Jason Becton and Patrick Evans, owners of the MarieBette Café & Bakery, reaffirmed their commitment to one another while moving to their new home with their daughters and two dogs. Photo: Rob Garland
Moving is stressful.
Moving to an old place that needs a gut renovation is more stressful.
Fighting with your spouse every step of the way? That’s a major test.
Jason Becton and Patrick Evans, owners of the beloved MarieBette Café & Bakery, were at odds about their new place. “Jason wanted nothing to do with the project in the beginning and definitely didn’t want to ever live in the house,” Evans says.
It was a rough start to a transition that would take a year to complete. “The house was in bad disrepair when we bought it, and it was hard for Jason to see the potential,” Evans continues. “It wasn’t until it was stripped down to the studs that he was able to start seeing that it could be a nice place—not to mention a home for our family.”
Becton and Evans persevered, taking great care to restore the charming cottage, inside and out. “We like to think we brought back the house’s original aesthetic and flow,” Evans says. “Also, when I first saw the house it had a red roof that had faded from its original color. But it was one of the things that caught my eye and I wanted to keep it. The triple gabled roof is also unique and I thought the color really brought attention to that feature.”
The partners in life and in business moved into the rehabbed place about three years ago, and they are glad to call it home—along with their daughters Marian, 8, and Betty, 6, and their dogs Seeta and Ponyo, rescues from Blue Ridge Greyhound Adoption.
Today, it’s a full house but a happy one, the product of a huge effort and an emotional journey. “It caused a few tense moments in our relationship, but in the end it worked out for the best,” Evans says. “We have learned to trust each others’ instincts and try our best to support each other, even if it’s not a decision we agree on.”
With 12-foot-tall walls made of 19,400 bottles, the interior lights up beautifully during the day, with sunlight filtering through the bottles. Photo: Stephen Barling
The empty bottles were piling up at Free Union’s Glass House Winery. The recycling service that co-owners Jeff and Michelle Saunders relied on for years had begun hauling the glass to a landfill, which the environmentally conscious couple couldn’t tolerate.
At the same time, the winery was increasing production, having gone from six acres under vine to 12. “We already needed more space to age wines and store cases,” Jeff Saunders says. “So, we framed out a pole barn. And then the empties started piling up.”
While touring wineries out West, the Saunders’ had seen a couple of buildings with walls made of bottles. The structures were smaller than the barn under construction at Glass House, but Jeff had experience as an architect and builder, so he decided to give it a go.
“It was totally doable,” he says. “You just had to get the right mortar, one that’s on the soft side so it wouldn’t create cracks or pop the bottles.”
As the project progressed, Saunders saw the possibilities. “I thought it could also be a second tasting room or even a little event space,” he says.
The mortar, which he found online, turned out to be prohibitively expense in the quantities he needed. Undeterred, Saunders did a little research and found the formula to make the mortar on-site.
With a concrete floor and foundation in place, and the framing complete, all that remained was building the walls of glass bottles, installing the roof, and finishing out the building. The walls are not load-bearing (six-by-six studs do that work) but they are air-tight, with insulation added in some places inside.
Construction finished up in the spring, and the bottle house—64 feet long and 32 feet wide —opened in May.
With 12-foot-tall walls made of 19,400 bottles, the interior lights up beautifully during the day, with sunlight filtering through the bottles. On cloudy days and in the evening, soft lighting reflects off the glass walls, creating a unique atmosphere.
Visitors are impressed. “They see it from the outside, so I believe they think it’s going to be more rustic, but it’s pretty sleek and cool inside,” Saunders says. “It just seemed like a cool thing to do with a bunch of old bottles.”
