Story Of A House

Our House, Our Town

Finding serendipity on Massachusetts Avenue

By Deborah Salomon 
Photographs by John Gessner

When the Roaring ’20s crashed in 1929, so did construction of luxurious winter residences in Southern Pines. One exception was a Dutch Colonial- style home designed by Alfred Yeomans in 1930 on prime Massachusetts Avenue acreage. Yeomans, a landscape designer and James Boyd’s cousin, had built the Highland Inn a few blocks away with Aymar Embury II. The new home on Massachusetts was owned by two daughters of Julia Anna “Annie” DePeyster of Ridgefield, Connecticut — Estelle Hosmer and Mary Justine Martin.

The DePeysters, mother and daughters,  were typical of urban high society flocking to Southern Pines and Pinehurst for the mild winters. The family tree included two Colonial mayors of New York City. Another descendant, Frederick DePeyster, was a loyalist who fought on the side of the British in the Revolutionary War, was exiled to Canada, returned as a wealthy merchant, and rejoined New York’s social and economic elite. Annie DePeyster’s husband, Johnston Livingston de Peyster (a variant of DePeyster)  enlisted in the Union Army at 18 and was credited with raising the first Union flag over the Capitol Building in Richmond, Virginia, after the city fell in 1865. He passed away in 1903. Why the sisters sold the fully furnished house in 1936  to the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh for half price remains a mystery, though Annie passed away a year later at the age of 90. William Hafey, the first Catholic bishop of Raleigh, kept his elderly father there; and Elizabeth Sutherland, a founding member of the Southern Pines Garden Club was a subsequent owner.

How very proud Yeomans, Embury (who built himself a cottage nearby) and the DePeysters would be of their accomplishment, now curated by Mary and Mike Saulnier. The flower, vegetable and herb gardens flourish, laid out and tended by novices who learned as they dug, moving and preserving decades-old plants. The house itself gains personality from irregularities and novelties — off-center dormer placement, angled walls, an exposed brick chimney rising two stories, a back stairway leading to the maid’s room (now a guest suite), a pair of interior windows, massive original bathroom fixtures and black-and-white tiled floors, a call bell system for the servants, and an under-the-stairway closet where hangs a clever fire extinguisher. Iron radiators, some covered with perforated screens, have been left in place as icons of the pre-forced air heating/AC era.

By way of introduction, in the foyer hang Yeomans’ architectural drawings, an homage to history beautifully framed by the Saulniers.

“I found them in the basement,” Mary says.  That find inspired her to compile a scrapbook containing newspaper clippings about the house and its wealthy occupants, as well as other schematics.  Because for Mary and retired Army Col. Mike Saulnier, this home represents another type of find.

“We were looking for a hometown,” Mike says.

Mary spent part of her childhood in Alaskan whaling villages, where her father taught in a one-room schoolhouse, later relocating his wife and eight children to Pennsylvania. Mike, from a military family, moved around.  They met at Shippensburg University.  Beginning in 1999, the military and NATO posted Mike, Mary and their children to The Netherlands, Belgium and Korea, sometimes for several years, with plenty of time to absorb the culture and acquire household goods.

The homesteading desire appeared in 2009, when they were stationed at Fort Bragg.

“We were sitting at the beach, trying to figure out where to live, since we didn’t have any connections,” Mary recalls. While browsing online she found a Weymouth listing that sounded attractive. They drove over and instantly fell in love with the area and, subsequently, the Dutch Colonial, which had been renovated and needed only painting (Mary and Mike did the interior themselves), window treatments, landscaping and minor adjustments.

“It felt right. We never looked anywhere else,” Mary says. Neither golf nor horses influenced their decision.

They moved in 2011 and began making the house their own. An unusual rectangular pool, for example. This came about when Mike discovered nothing would grow on that patch, also that a pool would cost less than a flagstone terrace. But nothing motel-style. He laid out the shape with ropes and hoses. “We wanted it to look like a water feature that had always been here.” The result, a safe 5-foot depth with a grayish pebble lining that makes the pool fade into the surroundings. An ozone purification system replaces chlorine. Add a few lilies and he’d have a pond.

Crumbling bricks on garden walls were made on premises by Yeomans, and a Dutch wooden gate replicates the one hung by the architect.

The main floor has a circular plan; turn right inside the front door, go through the dining room, kitchen and family room, windowless office and into the living room, which opens onto a screened porch. The only addition, by a previous owner, was the family room, which begs the question: Why are the walls angled in several directions?

Mary explains that the room was built not to disturb an ancient tree, perhaps a sugar maple like the huge one with dense canopy that shades and cools a portion of the yard.

That tree, a grassy lawn and boxwoods bring New England to the piney Sandhills.

If only nations could live as harmoniously as the furnishings the Saulniers collected in Europe and Korea. An Asian aura prevails, serenely, without resorting to red lacquer. A set of calligraphy brushes on a runner printed with the Korean alphabet adorn the foyer table, hinting at what lies within. Folding screens serve as headboards. Bells line shelves. A step-down bedroom chest, Mary explains, is finished and operational on both sides making it suitable as a room divider. But for every Korean artifact there is a table, a dresser, a desk or bookshelf — some carved antiques, others plain and functional —  acquired at auctions in Belgium and Holland.

“I am naturally attracted to rustic and classic in muted tones,” Mary says. Her palette flows from moss greens and woodsy browns to oatmeal, linen beige, deep maroon and putty. Dusty turquoise appears briefly in the living room alongside an 18th century Flemish tapestry, with a few brightly colored Vietnamese bed coverings upstairs. Mary chose other fabrics with contemporary motifs. She and Mike upholstered bedroom headboards themselves using only plywood, padding, damask and a staple gun. In fact, “Everything we did is the first time we did it,” Mary says.  Original oak and pine floorboards host carpets Mike brought back from Afghanistan. Beams cross the living room ceiling but this is not a house weighed down with crown moldings. Instead, objects like a colorful child’s kimono hung from a curtain rod practically jump off the slightly textured plastered walls.

In the DePeyster’s era a small galley kitchen was sufficient for the hired cook. Now, when houses sink or swim in the kitchen, the Saulniers’ bypasses glitz and gadgets for warmth and European country charm while providing every amenity. An L-shaped layout, beadboard cabinetry (except for a few original carpenter-mades), thick natural wood and Provençal blue ceramic countertops, a French Quimper tile backsplash, a small vegetable sink in addition to the oversize farmer model, make it a comfortable and convenient place to prepare meals. In a corner stands an antique baker’s rack holding Mary’s pride: a collection of polished copper pots and skillets without which a French chef wouldn’t attempt even a scrambled egg.

More than 3,000 square feet on 1 1/2 acres seems generous for two people and a cat. Yet no room (except for the family room adjoining the kitchen) is oversize. Mary thought ahead. “The kids are gone but we want them and the grandchildren (two, already) to come home and stay in the house for holidays and make noise.” Besides, she continues, the way the house is configured, when one area gets noisy other spaces, indoors and out, offer alternatives for quiet conversation.

Back to finding a hometown. As with the house, Mary and Mike Saulnier lucked out. “This area has a real blend of cultures and people and viewpoints,” Mary says. “You go to an art exhibit and every person you meet is from somewhere else — but it’s still a small town.” A small town graced with historic homes, preserved and furnished with fascinating memorabilia of lives well-lived, including theirs.  PS

Diamonds Are Forever

Living on the lake fulfills a fantasy

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

Houses often represent milestones: a new baby, job promotion, retirement.

