish chandelier hangs over the table surrounded by Russian neoclassical armchairs.  The opposite wall is actually more interesting as it is covered with a huge framed drawing, a "cartoon" of a Rubens tapestry.  My only architectural improvement to this room was to add an actual door, double-acting, to the trimmed opening to the adjacent serving pantry, blocking the view to that space, the Breakfast Room and the Kitchen beyond that had previously been just one long shot through the house.

My architectural improvement to the Family Room was to decrease the width of this opening to an adjacent Sitting Room;  it was formerly 16 feet wide.  The enormous steel beam in the load-bearing structual wall had to remain, so the opening height remains as existing or I would have preferred to raise it.  Josie McCarthy collaborated on this project and chose the wonderful printed linen that covers the walls (and matching curtains, not seen), as well as many other invaluable contributions.  Again, Hector Samada hung the framed prints, all birds of prey, a collection numbering almost 30 that covered the Entrance Hall walls and up the stairs of the previous house.  I designed most of the new custom made lampshades, including these for the great pair of red tole lamps from Colefax and Fowler, found on a shopping trip to London, that were specially re-wired to also include an uplight to bounce illumination off the high ceiling.

In the Sleeping Room of the Master Suite, I laid out the pattern of the Chelsea Editions embroidered linen fabric to utilize the scalloped border for the bed hangings of the Louis XVI style bed.  Josie and I both like to use side tables or chests rather than typical bedside tables that so often are newly made too low for a traditional bed's mattress height.

It was a fun project, especially interesting for me because of the improvements I was able to make to the architectural aesthetics of a house lacking refinement, yet held in high regard by the general public.

Classicism: It's Not Greek To Me

Yesterday, The Devoted Classicist had the great honor to present his talk "Classicism:  It's Not Greek To Me" to the Belle Meade Garden Club.  Showing examples of my work, I explained what an influence classicism has in my designs for architecture and furniture.  Because of the specific audience, I geared my comments more towards the ways that the houses relate to the landscape setting.  Many thanks to the program's hostess, interior designer Linda Kay McCloy, for the invitation to speak and making possible such an elegant luncheon reception afterwards.

The image shown here is "The Artist and His Family", 1813, by Adam Buck from Regency Design by John Morley, published by Harry H. Abrams, 1993.

Blog Appreciation

The Devoted Classicist offers belated but sincere thanks to Helen Young of the Whitehaven blog, http://whitehaveninteriors.blogspot.com/ for recognition with the Stylish Blogger Award.  Along with her business partner Jane Douglas Reynolds, Helen owns an Atlanta interior design firm called Whitehaven.  Both live in a white clapboard house that was either renovated or built in the past few years, hence the name.  My favorite feature of the blog is the House of the Week;  every Monday, an interesting home, usually an Atlanta classic, is presented.  Like all of my blog followers, with the exception of two, I have never met Helen or Jane Douglas.  But it is fulfilling to have regular readers of the blog, people with similar interests, from around the world.

With the honor comes the request to provide personal facts that few people know.  My second post covers a lot about my background that would possibly interest readers, but here is a bit more:

• A character on the long-running Soap "Guiding Light" was created, based on me and even given my name, to be the architect for a new house for the second-richest couple in fictional Springfield.  Unfortunately for the actor cast in the role, it was only a two day job.
• My wonderful, found-long-abandoned-on-the-street, dog adopted an orphaned,sick, feral kitten with a broken leg and, literally, nursed her back to health.  The dog produced milk for the cat.  A veternarian taped the leg and it healed with no complications.  Today, after a number of years, the dog and cat are still loving Mother and Daughter.
• A tree was planted and tagged in my name as thanks for my volunteer work in a conservation district to further education and appreciation of historic architecture.  The location of the tree is significant, and on a particularly beautiful residential boulevard.
• I once had a brief conversation with a woman in an almost deserted, just open for the day, Nashville restaurant who looked very familiar but otherwise was a mystery.  Her hair and dress were very conservative, but not unattractive.  In fact, she was very beautiful in a quiet way, despite wearing almost no make-up.  We exchanged pleasantries and as hard as I tried to hide it, she seemed to know that I was absolutely clueless to her identity.  It was the next day before I realized I had a one-on-one with Dolly Parton.

Again, many thanks to Helen Young of Whitehaven for the Stylish Blogger Award, and thanks to all my Followers for your continued support.

An Invitation to the Finest Rooms

Thomas Jayne -- friend, author, interior designer, decorator, and sometimes collaborator -- will make a presentation of The Finest Rooms in America this Friday, January 21, 2011, at 4 p.m., as part of the lecture series of the Winter Antiques Show in New York City.  The talk will highlight the individuals and their distinguished collections featured in his new book of the same title.  The location is the glorious landmarked "Tiffany Room" of the Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at East 67th Street.  Seating is on a first-come basis and is complimentary with Show admission of $20 (to benefit the East Side House Settlement).  A book-signing reception follows.  For more information, see http://www.winterantiquesshow.com/ and click on Special Events.

For those who are not able to attend, there is the book which features fifty of the most attractive and influential rooms in the U.S. from the past two hundred years.  Starting with the Tea Room at Monticello and ending with a Sitting Room in Albert Hadley's apartment, there is an eclectic mix of extant rooms from a diverse range of periods and styles, with extant being a key word.  Both public and private rooms are shown, with my favorite U.S. house museum, Vizcaya, represented by the Master Bathroom, shown here in the first two photos. 

