Month: September 2008

In the fateful year of 1993, Tony and Trew Bennett had already put 21 years of sweat, tears and living into their Nelson County property. They’d bought it in 1972, two young potters from Northern Virginia, and they’d built a yurt for housing, as well as a two-story building with a studio and an efficiency apartment. And they’d built an anagama—an ancient technology, a Southeast Asian-style ceramics kiln, its round form molded over the Virginia hillside, looking like a living, fire-breathing creature. And indeed, when the kiln is firing, temperatures inside reach 2,360 degrees.

Crouched inside her hand-built anagama kiln is Nelson County potter Trew Bennett. The kiln is built to follow the slope of the hill where she lives.

It’s ironic, then, that when a fire leveled the buildings in that fateful year, it most likely didn’t start with the kiln at all, but in the yurt. The anagama, and part of the pavilion-like structure that covers it, survived. So did the Bennetts and their young son. But little else. “It was an apocalypse,” Trew says.

They eventually converted a large shed up the hill into their new house and continued with their work—she as a potter, he as the owner of Buck Creek Nursery. And the periodic firings of the anagama—altogether, 16 since it was built—connected the new way of life to the old.

The anagama posts impressive stats: 10 cords of salvaged wood, burned continuously over four days and four nights, fire 400 to 500 pots at once and create a 12’ flame from the top of the kiln chimney. It takes a small army of students, working with the Bennetts in six-hour shifts, to keep the fires stoked, not to mention loading and unloading the kiln. “It’s like sailing a boat,” says Tony. “There’s a lot of camaraderie. You have this goal: to make heat.”

Trew: “I keep Buck Creek Pottery going as a teaching facility. Right now I have four wonderful fourth-year UVA students. Some of these people who have come through our life are still in touch 30 years later. It’s been a very lively resting place for me as a potter.

“The wood-fired work is really inspired by having worked with two Japanese potters. [One of them,] Nakazato Takashi, was a 13th-generation potter. This is the tradition of my teachers—to fire with wood. We preheat [the anagama] with a small propane burner for 24 hours to dry it out and get it warmed up. You start with a little fire; it looks like a campfire. You add and add. [When it really gets going] we’re all wearing head and face bandannas; nobody would let us into an airport!

“As the wood goes into the firebox, it roils, smokes, and the temperature actually falls a little bit before combustion begins again….It takes [the students] a day and a night to get used to the fire. The ash is drifting and being pulled through the kiln. As this happens, it melts. It looks like the pots are covered in honey when you look in there.

“We charge the kiln with a lot of wood at the end to get that smoky, carbon surface and soft grey tones [on the pots’ surfaces]. The unloading takes about four hours with all the students; we make a chain line to get the pots in and out.

“As corny as it sounds, every civilization has gotten some clay in a fireplace and found that it got hard. When you’re working with clay, you’re working with something that has a vital force in it. It’s a wonderful connection to all time.

“[Before the fire], the studio was right by the house. Now there’s a longer walk down to the kiln. One of the things the fire taught us was that the land was still here. We’re an adaptable species."

Ah, old houses! How do we love your handmade cornices, your characterful proportions, your charmingly slanted floors!

Your size, not so much.

An addition by STOA Design + Construction makes a decisive stylistic break with the 1930 brick house it expands.

Plenty of local homeowners, given the abundance in Charlottesville and Albemarle of well-seasoned housing stock, face this situation: They love their old houses, but they need more space. And so they decide to build additions.

This choice leads directly to a second dilemma. When one is starting with a late-19th century farmhouse or even a brick colonial, is it better to match that original structure, or to add something that’s obviously different, that actually revels in its newness?

Often, locals and the architects and builders they work with are opting for transparency with their additions. The front of a dwelling—and its place in a streetscape, if it’s in the city—can be preserved and honored even as something boldly contemporary arises in the back. 

Cook’s treat

Here’s your test case: a 1930 brick house in north Downtown, blessed with a wonderful location, solid construction and an extremely tiny kitchen. The owners, one of whom is an enthusiastic cook, felt cramped in there, and what’s more, the appliances were outdated and inefficient.