Once in a while, there’s a Cinderella factor, which better describes the desire and means to transform a ho-hum ranch into a lakefront cottage showplace filled with art and sunshine. Wielding the wand was Jayne Rhodes, who already had Prince Charming in husband Ed.

The story unfolds like this:

Jayne grew up gracefully Southern, in Lexington, North Carolina, home also to Artis Hardee, who developed Whispering Pines in the 1960s. Her friends, the Mashburns, had a summer cottage on Thagard Lake, where she spent idyllic vacations: “I loved the water, the sailboats . . . ” Sun sparkling off the wind-rippled surface reminded her of diamonds. “I carried that memory throughout my life,” she says. It’s a life that eventually brought Ed and Jayne to Moore County, where they raised a family in a Weymouth residence built in 1895, then at National Golf Club.

Jayne suspects Ed was suffering from golfing guilt when he surprised her with “I’ll do anything you want,” to which she replied, “Let’s drive out to Whispering Pines, see if a house is for sale.”

They spied one, with a lock box. Ed, being a Realtor, had a key.

“We walked in and that was it,” says Jayne, recalling a day 20 years ago. “I looked beyond the house and saw the view.”

The house, built in 1968 by a Navy admiral from California, had high ceilings and hardwood floors but not much zip after standing empty for years. “When we came back the amount of work made Ed sick. It was just old, but we’re good at remodeling,” Jayne rationalized. “Don’t worry, baby. It’ll be fine.”

Jayne’s vision of “fine” would challenge the most determined fairy godmother.

With the view as her lodestar and an eye for design, Jayne marshaled forces.

First, a layout adjustment. The small kitchen looked out onto a carport, which made it dark. That space became the formal dining room, while the elongated living room-dining area became all living room divided into two sections by furnishings and area rugs. At the end, a sun porch the depth of the house became the bright, sunny kitchen with many windows, vanilla cabinetry, cocoa granite countertops and — just imagine — a framed mirror over the range cooktop. “I can stand at the stove cooking, and see that painting (Jayne points to the end of the living room) reflected in the mirror.” Another novelty: The center island is L-shaped, with the sink positioned so Jayne can see beyond the breakfast room to her precious lake, while washing dishes.

That breakfast room represents a separate chapter. Ten years ago a squirrel found its way into the kitchen. While repairing the damage, Jayne and Ed decided to add this space, entirely surrounded by windows, as well as a deck, all facing that mesmerizing view.

Jayne isn’t sure why the main floor has only one bedroom, the master suite, with a ceiling vault that brings in even more light. Perhaps the admiral and his wife preferred privacy.

The staircase to the above-ground basement is open, making it as much a part of the foyer as one leading up would be. On this level, the family living room with raised fireplace and antique mantel, looks out onto gardens, a hammock, fire pit and dock through paned French doors which replaced Holiday Inn sliding glass. Two bedrooms and a bath accommodate the Rhodes’ three daughters and their families during frequent visits.

Miles of moldings, painted paneling, beadboard, columns and louvered windows lift this ordinary ranch to a higher architectural level. Its contents fuel another narrative.

“Sandhills Community College changed my life,” Jayne says. She always wanted to paint, realized an aptitude and finally enrolled at SCC, studying with Denise Baker. “In class I got the idea of a framing business.” As a result, Framer’s Cottage opened in 2001. The downtown Southern Pines gallery sold furnishings and décor accessories, as well as offering designer framing. Here, Jayne became acquainted with local artists while fine-tuning her passion for art. Her collection, including some of her own charcoals, dominates the house, from a picture rail near the living room ceiling, to a photo-quality painting of spring blossoms hanging over an antique ice box. “Ed gave me that on a date,” she smiles. “He said if you marry me, I’ll buy it for you.”

The ice box, a church altar piece/foyer table, her mother’s corner cupboard, a dry sink and a few more family antiques complement Jayne’s penchant for dark woods, leather upholstery (impervious to grandchildren) and outdoor hues — pale, mossy green, beiges and browns brightened with ivory and white present in every room.  Primary colors are limited to the paintings, several reminiscent (along with terra cotta tile flooring) of Spain, where Jayne attended university, perfecting the language and absorbing the flair.

She adores the look of distressed painted pieces, which repeat throughout the house, even on ceramic and pottery lamps which, Jayne proudly confirms, are made in America.

Most unusual are wall treatments accomplished by “printing” a pattern directly onto the paint. In the dining room Jayne used a comb to achieve the modular block effect. Downstairs, she replicated a feathery design with . . . a feather duster.

Overall, Jayne describes her décor as transitional, a mix of traditional and contemporary falling just south of eclectic.

Like every fairy tale, this one has a scary part.

The Rhodes bought their lake house in October 1997. With renovations almost complete, moving was set for Dec. 9. The day before, Jayne went to buy more paint. Her car was hit at a stop light, causing serious injuries requiring surgery. Friends and her Sunday School classmates pitched in. By the time she came home from the hospital, almost everything was in place. “Our world had changed in a moment but the diamonds on the water helped me convalesce,” Jayne recalls. Then, when she could walk, she enrolled at Sandhills.

Ed experienced a scare, too. While carrying a refrigerator down the stairs on his back, he heard an ominous crack. Miraculously, he wasn’t injured. Later, a penny was found at the scene of the near mishap. Jayne called it Ed’s “lucky penny,” framed and hung it near the scene of the misadventure beside a lucky paper penny she brought from Spain.

Window boxes, creeping ivy, flower beds and bright green grass sloping toward the lake complete the transformation from ranch to cottage. The final details address the exterior: an antique front door and painted shingles covering plank siding. Jayne added rose trellises to that carport, which remains an homage to the decade when Whispering Pines was born.

So, in the end, Jayne’s fairy tale came true: a house on the lake of sparkling diamonds conjuring long-ago summers spent with a BFF. A house where grandkids can eat drippy popsicles on the sofa. A house with fine paintings and traditional furnishings from Drexel but no Sub-Zero, in a neighborhood newly invigorated by young families.

Most important, a husband whose doubts were put to rest by the finished product. “As long as Jayne’s happy . . . ”  PS

East Meets West Down South

The house of a thousand stories chronicles a career abroad

By Deborah Salomon  •  Photographs by John Gessner

They met in a used furniture store in Columbia, South Carolina. Catherine was looking for a dresser. John was seeking distraction. He was from splashy Miami, “When it was young and empty.” She was from Albemarle — a doctor’s beautiful daughter raised in a gracious Southern home with wraparound porch, shaded by magnolias. Their life, a magic carpet ride through far-away kingdoms, plays out in a brick house on Massachusetts Avenue, attributed to society architect Aymar Embury II and Louis Lachine, an engineer associated with the Highland Pines Inn who, in the 1920s, built 10 spec houses near the  resort hotel.

Now, this one runneth over not with Southern heirlooms but Asiana, Africana and a Marco Polo-worthy trove. John and Catherine Earp display more than a painting here and a table there. As a Ford Motor Company executive in the 1990s John was posted worldwide, primarily in Asia. “What we have collected is more about memories than things,” he says. Still, shipping their massive collection from posting to posting and finally to retirement in Southern Pines boggles the mind.