The Monticello Hotel, designed by Stanhope Johnson, opened in 1923 and featured a lavish dining room. It is now the 500 Court Square apartment building. Photo: Courtesy Carolyn Gills Frasier
Stanhope Spencer Johnson doesn’t pop to the top of the list for most architectural historians, but the Lynchburg-based designer was remarkably prolific in his seven-decade career, and some of his better work—including two buildings on the National Register of Historic Places—can be found in Charlottesville. No one knows Johnson’s work better than our own Carolyn Gills Frasier, whose exhaustively researched book, Stanhope, Chronologically, came out late last year and would make a solid addition to any architecture aficionado’s collection.
Stanhope, Chronologically: The Work of Stanhope Spencer Johnson, by Carolyn Gills Frasier, is available at New Dominion Bookshop on the Downtown Mall and at The Ivy Nursery.
Johnson (1881-1973) designed the Martha Jefferson Hospital and Gallison Hall, the Georgian Revival estate in Albemarle County. Both landed on the historic register, but the less famous but much more popular Monticello Hotel —now an apartment building at 500 Court St. —endeared the architect to local residents.
Also in the Georgian Revival style, it was built in less than a year—from groundbreaking on March 9, 1926, to completion on April 8, 1926. The opening of the nine-story limestone-and-brick building was greeted with fanfare. It removed a stigma that—with apologies to the Boar’s Head Resort—still haunts the city. “No longer will the community be rendered self-conscious by the repetition of the plaintive wail: ‘if there were only a real hotel in Charlottesville,’” a Daily Progress editorial declared.
The complaint rose from the fact that Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello had opened to the public three years earlier, in 1923, causing a flood of tourists with few places to stay. By the time the Monticello Hotel opened, visitors were arriving here by train (there were two stations downtown) and wealthier travelers by automobile. The fortunate ones stayed at Stanhope Johnson’s opulent hotel.
For a 1992 Daily Progress column, David A. Maurer tracked down Mary Cabell Somerville, a New Yorker who booked into the Monticello weeks after its debut. “It was wonderful, and if we wouldn’t have known better, we might have thought we were back in New York City,” she told the writer. “We registered and went up to our rooms and took a long, hot bath.”
The newspaper clipping was a pebble in the mountain of Frasier’s research, but she shared a copy with Abode—with obvious pride and a bright smile.
Johnson designed The Monticello Hotel, which opened in 1923 and is now the north downtown apartment building 500 Court Street. Photo: Courtesy Carolyn Gills Frasier
Tucked into a hardwood grove, the house lives up to its nickname, A Walk in the Woods. Photo: Peter LaBau
After meeting in college, the couple got married and pursued their respective careers—she as a librarian and he as a patent attorney—living for many years in Delaware. About two years ago, when the time came for them to retire, there was little question they’d end up near Keswick, specifically, on a piece of land connected to her mom and dad’s farm.
“I distinctly remember when I first came to visit her family,” says the husband. “I thought, wow, what a nice area. There’s a lot of nature, and yet it’s not far from Charlottesville.”
The rooms on the main floor sit on the same level, easing transitions as one moves from one part of the house to the next. A partial ceiling defines the kitchen and dining areas. Photo: Peter LaBau
Many years ago, her parents had bought the land where the couple’s new home now stands to protect the views. But having a few acres to situate a house and having one built for you are two very different things. “I had never worked with an architect—that’s just not me,” she says. “I’m a librarian!”
Ah, but librarians are good at research, and after many hours of looking at architects’ websites, she discovered Charlottesville’s Peter LaBau of GoodHouse Design, which specializes in residential design. “I talked to Peter, and we had a comfortable rapport,” she says, adding that LaBau’s co-principal, Jessie Chapman, was also a key player in the project.
“We agreed on that point,” he says. “And my personal preference just happened to be to live in a house in the woods—so that’s what we have.”
The home lives up to its nickname, A Walk in the Woods.
“It’s in the woods, but there’s a lot of light,” she says. “Every morning I wake up and look outside, and the fields and the forest present different colors. It makes me want to go outside, but because of the openness of the design and the large windows, there’s a feeling of being outside without having to go there.”