Cut to the present, with the proud couple standing in their brand-new two-story addition, which turns the old cramped kitchen into a butler’s pantry and adds a spacious new room for cooking, bedecked with windows on three sides and sandwiched between a new deck and a generous stairwell down to the bathroom, laundry and entryway on the ground floor.

Color choices, fixtures and small objects weave an eclectic style that links old and new.

Though the new wing certainly solved space problems and made good use of the least usable part of their backyard, its most notable features are aesthetic. With its Hardiboard and cedar exterior, and its contemporary sensibility, it’s a total departure from the stolid brick look of the original house. “I struggled with the idea of this brick house—what would you add on that wouldn’t look funny?” says the owner. It was Justin Heiser, co-owner of STOA Design + Construction, who convinced his clients that matching the original was virtually impossible and that a clearly modern look would be more satisfying in the end.

What makes it work is a whole series of decisions, on both designers’ and owners’ parts, that link the old and new. For one thing, the brick wall that used to mark the rear exterior of the kitchen is preserved as an interior wall in the new stairwell, its color mimicked in paint on the lower-level floor. For another thing, the countertops (large light-grey patterned ceramic tile), sink (a pale sea green that looks inspired by a 1950s Chevy Bel Air) and smaller decorating touches reveal a fondness for all things retro, art deco and mid-century modern.

A sleek, minimal look in the kitchen addition, and improved energy efficiency throughout, serve as an update to this Belmont cottage.

Such eclectic taste serves to knit all the elements together between house and addition: herb-green stairwell walls showcasing large original artworks, antique furniture, stainless-steel appliances and a great Internet find—a light fixture made from recycled materials whose metal fins bend into a custom form.

A relatively subtle change in the original house seals the deal. Two wall openings connect the dining room visually to the butler’s pantry and the living room. Those openings nudge the house toward a modern way of living, in which rooms flow more seamlessly into each other, and inhabitants are less sequestered, than in 1930. Outside, the interest of the new forms and surfaces is a definite improvement, say the owners, over what used to be a rather bleak exterior, with a looming brick wall punctuated here and there by tiny windows.

Then too, the new space just feels good, regardless of one’s preferred era of design. The kitchen seems to hover in the treetops, light pouring in through its many windows. “We’re incredibly happy,” say the owners.

Built for the moment

The little cottage on Elliott Avenue was built in 1927 and nearly faced its demise when architect Jim Rounsevell prepared to transform the property. Its layout was outdated—again, the small rooms would have sequestered inhabitants—and it was inexpensively built worker housing to begin with. But, Rounsevell says, “It’s cheaper to leave as much as you can than tear it all down.” So he set out to modernize the house and expand its footprint while preserving its bones.

The cottage’s facade is now subtly energized by modern styling.

Whereas the early 20th-century norm called for “Mom in the kitchen, Dad with the guests,” Rounsevell says, “we’ve gone back to the one-room house”—the big flowing space that incorporates kitchen, dining and living rooms. And that is exactly how the little cottage now functions.

Once again, an eclectic approach allows old and new to marry happily. The front facade still blends perfectly into the streetscape, but there are modern touches in the railings and in a large wooden panel that holds the deco-style house number and hides the former front door opening.

Rounsevell had a sweeping vision for this modest place: He reversed the original floor plan (two bedrooms became living and dining rooms, and vice versa) and took off an existing rear addition to replace it with the new kitchen. That kitchen is unapologetically contemporary, a study in minimalist black cabinets and stainless steel backsplash and countertop, and it’s ornamented mainly by the view through three big rear windows. “I don’t like being in a house and separated from where it is, from the land,” Rounsevell says. “This house is 1,200 square feet, but it doesn’t feel like it because you’ve decompartmentalized it.”