But with Ford footing the bill, why not?

John was in the Army when he met Catherine. After discharge, he started with Ford in Cincinnati, Ohio, then Kansas City, Missouri, soon moving into the glamorous motor sports division. After two years, company hierarchy tapped him to open a new market, as director for Ford Motor Company in Korea.

“Is there a cookbook for that?” John asked.

No, but you’ll figure it out, the suits replied.

Catherine’s reaction: “Korea . . . where’s that? But I was excited, not apprehensive at all.”

Neither had a passport.

Off they went, first to a fabulous hotel for two months, then to an equally fabulous house overlooking a river, where they lived for two years.

The house needed furniture. Ford provided a $15,000 allowance. Catherine and John were already auction hounds. Oreos were an underground prize but in Korea they found “markets” similar to famous Les Puces (Fleas) in Paris. “The Koreans wanted everything new and modern; they weren’t interested in their grandmothers’ stuff,” Catherine discovered. This younger generation unloaded gems of the simple, practical Korean style — notably a stunning high-rise armoire in the living room, heavy chests meant for blankets and sleeping mats elsewhere. Some pieces, like the living room sofa with a teak frame, were made-to-order with distinctively Korean lines.

Then came Japan and Thailand, more markets, more décor finds.

Western eyes blur Asian styles. The black lacquer cabinet in the dining room is actually a Chinese wedding chest, functioning like an American hope chest where brides stored linen gifts. Catherine points out her many elephant motifs emblematic of Thailand, beginning with 10 carved specimens parading across the living room mantel. Fronting a stretch of small-paned windows, vaguely British along with the coffered ceilings, stands a row of alabaster Buddhas from a Burmese monastery. Exporting them required untangling red tape with government ministries. “It’s a sign of respect to Buddha,” John says. “Having them here is a rare thing.”

But because they lived in several Buddhist countries, “We also have a reverence for him,” Catherine adds.

Bells, bells everywhere — from cow bells to temple bells to elephant bells — some massive, made from iron, stand in the foyer, while others, more delicate, are displayed in a glass-fronted curio case. Catherine has positioned her collection of Japanese dolls throughout the house. These armless, legless painted wooden kokeshi (some with bobble heads) look like precious bowling pins, too tall and heavy for cuddling. But the most fanciful objet d’art is a miniature “spirit house” resting on a fern stand in the dining room. Like birdhouses, these carved structures with spirals and wings erupting from walls and roof are placed outside the home, to welcome beneficial spirits.  “Our real house in Thailand looked just like that,” Catherine says.

Their real house in Southern Pines has a circular floorplan; a tour begun in the large foyer tracks through the living room, dining room, kitchen, two dens/offices and back to the foyer without retracing a step. The original room designation remains a mystery. Catherine believes the two offices off the foyer might have been bedrooms with a bathroom, perhaps used as overflow accommodations by the Highland Inn. Outside, a terraced garden, fountain, pond and trellis covered with Confederate jasmine speak more North Carolina than South Korea.

The second floor, with lower ceilings and fewer moldings, suggests the house was planned for entertaining, with architectural details concentrated downstairs. Here, Catherine appreciates having enough wall space to display their art collection, including several waterscapes, some painted on lacquer, from Korea, where commercial fishing flourishes.

The kitchen had been enlarged and renovated by a previous owner who added a vaulted ceiling paneled in pickled wood — more Western than Eastern. However, musky olive green walls, a black enamel farm sink and sculpturesque gas cooktop mounted on the island impart an Asian flavor — except for statuettes of saints, brought from Central America, looking down from atop a cabinet.

Beyond the kitchen is a practical feature rarely seen in either classic or contemporary residences. A door opens into a hallway to the laundry, garage and stairs to the former maid’s quarters, now a private guest suite with heart pine floors, dormers, built-in drawers and claw-foot bathtub, all accessible without entering the house itself.

If Catherine loved Asia, South Africa left her positively ecstatic, perhaps because they lived on a predator-free game preserve where gentle kudus ate out of her hand, over a backyard fence. “The animals! You see these wonderful animals everywhere!” she says. Art and artifacts throughout the house, including zebra wallpaper in an upstairs bathroom, memorialize this experience.

“Africa changes you,” imprinting not just your house, but your soul, John says. Catherine felt closer to the earth from having lived there. “It’s just magical — both the animals and the people.”

John and Catherine enjoyed a lifestyle reminiscent of British colonials learning folkways from servants and drivers — not all positive. “Africa made me look at poverty differently,” Catherine says. “Our housekeeper taught us never to waste food, not a scrap.”

“Yet the people fought through poverty. They didn’t act poor. They were industrious,” John observes.

In 2013 the Earps (yes, he’s related to Wyatt, distantly) chose Southern Pines — and this house — for their retirement because Catherine’s sister lives down the street. Reason enough, without the existential link. For a decade or more the sturdy brick Weymouth residence was known as the H.H. Pethick house. Henry Pethick served as U.S. vice-consul in Saigon, in 1919. He then became a Standard Oil executive in China, returning only when Japan began bombing Canton, according to a Sept. 1937 edition of The Pilot. Mrs. Pethick had come back a year earlier, undoubtedly with household souvenirs. When the Pethicks sold the house in May 1945, a front page story described it as “one of the most attractive and elaborate residences in Southern Pines.”

No mention, however, of serene ghosts floating about in fine silk garments, waiting patiently for their ship, piloted by the Earps, to sail home.   PS

Long Live Loblolly

The halls are alive, with the sound of . . . a new generation

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

Ah, the good old days, the Roaring ’20s, when Southern Pines throbbed with urban intelligentsia wintering in cottages and mansions — the most prestigious built by New York architect Aymar Embury II — while they partied with author James Boyd’s coterie. Picture life in the Gatsby era as described by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a Boyd house guest. Perhaps he strolled over to Loblolly. Embury had taken on this second project for James’ aunt, Helen Boyd Dull, in 1918. Auntie Helen, founder of the Southern Pines Civic Club, christened it Loblolly, honoring the indigenous pines which she had lobbied her father to save from the booming turpentine industry.

Nearly a hundred years after Helen Dull’s death in 1924, ghostly echoes of Jazz Age soirees, heated discussions and philosophical musings compete with the barking of five dogs and the laughter of three small children kicking a soccer ball or playing fort in the bamboo grove.

Loblolly, purchased by Erin and Mitch Lancaster in 2011, is once again alive and lively, like a fashionably dressed dowager whirling across the ballroom floor in the arms of John Travolta.

Possible, since Loblolly actually has a ballroom — or so it was called.

“We call it the Big Room,” Erin says. Indeed, at 7,000 square feet total, big is Loblolly’s operative word. The house, including two guest suites with kitchens, sleeps 14  comfortably. The Lancasters have hosted a wedding on the terrace, with reception complete with dance floor in the Big Room.

The stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression silenced the ’20s roar, but Loblolly stands witness to the history that shaped Weymouth Heights.