Vizcaya's bachelor owner, James Deering of the International Harvester fortune, and his companion collaborator, the incredibly talented Paul Chalfin, created this fantastic estate, then on the outskirts of Miami, and started spending winters there in 1916.  Architect F. Burrall Hoffman, Jr., and landscape designer Diego Suarez helped realize the magnificent and exotic tropical estate that once empassed 180 acres.  The walls of this bathroom are panelled with three types of marble with silver decorations.  The ceiling is tented with linen embroidered with Pompeiian motifs.  The most memorable feature of the lavishly handsome room, however, is the shaving stand in the form of an antique brazier, seen in the first photo.  This house is open to the public and is not to be missed if you ever travel to the area;  actually, it is even worth a trip as a destination.

No decorator is credited with the furnishing of the Master Suite of the Kent, Connecticut, home of Annette and Oscar de la Renta pictured above.  Annette de la Renta was a long-time client of Parish-Hadley, in both her present and previous marriage, as her mother and Sister Parish were life-long friends.  But Mrs. de la Renta is now her own chief designer for her interiors, often calling on various interior designers to do particular aspects of a room.  For example, one person might be called on for locating a specific piece of furniture, another for arranging furnishings and selecting fabrics, and another to supervise fabrication and upholstery, I am told.  The results are certainly as individual as they are stylish.

Another favorite room in the book is the collaboration of two of this country's most influential design talents, Bunny Williams and John Rosselli.  It is the 30 by 50 main room of the renovated 1840s barn on their property in Falls Village, Connecticut.  One of the top interior designers, Bunny owned the property with her former husband and used the building as a garage and shed for garden equipment.  After her marriage to John, a now-not-so-secret-trade-source for decorative furnishings, the two were able to combine their incredible talents on this space, a contrast to the relative low-ceilings of the historic main house.  The hospitable couple created a lovely, yet remarkably comfortable, room for entertaining with a delightful mix of informal furniture, shapes, colors, and textures.

Readers of The Devoted Classicist might be surprised that I would be enthralled by this outdoor room featured in the Introduction.   It is from the Frances Brody House, Los Angeles, decorated by Billy Haines, the former silent film star.  But it can be analyzed as a classical space;  it just has a modern vocabulary.  Modestly, Thomas Jayne has included only three photos of his own work, and they are confined to small images in the Introduction, which also includes his thoughts on design philosophy and how they were formed.

All photos are from The Finest Rooms in America by Thomas Jayne with Anne Walker, published by The Monacelli Press, 2010, a book that is highly recommended for all who appreciate the study of decoration, past and present, or "ancient and modern" as Thomas would say.

Thomas Jayne's book THE FINEST ROOMS IN AMERICA can be purchased at a discount of 37% off the published price with the option of free shipping by clicking here to visit The Devoted Classicist Library.

The Dean's List

Several blogs and newspapers wrote about last November's event to benefit the outreach ministry and programs of the Southport (Connecticut) Congregational Church, "Rooms with a View, 2010".  This past year it honored Albert Hadley, the "Dean of American Design" with the collection of vignettes titled "The Dean's List".  Albert Hadley was my Best Boss Ever, but I had not started my blog in time to write about the event.

The current February "Architectural Digest" features a short article on the event, however, so I considered that eligible for a posting.  The photos above and below come from that magazine in an article written by Mitchell Owens titled "Master Class".  My friend and sometimes collaborator Thomas Jayne had a very small space decorated by fabulous inkblots, like a Rorshach test.  I provided a sketch of his ideas for the space as the illustration for the catalog that accompanied the exhibition, so I had a hint of what was to come.  But the results were fantastic in reality, as all, including Mr. Hadley, agreed.

Other friends who participated were Libby Cameron, Susanne Earls Carr, David Kleinberg, Brian McCarthy, Michael Whaley, and Bunny Williams.  Others, who were either before or after my tenure at Parish-Hadley, were Pamela Banker, David Easton, Thom Filicia, Harry Heissman, and Brian Murphy.  Five more vignettes are shown in the article, all showing an influence of the great Albert Hadley, so take a look at the magazine, now on news stands.  It is a treat for the devoted classicist.

Mid-Winter With Gardens on My Mind

This past week, I officially passed on the gavel, ending my term as President of the Memphis Horticultural Society.  For those who enjoy reading about gardening, the organization's newsletters are available on-line at http://www.memphishorticulture.org/.  Readers of this blog might particularly enjoy the description of my favorite private garden in the U.S. that I described in the President's Letter of the September, 2010, newsletter "Clippings" which can be viewed by visiting the site.

As some may guess from the photos, the garden that I have written about belongs to interior designer and author Bunny Williams and her antiques dealer husband John Rosselli.  The first photo shows antique tole flowers in pots on a window ledge at the Manor House, Bunny and John's weekend house in Litchfield County, Connecticut.  And the second photo shows a portion of the sunken garden, an outdoor room with a wonderful stone retaining wall on one side and lattice walls on the other three;  trimmed boxwoods around the lily pool form a room-within-a-room.  (The photo is reversed, for those who have visited).

 

My very minor contributions from years ago, a drawing for a fence, a bench, an arbor, etc., are all still part of the scheme for the remarkable series of gardens to form a collection that Bunny has created and beautifully maintained.  All these photos and more, along with the whole story of the property, are delightfully presented in An Affair With A House, written by Bunny and published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York.  The book is one of the best of its kind and highly recommended for all house and garden lovers.  And yes, it is pleasing to the most devoted classicist.