Also, having grown up in the area, she had spent time in many local friends’ houses, historical ones that had been added onto over the years. “There were a lot of different levels, steps up or steps down into different rooms,” she says. “I knew we didn’t want that—we want this to be our last house, so ease of movement from one room to the next was an important consideration.”
In the master bathroom, natural stone tiles pull together all the surfaces, including a painted vanity, built-in wood bench, and textured tile shower walls. Photo: Peter LaBau
The rooms on the main floor sit on the same level, easing transitions as one moves from one space to the next. But the house isn’t uniformly horizontal. It presents three primary upper volumes—the garage, the bedroom wing, and the loft above the main living area. “We wanted enough space where, when everyone came to visit they could have some alone time and close a door,” he says.
Guest bedrooms on the first floor and in the loft accommodate frequent visits by the couple’s sons. “One is married, one is engaged, and one is dating,” she says. “No grandchildren yet—but we have plenty more room.”
Technical considerations
Before construction began, LaBau and associate Victor Colom staked out the proposed position of the house. “So, we knew the direction the front of the house would be facing,” the husband says. “Peter is deep in thought. Finally, he says, ‘Wait a second. We need to rotate this whole thing 10 degrees to the right—that is the view you want.’”
The couple agreed that the architect was right—just like he was about many other technical and design considerations. “It is a house designed to look like it evolved out of the site,” she says.
Because of that organic feel, the couple considered cladding the exterior in reclaimed pine or cedar. Then the husband asked colleagues at work about the materials. “They said, ‘Oh, the woodpeckers! You’re going to attract every one from miles around.’”
Also rejected was a roof made entirely of raised-seam metal, even though the couple both liked the sound of rain falling on such a surface. But after the husband visited a friend in North Carolina who had a home with a metal roof, and overhanging oak branches, the couple backed off of the idea. “When the acorns were falling, it sounded like gunshots going off,” he says.
Regardless of the roof (it’s shingled, by the way), the couple still loves the secluded feeling of living among so many trees. “It’s zoned rural, and it remains rural,” she says, noting that the closest neighbors are a quarter to a half mile away. “When the trees leaf out, you don’t see light from the neighbors’ houses at all.”
A balcony perches outside the third-floor, which is used as a meditation room. Beneath the exterior cladding, foam panels envelope the house, increasing its energy efficiency. Photo: Prakash Patel
The graphic artist, web designer, and bookbinder worked in Charlottesville for many years, running her own business. She shifted gears, taking a full-time job at a non-profit. But after a while, she wanted to get back to being her own boss, and to find a way to spend more time in the country, gardening, hiking, communing with nature, and meditating.
The south-facing roof rises up to the top of the second floor, creating an open interior space with natural surfaces including wood and locally quarried soapstone. Photo: Prakash Patel
She envisioned a minimal, modern, energy-efficient home with a studio, situated on plenty of land to grow her own food. Armed with sketches of her dream home, and a conviction to live sustainably, she called on a former client, architect Chris Hays, of Hays + Ewing Design Studio. When Hays learned what she wanted, he thought immediately of builder Peter Johnson, and the collaboration began.
“It was a very dynamic process,” Johnson says. “The client had strong ideas for the home, and Chris was quick to draw them. I’ve worked with him many times. When he draws out his plans, even in preliminary stages, he puts them into CAD so they are easy to envision.”
The client also had a nice chunk of property, 94 acres with a perfect spot to build. “It was a house to be located on top of a hill with a nice view out to the west,” Hays says. “We were looking at a smallish house, but on the other hand, she was interested in getting up high to see the property.”
All indicators pointed to a vertical space. “We went through a few ideas before we came up with something we were excited about,” Hays says. “We came up with a third floor that she could use to meditate, and also look out at the land and all of the wildlife.”
After a few design iterations, Hays and the client agreed that they’d devised a good scheme. “She said that it really felt right for the place, which is one of the greatest compliments we could get,” Hays says.