When James Boyd lured his Princeton classmate, already a “society architect,” to Southern Pines no architectural style prevailed in the nascent enclave.  While Embury developed the Boyd homestead as Classical Revival, he shook, not stirred, Loblolly. Instead of a rectangular footprint the house stretches longitudinally as far as the eye can see.  Sources provided by the Moore County Historical Association describe it as “recognizable but difficult to define, not quite English Norman cottage, or French, not Art Nouveau — with stuccoed clay tile, checkerboard brick, bell-cast and hipped and gabled slate roofs with tile ridges.” Which boils down to a divine mishmash that established prototypes influencing subsequent homes in growing Weymouth Heights.

After Mrs. Dull’s death, Loblolly was sold to the Vale family, who retained ownership until the 1970s. A fire in 1926 caused the Vales to hire Embury to rebuild and add the ballroom wing.

The tennis court is gone, the swimming pool filled in, the acreage divided.  Inside Loblolly seemed dark and imposing by today’s standards, with its hewn beams, teak and walnut floors and miles of built-in bookcases — hardly a tempting project for a young family.

“I didn’t even want to move (to Southern Pines),” Erin Lancaster says. She is from Richmond, Virginia, Mitch from historic Windsor, North Carolina. They met in Raleigh. His parents lived at Woodlake. The young couple, then with a baby and toddler, were looking to relocate — a possibility, since Mitch operates his businesses from home.

“We were visiting friends and loved the idea of walking downtown,” he says. For fun, they looked online. Loblolly popped up. That was on a Sunday. They viewed the property on Tuesday, made an offer on Friday, which was accepted the following Sunday.

“Not much had been done — it needed a few upgrades,” Erin remembers, charitably. “It had that ’80s look, with faux marble.” The Lancasters knew what might be involved from remodeling their Raleigh home. Full speed ahead — systems and big jobs first.

But making a historic property livable and practical goes beyond fresh paint and new carpet. “We wanted it to be comfortable, not stuffy,” Mitch says. In other words, Erin adds, no no-touch zones.

Here, architectural features dictate interior décor: Paned metal casement windows decorate walls like paintings. Sculpted moldings in the dining room channel French chateaux.  Plaster walls hand-rubbed into an undulating pattern throughout were likely the work of craftsmen imported from New York by the builder.  Built-ins dominate public rooms.

For participants in the Southern Pines Garden Club Home & Garden Tour on April 14, a walk through the Lancaster-era Loblolly will be a magical mystery tour, beginning with a dark, wide, slightly monastic foyer whose only decoration is Erin’s favorite Biblical verse, from Isaiah, stitched on fabric in the shape of a cross, framed, and hung on the wall — her talisman. To the left, through a paneled round-topped door is the formal living room with beamed ceiling and an entire wall of bookcases, also of dark woods, which convey a library effect.  The Lancasters call this the Christmas Room, perfect for their big tree.

“We wanted traditional (furnishings) to match the house,” Erin says. What they brought from their previous home fit beautifully. High-backed upholstered chairs, a circular upholstered coffee table/ottoman, her desk and side pieces — even a bread trough under a window shelf — are oversized to match the living room’s dimensions. Yet, she reports, the kids have enough space to run laps around the sofa.

Erin’s interior designer, Susan Brown of Raleigh, chose light solids and patterns (some classic Schumacher) for upholstery and drapes to relieve the dark paneling and floors, which are original, gorgeous and sparsely covered by Orientals.

“Susan worked with me on our house in Raleigh,” Erin says. “She knows me so well.”

Nowhere is the scale of Loblolly’s original footprint more evident than in the dining room, which accommodates 12-foot table, a full-sized sofa under the window, an exquisite French china cabinet filled with Minton bunnies (Erin’s trademark) and other pieces without crowding.

Here, Susan and Erin created a wild juxtaposition that works: The tabletop is made from wide, roughly textured planks while the Papa Bear-proportioned chairs have ornate French Provincial frames upholstered in a floral fabric. Under the table, a sisal all-weather rug, in neutral sand because, Erin points out, “The kids run through here on the way to the kitchen.”

The kitchen, of course, required gutting. A small bedroom and pantry behind it were removed to open up space for a family sitting/dining area. The kitchen itself displays an unusual arrangement of two parallel islands, with sink on one and range, ovens, refrigerator against the walls. Carrara marble tops the massive bureau-style walnut cabinetry. A ceramic tile backsplash adds another texture. “Mitch has the good brains about how a kitchen functions,” Erin says, understandable since he’s the family chef.

When it comes to colors, Erin and Mitch part ways. She adores the pale aqua predominant in the dining room and on some fabrics. He likes red. Erin and Susan Brown have softened his bright primary into a rosy rust, which lives peaceably with Erin’s choice throughout the house, but especially in the family dining area.

The Big Room, sunken a half-dozen steps below the main floor, elicits disbelief. Approximately 40-by-25 feet with a high ceiling of the same undulating plaster, built in bookshelves lining two walls, paneling elsewhere, a wood-burning fireplace and two TVs, the space is arranged as the baby grand piano area, the conversation area and the bar added by the Lancasters, where a small kitchen with dated metal cabinets once stood. Beside the bar, a grouping of two pale yellow leather chairs, made in New Zealand, seem lifted from a modern art museum. “We were at a gallery in Las Vegas, looking for paintings,” Erin explains. “Mitch saw the chairs and sat down on one. He said, ‘Oh, these are comfortable.’” Others have noted that Elvis might share his opinion.

Pack ’em up, ship ’em east.

Loblolly has no grand staircase. The elevator has been removed. The second floor remains a maze of wings and narrow hallways, dormer niches with light streaming onto a heirloom slipper chair or table. But the bedrooms (eight, total, including the garage apartment) are enormous, with window seats and sitting areas. Son Milum’s room has two four-poster beds from Mitch’s childhood, while daughter Beverly uses Erin’s small  chests of drawers and plays with her mother’s stuffed bunny collection. The kids have a designated Lego room. One small bedroom has become Erin’s closet/dressing room. At the end of the hallway the master suite with soaring ceiling and windows on three sides looks out over terraces, gardens and two-plus fenced acres bordered by ancient trees — another world, another story

Loblolly represents not only an extinct lifestyle, but materials and workmanship impossible to duplicate. The trick is dressing old bones in new clothes. “We’ve been chipping away at it for seven years,” Erin says. “We’re about halfway done.” During that time, the Lancasters had a third child, adopted several rescue dogs, enticed Erin’s sister and her family to a house down the road. Mitch entered city politics. And a renewed Loblolly is once again the scene of dinner parties, meetings, play dates and social events.

“It’s a God thing that we ended up down here,” Erin concludes. “OK, here’s your path, God told us. So if this is where we’re supposed to be, let the house pass inspection.”

Loblolly is one of six homes featured on the 70th Annual Southern Pines Home & Garden Tour, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 14. Also included, an exhibit at Campbell House recounting how club members shaped the landscape of the community through their projects and initiatives. Proceeds from the tour support local beautification and horticultural scholarships. Tickets: $20 in advance, $25 day of tour (at sites). Advance tickets are available at The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines and Pinehurst Woman’s Exchange, or through the club website: www.southernpinesgardenclub.com.

Portrait of the Artist’s Home

A place where nothing matches but everything belongs

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

There’s something about Jessie Mackay’s house . . .

Outside, distressed bricks melt into the wooded 2-acre lot rather than jumping out onto the road that winds through Country Club of North Carolina.

