The quaint blue-clad Queen Anne house could have been plucked from a miniature Christmas village and relocated amidst the towering trees in this bustling Takoma Park, Md., neighborhood.
A long way from steam locomotives loaded with gifts, this 109-year-old life-size dollhouse presents a very traditional, turn-of-the-century facade.
But a peek around the corner reveals a 900-square-foot addition that structurally and stylistically links the past to the present while also creating a “second front door.” Designed by Jeffrey Broadhurst of Broadhurst Architects, in Rockville, Md., and built by Merrick Design and Build, in Kensington, Md., the new addition salutes the home’s classic style while also becoming the heart of the family’s daily life.
A New Life
A family’s original desire to simply escape their old cramped kitchen gave this home an entirely new dynamic
The owners’ desire for a bigger kitchen where they could prepare and eat meals while engaging with friends and family was the impetus for the new construction. Aside from the roomier eat-in kitchen, the addition also contains a formal dining room, a family room with a fireplace and vaulted ceilings, and a welcoming back porch straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
The whole structure was pulled farther out into the backyard with a resulting hyphen containing a mudroom, a powder room, expanded circulation, and the much-needed entry all in the space once occupied by the home’s original kitchen. Much to Broadhurst’s delight, the family seldom spends any time in the original part of the house, other than to simply pass through. “Their life really happens back here,” he says.
Let the Sunshine In
One of the unique elements of the addition is subtle but has a big impact, at least during daylight hours. It’s in the kitchen where the flat ceiling abruptly stops at the family room’s vaulted roof and light pours in through numerous windows and dormers.
Even the most trained eye might not spot this eco-friendly feature until you look upward to the “light” in the middle of the kitchen. That light is actually a lightwell that lets daylight pour in from the upper-level gable window and two shed dormers. A laylight filters the sunlight that comes in through what Broadhurst deems a “glorified light shaft” on the second floor. This light shaft is essentially a small finished room, painted all white, that allows the sunlight to bounce around fairly efficiently and spill into the kitchen via the laylight.
Merrick says that this method was prominent in turn-of-the-century row houses to get light into the interior and is a favorite concept of renowned architect Robert A.M. Stern.
The owners’ desire for a bigger kitchen where they could prepare and eat meals while engaging with friends and family was the impetus for the new construction. Aside from the roomier eat-in kitchen, the addition also contains a formal dining room, a family room with a fireplace and vaulted ceilings, and a welcoming back porch straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
The whole structure was pulled farther out into the backyard with a resulting hyphen containing a mudroom, a powder room, expanded circulation, and the much-needed entry all in the space once occupied by the home’s original kitchen. Much to Broadhurst’s delight, the family seldom spends any time in the original part of the house, other than to simply pass through. “Their life really happens back here,” he says.
To Good Effect
Three small features that make a major impact
Up on the Roof
One noticeable break from the past is the addition’s dormers. Rather than echoing the doghouse dormers from the original home, Broadhurst opted for a more contemporary look with shed dormers. Aside from the aesthetics of this choice, the reasoning was also more in line with the new structure. “It’s really an issue of the pitch of the roof more than anything,” he says. “Because of the width of the building, we matched the pitch of the main room but there wasn’t a lot of roof surface. If you tried to get a properly proportioned gable dormer on top of that roof, it would sit too high and look rather silly. So the shed dormer is a more casual way of doing it, perhaps, but it seemed to be better proportioned for the facades.”
Linking Past to Present
Another noticeable change on the addition’s gables is the lack of the fish scale siding prevalent on the original structure and very much a product of its time. Broadhurst used horizontal siding, revealing a clean, sleeker look. “We wanted to simplify it,” he says. “Otherwise it would’ve been just a little too much happening, considering the size of the addition.” One of the goals in recreating historical architecture is “you’re supposed to design these additions so that it picks up details from the original structure but it looks like it’s an addition,” says David Merrick, president of Merrick Design and Build, in Kensington, Md.
Broadhurst said that other design details such as window casings, siding, and shutters have a much closer match between the original structure and the addition. “A lot of our drawings told Merrick’s crew to look at what was on the existing building and just match it,” he says, adding that many historical architecture review boards would rather have new additions be clearly delineated from the historical structure so that they pick up some of the details but the new work still looks like an addition.
Squared Off
One of the marked changes between the past and the present is the use of square columns on the new section, much different from the round columns on the home’s front porch.
Broadhurst had no problem with this change, and says that there are plenty of classical buildings where this was done but “the real reason that it’s done in this case is that the rear facade was designed to look like a porch that’s been filled in.”
Part of that “filled in” area is the new formal dining room. “It’s a lot easier to fill in between square columns than it is between round columns. That’s really what it’s about,” Broadhurst says.
—Mark A. Newman, senior editor, REMODELING.
