Best Addresses

Six projects take honors in Trust's restored Home Awards.

By Rachel Adams

Hard work on his Detroit house earned Mark Reynolds a Great American Home Award.

The National Trust decided this year to reinstate its popular residential-restoration contest, the Great American Home Awards, and the response has been, well, great. The annual competition first ran from 1989 to 1996, saluting homeowners and design professionals for their commitment to excellence in home rehabilitation and their dedication to preservation. Given in conjunction with the restoration magazine Old-House Journal, the revived Home Awards have assumed a simplified format. There are now six winners in six equal categories: exterior rehabilitation, interior rehabilitation, sympathetic addition, interior design/furnishing, kitchen renovation, and bathroom renovation.

Some of the 2003 winning projects entailed far more than basic renovation. Often the homes had languished in extreme disrepair for decades, neglected or abandoned by former residents. Mark Reynolds, whose house won the exterior rehabilitation prize, spent nearly six years renovating the 1900 residence in Detroit's Indian Village neighborhood, the second-oldest National Register historic district in Michigan. "Looking back on the house as it was when I bought it, I have to question my sanity in undertaking such a big project," says Reynolds. "But there's no way that the place would have survived if we hadn't put so much work into it."

When Reynolds bought the sprawling, 20-room Victorian cottage in September 1997 and began rehabbing it with his brother Christopher and Hayes Design, a Birmingham, Mich., interior decorator firm, the building had not been properly maintained for more than 20 years. The previous owner had allowed a badly leaking roof to severely damage several rooms, making them uninhabitable. The plumbing had failed, and the electrical system, last upgraded in 1914, had grown dangerous. "We were down to one working sink and toilet," says Reynolds, "and had to fill up the tub with sink water in order to use it. When the wind blew, the lights would flicker on and off. That's how scary the wiring was at that point."

The 1906 Walter J. Lee House, an early-20th-century Queen Anne structure in Westfield, N.J.

First Reynolds fixed the massive leaks by replacing the cedar roof. Next, all the exterior walls were stripped and reshingled; trim and siding were repainted; windows were removed, repaired, and rehung; and new copper gutters were added. A second-floor sun porch, irrep-arably rotted, was torn off and replaced by a deck, and the first-floor breakfast room, slipping away from the main building because the brick piers beneath it had disintegrated, was lifted up and stabilized with a new foundation. Inside, Reynolds fully renovated the decaying kitchen, placing special emphasis on the original decorative detail. This past summer, as one of the final touches, the surrounding property was newly landscaped.

"The best part of all," says Reynolds, "is having the house as an integral part of the neighborhood. And my neighbors were great during the renovation, lending their advice, expertise, tools, and camaraderie throughout. Now, finally, the house is an asset to the area."

For the majority of the winning residences, the restoration was carried out primarily by architectural and design firms enlisted by the homeowners. On East 93rd Street in Manhattan's Carnegie Hill Historic District, architects Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn were chosen to update a six-story 1892 townhouse, earning the interior rehabilitation award. The home was one of the few remaining single-family dwellings in a neighborhood rife with apartment conversions. Although the building was not in as grave a condition as Reynolds', it had never been modernized. It was still fitted with its original cloth-covered electrical wiring, lacked sufficient electricity on the top floor, and was heated by a coal-burning furnace. Project manager Lisa A. Easton, now of Easton Architects, launched into the extensive renovation in 1997, vowing to be as minimally destructive as possible to the distinctive interior elements.

"The old wiring made the place a fire hazard," says Easton. "We needed to make it safe and livable but at the same time preserve its historic qualities." After channeling the floors and walls throughout the building to accommodate contemporary electrical and plumbing systems, workers installed an elevator where the dumbwaiter had been, to link all six floors easily and provide roof access. Instead of cutting through the walls to install the heavy elevator cables, the team gained access to the space by removing pieces of flooring, which could then be reinstalled without obvious traces. Similarly, the elevator doors were fitted behind original architectural features. "We understood the importance of seamlessly integrating the new and old," says Easton. "The first floor is totally 21st century now; we put in computer wiring, a Jacuzzi, and a home gym. But we were sensitive to the old intricacies of the building as well."

This attention to historic detail became evident in interior design choices. Where period items could not be salvaged, they were replicated. Faux-vintage lighting and plumbing fixtures and hardware were chosen, and antique furniture was purchased to uphold the building's historic character. A late-19th-century-style glass conservatory was constructed, and the house's interior rooms, fully refurbished, were decorated with period paint colors, stenciling, and wall coverings.

The other 2003 Great American Home Award winners are, for sympathetic addition, the 1906 Walter J. Lee House, an early-20th-century Queen Anne structure in Westfield, N.J., renovated by homeowner Jennifer C. Jaruzelski and architects Vincentsen Associates; for interior design, the DeKenessey House, a composer's salon and studio in New York City, by Fairfax and Sammons Decorating, Ltd., project managers Ben Pentreath and Anne Fairfax; for kitchen renovation, Green Gables, an 1892 Victorian house in Glencoe, Ill., by Geudtner and Melichar Architects; for bathroom renovation, the Loo–San Juan residence, an 1890s colonial revival house in Berkeley, Calif., by architects Jerri Holan and Associates.

The Home Awards competition, which was judged by a panel of residential architects, was cosponsored by Minwax, Marvin Windows and Doors, Southern Wood Floors, and The Unico System. Old-House Journal will solicit applications for the 2004 contest.

Read more from our current issue online, look for the November/December 2003 issue on newsstands, e-mail us to purchase a copy, or subscribe to the magazine.