Its contents — fewer heirlooms than souvenirs of a life well-traveled — begin their story in the soaring front hall, where hats hang on a coat tree:

“I wore the pith helmet when we rode horseback across Malawi into Zambia,” Jessie begins. Beneath the hats stand boots; Wellingtons speak of her life on a farm in the Cotswolds. On a campaign chest are arranged antique watch faces and a pipe picked up in France, a carved box from Hong Kong and cavalry spurs used by an ancestor. In the corner, a weathered Old Glory leans beside a Union Jack, affirming her dual citizenship. Although fascinating, these artifacts pale beside the paintings — everywhere: her own, those of friends, family members and fellow artists. Some, like a vibrant purple abstract by an Ecuadorian painter positioned on the upstairs gallery wall, attracted her purely for its color.

Jessie grew up in Westport, Connecticut, bordering Manhattan art and culture. She recalls attending a Van Gogh exhibit at the Guggenheim every day, “until (the staff) didn’t want to charge me admission.” Her British parents were casual painters. Jessie might have felt an inclination but, instead, followed a career in consultant management, which included measuring behaviors and results to enhance the workplace environment.

Well, Gauguin sailed with the merchant marines and Cézanne studied law.

Jessie dabbled a bit in high school. “After getting married I wanted something on the walls.” Her first inspiration came watching laborers in a British steel mill, admiring their physicality. The result, hanging in the living room, recalls grim early 20th century factory scenes immortalized by American artist Thomas Hart Benton.

Otherwise, Jessie identifies with Fauvism (think Matisse, its practitioner), defined, in part, as color existing as an independent element — intense blobs of it, rather than within finely drawn lines. “I felt painting was an outlet, a meditative thing,” she says. Not until early middle age did she make art her career. Her first show in Atlanta sold out. Her debut at Campbell House Galleries in Southern Pines moved 13 paintings, more than double the average.

Life, marriages, careers, activism took Jessie to various houses in many countries. In 2008 she was alone in Pinehurst, looking to downsize. Her first impression of the CCNC saltbox built in 1982: “Brick, ugly roof, sad, a mess inside.” Yet its bones and cross-hall two-story layout reminded her of New England while her design skills promised improvement. She and builder Buddy Tunstall made plans. First, the exterior. The painter had never done peeling brick, so they tried the obvious: spray with white paint, follow immediately with a pressure washing. Jessie recalls how the workmen laughed.

But it worked. So did the bright yellow door, the circular drive and informal landscaping. Back acreage, fenced for Jessie’s Jack Russell terriers, appears delightfully wild in the weak winter sun.

Inside, carpet was replaced by hardwood. Bathrooms needed remodeling — one in charming green toile wallpaper with graceful bureau-turned-washstand — but the three upstairs bedrooms remained intact.

Not so the main floor. Jessie decided to tear out several small rooms spanning the rear, including a dated kitchen, install an extra support beam and repurpose the space as her studio (with bay window), a long galley kitchen and small den with wood-burning fireplace. This was accomplished without dividers. The kitchen is beyond startling, since a guest walking through might not realize its purpose. On one side, an oven, a single-width refrigerator and cooktop niche are embedded in a brick wall. A polished harvest table used as both work island and seating is positioned down the middle with cabinets, drawers, sink, another bay window crowded with plants on the opposite side.

In the spring, a dogwood tree blooms just outside the bay.

“It reminds me of Europe — a lot of stuff, a lot going on,” Jessie explains. The brick provides a textured background for paintings, including the portrait of a friend dominating the south-facing studio with two easels, paints, brushes, stool and a portable typewriter. Locating her workspace adjoining the kitchen made sense. “I didn’t want to allocate a bedroom for a studio.”

Her office and laundry room line the hallway leading to the garage with doors not visible from the front.

Jesse misses her dogs, cats, horses and other creatures from what she called The Farm of Content Animals, since none of the ducks, chickens, geese, lambs or cows entered the food chain. Bovine portraits hang over the den fireplace, flanked by English corner chairs with leather seats and open sides to accommodate the sabers worn by officers.

Jessie courts a lived-in look. “Everything (these days) seems so contrived — a blanket draped just so over the couch,” she says, and points to a woolly throw in disarray on her own. “The dogs made that pile,” before falling asleep on it.

Jessie found the small living room both appealing and functional — especially after constructing bookcases across an entire wall. Half shutters on low-set windows continue the New England effect, although furnishings speak faraway tongues. The unusual high-backed sofa in Jessie’s favorite khaki is from a fine North Carolina manufacturer, but her leather-seated folding campaign chair (for easy transportation) experienced far-away battles. Facing it a plaid armchair with ottoman channels the ’60s. Each artifact on the mantel tells a story, each painting reveals a connection. Conversation never lags here.

“I wanted my dining room table to be wide enough,” Jessie says, to accommodate her stepsons and grandchildren. She chose one from Ireland, of yew wood, surrounded by Windsor chairs. Paintings lean against the wall, for decoration or perhaps awaiting a buyer.

Rugs throughout are, predictably, well-worn Orientals in subdued hues except for the den, where sheep gambol across a pastel background, to offset a shabby-chic white sofa.

Jessie admits to using the house as a supplemental gallery. “The problem for artists is that people don’t have wallspace any more,” she says. Her walls, painted gradations of white and framed by crown moldings, are covered but not saturated. Arrangements change as paintings sell. Emotional attachments don’t hinder business as with some artists: “There’s no sense of loss. Paintings are like children; when they’re 18, it’s time to go.”

Sometimes she follows them. Each year, Jessie returns to Tanzania, where she and friend Tally Bandy have established empowerment programs where women earn enough by raising pigs and goats to educate their children. To this endeavor they have added solar kits made in North Carolina, which enable the women to establish charging stations for lights and mobile phones. A few paintings reflect the African project.

So much life, in a moderate living space. “When I have a party we’re like puppies in a box,” the artist smiles. An elegant box, yet comfortable, inviting, with several areas to sit and chat, walls hung with oils and acrylics of varying shapes, moods, styles and expressions — even double entendre as with zebras crossing a busy thoroughfare.

Indeed, there’s something about Jessie Mackay’s house . . .

That something is Jessie Mackay.  PS

Treasures of Home

A proud Southern couple furnishes their house with family history

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

Family means everything to Mary Balfour Dunlap and her husband, Murray Dunlap. Mary Balfour grew up alongside grandparents, aunts and uncles. “My cousin is like a sister. Family is who we are.” These roots run deep in Mississippi, where Mary Balfour’s father, a cotton farmer, became an Episcopal priest. The Balfour in her given name honors a great aunt. Portraits hanging from her walls represent ancestors. Murray — a lauded writer, poet and artist — is from Alabama, where Mary Balfour later lived and worked. His background also included old, beautiful Southern things. Nowhere do their heritages blend better than in a simple yet charming brick bungalow where furniture, paintings, carpets, silver and china hum the same tune.

“We didn’t buy one single piece of furniture. My dad and mom and Murray’s dad were collectors,” Mary Balfour says. Coincidentally, their parents were downsizing. Just imagine, if these tables and chairs, sofas and bureaus could speak of the people, places and events they have witnessed.

No need. Mary Balfour  (“I’m the talker, Murray’s the introvert”) serves as docent.