As for the bright line between original house and recent addition, Rounsevell says, “I’m a modern architect. I believe in building for your time and not trying to represent history.” If a new structure is well-designed, he believes, it will work with an existing or traditional building. This one announces itself on the exterior with honey-colored Hardiplank that meets the original white siding. Inside, that juncture repeats where old hardwood floors meet the newer flooring in the kitchen, which is a lighter hue and runs the other direction.

From the older section of the house, the massive fireplace draws one toward an airy new retreat.

Such juxtapositions may stand out on a street of traditional houses, but they seem entirely at home within the larger context of a neighborhood like Belmont, where design-minded owners have been hard at work for at least a decade updating older homes.

Modern farming

Realtor Bob Hughes (voted the best in town by C-VILLE readers, incidentally) lives in an 1880 two-over-two farmhouse, which upon initial approach looks like a classic Albemarle dwelling: white siding, boxwoods and beautiful big trees. Follow the driveway to its end, though, and your car winds up facing a tall stucco wall that Albemarle County, circa 1880, surely would not have recognized.

This is Hughes’ rather grand two-story addition, designed by Wolf-Ackerman to boldly assert itself in contrast to the homey, vernacular building to which it’s attached. (A previous addition, c. 1910, connects the two.) The addition comprises a master suite upstairs and a sitting area downstairs, as well as a screened porch looking onto the backyard, where Hughes cultivates a variety of ornamental plants. Anchored by a substantial granite chimney and dressed up in mahogany flooring, the tower-like structure is “purposefully different” than the farmhouse, says architect Dave Ackerman. His partner, Fred Wolf, says the firm has an interest generally in “using what you have to create a starting point; to bring the old into the new but allow the new to stand on its own.”

In this case, they say, the relationship isn’t about superficial things but about massing and scale. And the addition’s natural materials—cedar siding and granite—allow it to relate to the setting and thus to the very-well-lived-in farmhouse.

Bob Hughes’ Albemarle farmhouse is connected to its contemporary addition by what architect Fred Wolf calls a "knuckle."

Starting in the 1880 portion of the house, one is struck by the low ceilings, which suddenly give way at the juncture—Wolf calls it a “knuckle”—of the airy addition. Here, light pours through an upstairs window and down a decisively modern staircase (the treads seem to float, sans risers, on a single central support). One’s path seems to naturally drift toward the screened porch (which can be fully integrated by folding back the wall that separates it from the fireplace area) and ultimately, outside.

“Part of the idea behind this space was to dissolve the barrier between inside and outside,” says Ackerman. That happens most deliciously in the master bedroom, which has the feel of a treehouse thanks to the clerestory windows that top the walls. From bed, “On a full moon, you can watch the moon as it traverses,” says Hughes.

He also finds himself drawn to the fireplace in the wintertime, and has reserved the area as a kind of retreat: no cable and no phone. “Farmhouses are great, and I like them, but the ceilings are low,” he says. “Out here it feels fresher and more airy…I have the best of both worlds.”

After William O’Shaughnessy’s eight-and-a half-hour shift in the MRI section of Martha Jefferson Hospital, it is 11:30 at night, and O’Shaughnessy is happy that home—the quieter portion of Ridge Street south of Cherry Avenue— is less than two miles away. “Convenience is critical, I have to admit,” he says. “Being home from work in less than 10 minutes…and riding my bike is great. I haven’t ridden a bike since I was 13 and I’m 43 now.”

At a glance Distance to Martha Jefferson Hospital: about 1.68 miles Distance to UVA: about 1.5 miles Elementary Schools: Jackson-Via, Clark Middle Schools: Walker, Buford High School: Charlottesville High School Home sales since 2007: 7

A sharp left off the busy Fifth Street Extended divided highway, and up a short hill, the less-traveled Ridge Street hosts a private, residential area that approaches a dead end in less than nine blocks. Lined with paved driveways and thirsty lawns, the older street overlooks the busy highway below. It feels removed up here: Even in the sweltering heat of a mid-August afternoon a teenage couple, holding hands, walks along the sidewalk past a garden of zinnias and a collection of plastic animals.