Building a modern dream home
The fundamental idea of verticality was reinforced by the client’s desire to install a radiant-heat oven that can also be used to cook. Made by Tulikivi, Finland’s largest stone producer, the soapstone-clad unit is so large and heavy that it requires its own concrete footing and foundation. It also contributes to the home’s energy efficiency. A single firing with split wood provides 12 hours of heat.
One firing of the gray soapstone oven on the first floor provides heat for 12 hours. It is beautiful but, practically speaking, largely redundant, because the house is also heated via solar power. Photo: Prakash Patel
For practical purposes, the Tulikivi is largely redundant—ample energy for heating is provided by solar panels on the south-facing portion of the roof (more on that later). But the oven is quite beautiful, a tall rectangle of mid-gray stone with a cylindrical stainless-steel flue that shoots up through the open-plan home and exhausts through the roof.
“It has emotional and psychological benefits, in terms of the warming,” Hays says. “You also have a cooking compartment up above the main hearth, which has a glass door. From the bathroom, you can see out to the oven and the flames inside.”
Hays also designed the staircase to convey heat from the first floor to the third. This provides warmth throughout the house—including the studio on the second floor—when it’s cold outside, and when temperatures climb, windows on the top floor can be opened to let heat escape.
The roof is a key element of the design, rising up to cover the second floor, flattening out, and then zigzagging down to form a porte cochere. Photo: Prakash Patel
Now, about the roof. On a conventional home, the roof may simply be a cap on a box, but here it’s a key element of Hays’ design. From the south extremity of the structure, the roof climbs at an angle to the top of the second floor; solar panels cover this part of the surface. After flattening out and reaching south, the roof drops more or less straight down, and then completes its zig-zagging journey with an L-shape that encloses the porte cochere, which also serves as the woodshed.
Viewed from the east or the west, the roof establishes the clean, modern feel of the home. The rather simple exterior finishes—horizontal red cedar siding on the east and west walls, and rectangular fiber cementpanels on the north and south—enhance this aesthetic, as do the plentiful (and large) windows.
Beneath the exterior cladding lies an envelope of thick foam slabs, which seal and insulate the structure. “We did blower and duct-blaster tests and were very pleased with the results,” Johnson says. “The house is tight.”
Inside, finishes selected by the client lend a natural feel. “I wanted to go really organic—oak floors, maple cabinetry, porcelain tiles,” she says. “The central space is all enclosed in plywood. It’s like there’s a treehouse in the center of the house. The counters are soapstone that was quarried right nearby the house.”
The client now has the country place she envisioned, with plenty of room for planting outdoors. “My mom always said two things about me: My eyes are bigger than my stomach, and I always bite off more than I can chew,” she says. “I guess that’s why I ended up with a one-and-a-half-acre orchard and garden.”
The client just added chickens to the mix (“Oh, and I have to build a coop,” she says), and she plans on getting goats and honey-producing bee hives. Her enthusiasm and energy are seemingly endless.
“It was a lot of fun working with her, because she cares a lot about design,” Hays says. “It was very much like a partnership. Peter, the builder, was also very invested to get things exactly right. We were a good team.”
The simplicity and uniformity of the wall enhance the other primary quality of the apartment, namely, openness. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
There’s an air of mystery about the renovated third-floor apartment on the Downtown Mall. A wall of rough-sawn reclaimed white oak treated with bleaching oil runs nearly the entire length of the main room, interrupted only by the rectangular opening that accommodates the black-glass stovetop, kitchen sink, and counter space for food prep.
A gentle push unlatches sections of the wall, which open to reveal key elements of the apartment, such as the bathroom. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
It’s a bold design feature, the materiality of which is complemented by the plank floors, also reclaimed white oak but smooth and stained slightly darker. Scanning the wall, a visitor can’t help but think, where is everything? The bathroom, pantry, dishwasher, cabinets, refrigerator, freezer, and drawers to hold silverware and cooking utensils? Also, what about the HVAC ducts, utilities, and wiring that makes this place work?