“Murray flew me to Mobile for our first date,” she begins. They had never met, only talked and corresponded. Once there, she recognized a kindred spirit. “I saw his house . . . I was drawn to his art.” The tall blonde with wide smile was attending seminary in Austin, Texas, fulfilling a vocation that came after working as a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., and Birmingham. Murray, who holds an Master of Arts in creative writing from the University of California at Davis, had survived a catastrophic car crash in 2008 that left him in a coma for three months, then wheelchair-bound with traumatic brain injury and memory loss. His progress, although slow and arduous, has been dramatic. Murray mows the lawn, tends the garden as well as creating abstract/modern art — and publishing a book. He has been selected as writer-in-residence for November at Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities.

They married in 2015. Murray works from home. Therefore, where to settle was Mary Balfour’s decision.

“If we can’t be near family, we want to be near good friends,” she says.

A position as associate rector opened up at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Southern Pines. Close friends from Birmingham, Elizabeth and John Oettinger, lived here. Mary Balfour accepted, then tasked Elizabeth with finding a rental house, preferably in Southern Pines, where the church was located. The friends had similar tastes. Choices, however, were limited.  “I looked for a place where I would consider living,” Elizabeth says. She investigated a post on Instagram, forwarded photos to Mary Balfour and Murray, who took it on faith.

“I saw the picture of the mantelpiece and could imagine Daddy’s portrait over it,” Mary Balfour says. “I knew I could keep my china and silver, which we use every day, in the (built-in) corner cupboard.”  The clincher was a sunny side porch enclosed as a den, where Murray could write — also, an outbuilding which now houses his painting studio.

In October 2016, they moved into their first shared home.

This brick quasi-ranch built in the early 1950s on an oversized treed lot escapes the stereotype via paned bay windows and a small, uncovered front porch with white railing and two enormous Boston ferns flanking the blue door. Off to the right, a cottage furnished in less-formal antiques serves as guest quarters.

Once inside the house, a predictable floor plan is eclipsed by pieces from comfortable, much larger Mississippi Delta homes, circa early 20th century. The living room armoire was made by slaves: “Not a screw in it except for hinges,” Mary Balfour points out. The walnut “secretary” (drop-leaf desk) belonged to Aunt Balfour.

The living room settee (definitely not a couch or sofa) framed in carved wood is upholstered in pale avocado, the colors drawn from Persian carpets worn threadbare and mended by Mary Balfour’s mother. Artwork, including several Dali drawings, are framed and grouped artistically. “Murray has the eye,” his wife learned.  His black and white landscape photos make up part of the gallery. Mary Balfour calls two side chairs reminiscent of a medieval castle her “bishop’s chairs” since a Costa Rican bishop stayed at Owen’s Place, the guest house named after their beloved dog, recently deceased. A pair of Cavalier King Charles spaniel china figurines have been retrofitted as lamps and placed on the sideboard underneath a portrait of Murray’s namesake ancestor.

Two other portraits dominate the living-dining space: Mary Balfour’s grandmother in a Red Cross uniform, the other of her grandfather, also in uniform, both painted in Italy during the 1940s — a coincidence, since they did not meet and marry until after the war.

Another, of a great-grandmother, illustrates the romantic Gilded Age genre.

Delight is in the details. A collection of snuffboxes sits on a silver tray on the coffee table, exactly as it did in Mississippi. Crosses made from steel drums were acquired on a mission to Haiti. And tags with notes written by a grandmother hang from exquisitely wrought silver serving pieces which Mary Balfour keeps polished.

Along a narrow hallway lined with family crests, two of the three bedrooms contain tall, heavy four-posters, one requiring a stepstool, which, even in modestly sized rooms look comfortable, since other pieces are small and simple. The master bedroom furniture recreates Mary Balfour’s parents’ room exactly, including the prie dieu, but not an Indiana Jones hat perched on a post, recalling Murray’s fishing trip to Montana. Mary Balfour especially favors a guest room wall where hang three generations of wedding photos, including her own, and names engraved on a Tiffany wedding cup.

But not all is as expected. Instead of traditional Southern rose, spring green and tepid blue, Mary Balfour chose a pale khaki for the parlor walls and festive cranberry and olive  for upholstery. Florals, another Southern décor staple, are scarce except on a wing chair and heavy, dark, crewel-stitched dining room curtains, from Mexico.

The kitchen, of course, had been redone — not overdone — with black countertops, a bar-island,  butler’s cupboard, stainless appliances. The original carpenter-made wooden cabinets remain, painted white. “This is our most comfortable room,” Murray says. Here, Mary Balfour accessorized with a breezy contemporary touch, including a glass bubble lighting fixture, bright rooster posters from New Orleans and McCarty art pottery — the Mississippi equivalent of Seagrove.

“We live in the den,” adjacent to the kitchen, Mary Balfour confesses. This is Murray’s domain and repository for chairs, bookshelves, a wooden storage box made by his grandfather and a dry sink, most from his childhood homes, as well as his books and a progression of art work; Man with a Beard, painted before the auto accident, is Mary Balfour’s favorite. “I didn’t know him then. His painting has changed. This gives me a glimpse into who he was.”

What was — along with artifacts conveying a bygone lifestyle — remains central to the lives of this handsome, interesting couple. Their home accommodates an Ugly Christmas Sweater church party as easily as a literary gathering or supper for a few friends. Conversation never lags as Mary Balfour enthralls newcomers with background on their furnishings. She has already begun thinking about the future, how best to preserve and distribute family treasures along with their histories to cousins, nieces and nephews. For now, they are used, enjoyed and safe. Because, as Mary Balfour says, “We are the keepers.”  PS

Story of a House: Rose Cottage

Rose Cottage

James Tufts’ first foray into vacation homebuilding, once again a showplace

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

A rose is a rose is a rose . . . 

However, Rose Cottage looks and lives very differently than when it was built by James Tufts in 1895 — among the first of about a dozen. This house, intended as a rental, then sold in 1905 for $1,050, had few neighbors and a clear view to the Carolina Hotel and nascent Pinehurst village. Its tight floor plan, consisting of seven rooms, a small sun porch, and one bathroom, begged expansion accomplished by subsequent owners over the next three decades, culminating, circa 1940, with the colorful Razook family. F.R. Razook, a Lebanese immigrant, and his wife Rose had established a haute couture ladies’ boutique in Blowing Rock, N.C. They followed the money to Pinehurst, Palm Beach, Manhattan and Greenwich. While the Great Depression wiped out some clientele Razook’s thrived on survivors. Gen. George Marshall’s wife (with a home in Pinehurst) reportedly purchased the gown she wore to Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation from Mme. Razook.

However, by the 1960s, this rose had faded. The younger Razooks came down for holidays only. Modernization stalled after 1940. Gorgeous heart pine floors slumbered beneath ratty broadloom. Critters overran the attic. The layout had been chopped into a warren of small rooms of indefinite purpose. The kitchen was a period piece and the bathrooms . . .

***

Lisa and Bill Case — retired lawyers who married in 2008 — weren’t looking to rebirth a landmark. They knew what such projects entailed after living in the German Village section of Columbus, Ohio, a revitalized neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places. Bill first visited Pinehurst with his father, on a business trip in 1964. He brought Lisa, a new golfer, with increasing frequency, telling her during a Thanksgiving jaunt, “You have to play No. 2.”