While O’Shaughnessy says he has complaints about the neighborhood, proximity to the hospital is very important to him, and it makes the neighborhood a great place for him to live. O’Shaughnessy moved onto Ridge Street in 2005 and since then, he says, he has had no issues with snow removal, electricity, or any other utility managed by the City of Charlottesville. It’s easy to meet neighbors and make new friends; people like to gather under the shade on hot afternoons.

But, he adds, there are a couple of problems with living in an older house in the heart of Charlottesville. O’Shaughnessy’s house was built in 1973 and is a bit of a fixer-upper. When asked his opinion of new developments in the area he said, “I’m jealous, I guess, that I can’t afford to buy one. They’re nice and new.”

For O’Shaughnessy, traffic through the neighborhood is a more unexpected downside. While he doesn’t have any children or pets of his own, O’Shaughnessy said if he did he would be worried for their safety.

Time travel

Even though many of the homes in this neighborhood are not new, there have been a total of seven sales in the neighborhood since 2007, the homes ranging in size from 750 square feet to a little over 2,000 square feet, according to Real Estate III agent David Cooke and a report from the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors. CAAR’s website reports the cheapest home selling for $111,000 and the most expensive home, with refurbished hardwood floors and a deck, selling for $253,500.

Along the quieter section of Ridge Street, older homes have seen a succession of changes as the neighborhood’s hosted both white and black residents.

Cooke says he thinks one of the major draws to the neighborhood is its location, but the age of the homes makes homebuyers wary of buying in the area, since constant maintenance would be almost guaranteed. “They like the city location, but a lot of people really like the new construction,” Cooke says.

Developers have, of course, been quick to respond to that preference for new homes. Building company Southern Development recently constructed Brookwood, a neighborhood with around 75 new single-family homes with three to four bedrooms and up to 3,300 square feet. It connects to both the original Ridge Street and Fifth Street Extended. Southern Development has also proposed a development, called William Taylor Plaza, at the busy intersection of Ridge Street and Cherry Avenue. Some residents worry it would encroach upon the historical feeling of the Ridge Street community and destroy some of the area’s natural charm.

New development, like this Brookwood block, is changing the dynamics along Ridge Street, bringing more traffic and drawing protest from some neighbors.

“In most historical districts all the buildings are not the same age, but the point of a district is to conjure a time, conjure a feeling, conjure a look,” said Oak Street resident Antoinette Roades. She said she worries that William Taylor Plaza “will break that mood radically. It’s a project, it’s a complex.” The plaza would sit at the border between the Ridge Street neighborhood and Fifeville.

Historical fabric

When the first homes were being built on Ridge Street in the late 19th century, the area was very different. The street is home to the first African-American Girl Scout troop in Charlottesville and is still the location of Oak Hill Estate, the residency of Thomas Jefferson’s friend and associate Alexander Garrett. Over the shifts and changes of the past 175 years, the street has served as one of the most coveted neighborhoods for both white and black residents, says Roades, and many of its buildings have been designated historic by the City of Charlottesville.

Roades says she is worried not only that people won’t want to maintain the older homes on the street, but that residents are forgetting about the impact the construction phase for the William Taylor Plaza will have on the neighborhood.

“Old houses are quirky. It doesn’t matter how beautiful they are, they always need something. They [residents] have to enjoy living in it,” Roades says. She tells the story of one family that bought a refurbished historic home, originally built around 1844. Although the family seemed extremely satisfied with their purchase, they are looking to sell the home after less than five years of ownership. Roades speculates that their move can be attributed to new developments and the noise and disruption that comes with beeping machines and jackhammers.

Indeed, residents say that new developments have increased through-traffic in the old neighborhood. The same central location that makes O’Shaughnessy’s commute so easy means that development, occuring along the borders of dense city neighborhoods, impacts diverse swaths of residents.

Even so, William O’Shaughnessy says the neighborhood is affordable and he wouldn’t want to live anywhere else right now. It’s still a place where, he says, people bring by a couple of peaches for their neighbors.