Architect Jeff Bushman smiles slyly. He presses a section of the wall and a door pops open, revealing the fridge and freezer. I’m starting to get it. “Where’s the bathroom?” I ask. He nudges another panel. It unlatches with a click-click and swings open to a bright, spacious bathroom with a glass-walled shower. “We needed the central wall to be functional,” says Bushman, of Charlottesville’s Bushman Dreyfus Architects. “But we didn’t design it just to hide things. It fits with the clean, pared-down look we wanted.”
The simplicity and uniformity of the wall enhance the other primary quality of the apartment, namely, openness. The floor-through view is uninterrupted from the front, which overlooks the mall, to the back, which faces Water Street. The staircase leading to the loft bedroom is made of perforated steel, a porous barrier separating the dining area near the rear of the apartment from the assemblage of living-room furniture up front. In the bedroom, six light wells open up the peaked ceiling, offering a leafy, eye-level view of tall oaks on the mall.
The view is unfettered from the rear of the apartment, which faces Water Street, to the front, which overlooks the Downtown Mall. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
The thoroughly modern feel of the space runs counter to the historic nature of the building. Constructed in 1843 at 118 E. Main St., it and its neighbor, 114 E. Main St., are the oldest structures on the mall. Bushman says the apartment building required “a deep, frame-up restoration,” but he was proud to have done it. “We stripped everything back to the bones, so you could see all the original brick,” he says. He points to the exposed red-brick wall beside the staircase that connects the small entry space and the main floor. “That, right there, is your truth wall,” he says. “It’s an important part of the story.”
Days before UVA former associate dean Nicole Eramo’s 12-day defamation trial is set to begin October 17, the magazine accused her of improperly releasing video depositions to ABC’s “20/20” to air October 14, and sought relief in an emergency motion. The judge ruled October 11 that Eramo can’t use leaked videos in court, according to the Daily Progress.
Poorly spelled, as well
Bella owner and UVA lecturer Douglas Muir burned up Facebook with his post last week: “Black lives matter is the biggest rasist (sic) organisation (sic) since the clan (sic). Are you kidding me. Disgusting!!!” UVA’s School of Engineering and Darden scurried to distance themselves from Muir, now on leave from the university, and some locals have called for a boycott of the restaurant.
Festy ends with a bang—literally
As if two days of rain weren’t bad enough, when the sky finally cleared Sunday, a food vendor’s propane tank exploded, sending one person to the emergency room and evacuating the Arrington site for several hours.
Epic fail
Gordon Goines’ call to Waynesboro police about a theft in 2014 resulted in him handcuffed and involuntarily committed to a mental health facility for five days. Goines, who has cerebellar ataxia, which makes it difficult to walk and speak, sued and the case settlement was announced October 6, according to the News Virginian.
White House photo by Amanda Lucidon
Landscaping for Michelle Obama
The first lady called upon UVA landscape architects to spiff up the White House kitchen garden area, and a team led by Elizabeth Meyer added tables, benches and paths to accommodate hanging out in the garden as the Obamas prepare to exit.
Living the high life
There’s a beacon of hope for grocery fanatics hoping to move closer to Wegmans, and you may have seen it perched atop several layers of massive rounded retaining walls while heading out of town. A new upscale apartment complex by Castle Development Partners, called Beacon on 5th, will begin leasing in January with move-in this spring.
Rents start at $1,200
207 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments
34 two-, three- and four-bedroom townhouses
Located two minutes from 5th Street Station (aka Wegmans)
By the numbers
Voter swell
27,616
Active registered voters in Charlottesville as of October 3
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” —State Senator Tom Garrett quotes Hitler propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in his October 10 debate against 5th District opponent Jane Dittmar about whether he was influenced by donations from uranium mining interests.