Slowly, as retirement took shape, Pinehurst looked promising — not only for golf. “We were footloose, could go anywhere, but we kept coming back here,” Lisa says. They liked the climate and population potpourri. However, this time Lisa wanted a sleek modern residence, “No curlicues, easy to keep clean.” A Realtor gave them the tour; they passed Rose Cottage without going inside. Yet the charm of the old place caused them to ask for a walk-through.

They returned to discover the house a mess, old and tired from not being occupied. But quality materials, location and antiquity left an impression.

“Bill’s eyes were like saucers,” Lisa recalls.

Options were discussed and decisions were made during the 8-hour drive back to Columbus.

“As long as you give me rooms for guests and a kitchen that I love . . . ” Lisa said, having recently remodeled hers. “We could see ourselves living here.”

They took the leap in 2013 with a lowball offer. Their Columbus house sold in a day. Down they came with one dog and two cats, hired a designer and builder, rented a condo for the duration.

Bill: “I thought we’d gut the bathrooms and kitchen and do the rest later,” which, as it happened, was like being a little bit pregnant. Their builder wisely advised a “one fell swoop” plan, to avoid tearing the place apart twice.

And tear it apart they did, moving interior walls, combining cubbies, creating spacious bathrooms and storage, opening up the staircase with a transom and handsome banisters all without altering the footprint.

***

The result begs questions, reveals surprises. What purpose, the room just inside the front door? Larger than a foyer — likely a parlor before the enormous solarium was added. To the immediate left, the dining room with an off-center fireplace could have been a ground floor bedroom for grandma, as was common in houses of that era; formal dining rooms weren’t required since the first Pinehurst cottagers ate communally. Windows at the end of the dining room suggest a small sun porch. Ceiling beams, now painted white, could be original or an addition. Then, in a bay window area connecting dining room to kitchen, the Cases created a conversation nook/butler’s pantry/bar.

As stipulated, much attention went into Lisa’s kitchen. “We splurged on the soapstone counters,” she admits. They are black, the walls throughout a soft, soothing grey, the cabinets white. Color pop comes from her unusual red gas range and dishes in a variety of bright primaries. French doors open onto a brick patio, which they added.

The real main floor knockout, however, is that 30×20 foot solarium, a veritable fishbowl with three complete window walls not covered by shutters, shades or drapes. Here, the Razooks held high society soirees. Now, Bill’s stringed bass fills a corner, silent but decorative.

“People look in  . . . we wave to them,” Lisa says. 

Upstairs a narrow hallway, sloping from age, leads to three bedrooms with niches and windows set low on the mansard walls, creating a treehouse effect.  Nobody knows why the Juliet balcony off the master bedroom lacks a door. Obviously, it wasn’t planned for sitting.  “We crawl out the window and decorate it for Christmas and July 4th,” Lisa says.

Ever the conservationists, Bill and Lisa created sliding pantry doors from original hinged, moved the porcelain kitchen sink into the laundry room, made free-standing cabinets from removed built-ins and salvaged old knobs for pegs. Since no clawfoot bathtub survived, Lisa chose a reproduction.

Because all but one room is moderately sized, the house doesn’t feel like 3000 square feet, “But we use every inch,” Lisa says.

Across the garden, a former carriage house/garage has become Bill’s man cave, repository of baseballs and books, where he researches and writes. Bill appreciates history and its icons: he owns a mint-condition 1954 Mercury used in the Johnny Cash film bio Walk the Line. A Waring blender with glass canister has been converted to a lamp. And on the walls hang a continuation of golf course art, both paintings and photos, appearing throughout Rose Cottage. “We marshaled at St. Andrews in 2015,” Lisa says proudly. Other wall décor includes their “happy place” beach in Scotland, archival photos and documents relating to Rose Cottage, personal mementos, and a Columbus landmark — the Wonder Bread factory sign.

The couple’s furnishings — his, hers and theirs — stretch the eclectic concept. An heirloom sideboard looms over the dining room like a frigate. A round English-manor hall table centers that mysterious front parlor. On the mantel stands a trophy dated 1941, won by Bill’s mother at the (prophetically) National Rose Show. Lisa found fertile hunting grounds in Moore County consignment shops — everything from an ornate French chateau desk reproduction and carved settee to tables and chairs with contemporary Scandinavian lines. When pushed to feature a color, as in the master bedroom, Lisa chose “cat’s eye” green, a pale avocado evocative of bygone days.

“Doing the outside is my next project,” says Lisa, who completed a Master Gardeners’ course. As yet, neat plantings neither overwhelm nor detract from the house itself. Lisa is learning what grows well in this warmer climate. “I’m thinking about a pollinator garden, but so far, it’s a work in progress.”

All in all, Lisa and Bill have adapted the prototype Pinehurst cottage to active retiree living: original wide baseboards and doorframes meet recessed lighting. Long halls become gallery space. The black-and-white magazine kitchen co-exists with a Welsh cupboard. An exterior painted the white and money-green, popular mid-20th century, gives no hint of what lies within.

Bill and Lisa are pleased. “We’ve learned ‘porching’  . . .  sitting outside with a bourbon at four in the afternoon, watching the world go by,” says Lisa. “Our neighbors are wonderful. This house has good vibes.”

With one ghostly exception: “I was lying in bed and Bill was watching TV. I swear I heard somebody standing by the bed. She whispered, ‘This is my house.’”

To which Lisa rightfully replied, “Oh no, this is MY house now.”

Kings of the Castle

An architect out to conquer the world blazes a trail through Vineland

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner

North Page Street has a certain aura, a whiff of bygone times — a neighborhood apart from elegant Weymouth a few blocks east. The faded houses sit back aways, sheltered by towering magnolias. Even the ones in disrepair appear family-friendly, with wide porches where kids played on rainy days. Residents once strolled down these streets of an evening. Yards twinkled with fireflies, waiting to be caught in Mason jars.

Children skipped up to Broad Street for ice cream.

Back then, time was marked by passing trains. Now, the early summer haze is shattered by hammers and saws wielded by sweating hard-hatters working for Dean King: architect, developer, builder, entrepreneur, businessman, preservationist. A boyish 40, Dean exudes the enthusiasm of a teenager out to conquer the world.

“I want to build for myself. I want to take risks, flip houses, make money,” he says.

Not only does he walk the walk and talk the talk . . . he lives the life. Dean, his beautiful wife, Tori, and adorable children, Levi and Josie, occupy, for now at least, half of a rambling Southern Victorian guest house — Magnolia Lodge — which he bought, tore down to the studs and built back as a duplex, which he will eventually rent, as he does the other half, probably to military families.

Annie Oakley slept here. So did Al Adams, whose mother operated the guest house with nine units beginning in 1936.

“It was a wonderful house to grow up in,” says Al, who lived there from age 4 to 19. He recalls climbing the magnolia tree to eat scuppernong grapes from the arbor — and getting cornered by a wasp. At mealtime, he rang a bell calling boarders, mostly retired Northern ladies, to the table. After dinner, they would play croquet on a court where the garage now stands.

Much as they love millennial transformation, the Kings will move when Dean finishes renovating the rambling classic a few hundred yards away. Tori’s on board; in 11 years they have moved nine times, saving thousands by taking advantage of the two-year tax deferment.

How so, these urban nomads?

Dean grew up in Rockingham. His talents surfaced early. “I was always artistic, liked to build stuff,” meaning a kids’ hideaway and a two-story tree house constructed with scrap lumber. He parlayed his skills into a degree in architecture, from UNC Charlotte, then lived high in North Carolina’s largest city. By day, he worked for a company that designed hotels. By night, “I enjoyed myself like a young man living downtown and making good money should.”

Not good enough. “I didn’t want to sit in an office — and hotels didn’t excite me.”

A friend who started Pinnacle Development Design Build in Southern Pines suggested he move. Dean knew the area, realized the potential. Tori, a high school teacher and photographer from Ohio, supported the idea.

They relocated in 2005. With partners and associates, Dean designed several projects, including The Pinnacle Lofts on West Pennsylvania Avenue and Broad Street Lofts, both examples of the urban redevelopment trend which entices people to live downtown, or nearby, in new units or repurposed buildings, with services within walking (or biking) distance. The concept took hold in the ’90s as decaying factories in Manhattan’s Soho, Tribeca and Meat Packing District became fashionable condos. Abandoned tobacco warehouse and textile mill residential developments in Durham and elsewhere followed suit.

Dean was convinced: “Urban density is the way to go.” A younger demographic was discovering downtown Southern Pines, one that could afford west of the tracks (formerly Vineland) but not the historic district, where “cottages” designed in the Roaring Twenties by Aymar Embury have been rebirthed as mini-mansions.

Building Pinnacle Lofts was straightforward new construction, but buying an entire block of North Page Street (with a partner) in 2014 seemed risky, since 100-year-old structures like the Magnolia are usually money pits.

“I was scared to death,” Dean admits. Removing asbestos alone cost $25,000.

The house had stood vacant for half a dozen years. Dean describes the interior as “gross,” which actually proved inspiring. Since nothing but the bones and chimneys were salvageable, he could follow his imagination.

Because “imaginative” best describes the interior.

But first, the porch — 48 feet long, with a slanted ceiling and original posts and floorboards that Dean labored to preserve. Before social media, people connected on porches. Here, Tori and Dean sit for hours on rockers and a church pew they salvaged from a fire pit. “I like to think how many people have sat on this front porch in the last 100 years,” Tori says. The porch is especially useful, since the house has no conventional living room. Instead, just beyond the front door, what Adams remembers as Magnolia Lodge’s lobby became the foyer and family dining area with a sloping ceiling, built-in shelves under the stairs and a bay of paned windows. Tori’s office with separate entrance, formerly Al’s bedroom, is off to the right.

Front, center and open stands the kitchen — something that would have been hidden out back in the early 1900s when the house was new. A massive butcher block from White’s Grocery in Rockingham, a business run by Dean’s family, represents the past, along with simple cabinetry, exposed shelving, an oxen-yoke pot rack, ceramic tile backsplash, a bank of brightly painted school lockers, original doors and windows with wavy glass. Tori has brightened snow-white walls, moldings and columns with faux antique signs and vivid pottery. The original floorboards, some approaching 20 feet, must have been milled from tall local heart pine. Exposed brick chimneys, board-and-batten walls, panel doors and moldings provide texture.

Off the kitchen is a narrow sitting room — more TV den than parlor — which suits the young family. Bath and powder rooms, none quite the spa variety, were wedged into the tight layout.

“Dean is good at maximizing space,” Tori says.

Wall décor is limited to poster-sized art photos of the children.

A narrow flight of stairs with original banister and newel posts leads to the bedrooms — adequate but not huge. “People don’t spend time in the master bedroom anymore,” Dean reasons. But he did provide a dressing room and closets, often tiny in even spacious Southern Victorians.

At the top of the stairs a sunroom with original stained glass panels and a low table and chairs is where Levi and Josie draw and play games. “My mother used to grow flowers there,” Al says as he points to where the bedrooms had been, even remembering names of the boarders.

The house has a third floor with more bedrooms, but given its condition, Dean “left it for the ghosts.”

Except for a few old pieces, the furnishings throughout pit Ikea against Pottery Barn — sleek, tasteful, utilitarian, perfectly suited to a young family on the move. Tori boldly mixes formal upholstered dining room chairs with a rough picnic table and benches. An old railroad trolley serves as a coffee table in front of a modern sectional sofa with a side table painted pastel turquoise. Woven rugs in geometric patterns complete the casual look.

An attached double garage is, Dean admits, a necessary anachronism. He will tuck one around back, out of sight, in their next address, just down the street.

“But I’m not sure we’ll ever have a forever home,” Dean admits. Until then, “We’re living in a brand new 100-year old house . . . with good vibes.”  PS

The Happy House

A young family appreciates the old and enjoys the new

By Deborah Salomon  •  Photographs by John Gessner

In the 1940s, with the world deep in World War II, Walt Disney created Happy Valley as a Technicolor backdrop for animated films. Here, the sun forever shone, flowers bloomed, birds chirped, bunnies hopped and all was well — a remarkable resemblance to the grounds surrounding the home of Dr. Ed (dentist) and Ginger (interior designer) Monroe. Tucked out of sight on a forested Weymouth lane, the brick ranch rooted in the ’60s but now painted vanilla practically glows.

Rosie, a black Lab puppy, wiggles greetings but does not bark. The manicured grass is brilliant early-spring green, the swimming pool crystal azure and the azaleas — some from Pinehurst’s famous Clarendon Gardens — a dozen shades of pink.

Inside, 9-year-old Janie plays the piano and guitar while 5-year-old twins Charlie and Hunter construct Lego vehicles. Almost every evening the family gathers around the dining room table for dinner and conversation.

“It’s our time to regroup,” Ginger says.

This scene — quintessential feng shui — fulfills a note Ed wrote to their Realtor, when acquisition of the property seemed uncertain. He promised to “fill the house with love and laughter.”

The story of this acquisition matches the results.

“We sold our first house when Janie was 4 and I was 7 1/2 months pregnant with the twins,” Ginger begins. “We hadn’t expected to sell it in one day so we had no place to go.”

Not a pretty predicament.

“Then our Realtor called. ‘I think we found a house, but it’s not on the market yet.’” Ginger walked up and down the driveway, enchanted by the rhododendrons in bloom, hardly noticing the house. “I called Ed. His parents came and looked. I was so afraid we would lose it because somebody else was bidding.”

They made an offer which, with the help of Ed’s letter, was accepted.

Ed grew up with three brothers in a ranch house in West End, where his family has lived for 100 years. “We wanted this neighborhood; the house has a great layout for little ones.” Now, Ginger, in advanced pregnancy, faced moving into space which needed freshening and moderate renovations. “We moved in on June 4; the twins were born on July 30,” Ginger says. “By then, the work was 90 percent complete.”

She remembers feeding the babies while the range hood was being installed.

In truth, before Ginger-the-designer waved her wand, the brick ranch built in 1963 was — inside and out — quite ordinary except for an odd floorplan. Imagine, no living room. Instead, the U-shaped kitchen extended to a pine-paneled “family room” with vaulted ceiling, sliding glass doors and fireplace surrounded by built-in bookshelves. Guests could view whatever transpired in the kitchen — a preview of “great rooms” popular in the ’90s. No breakfast room, either, although the long counter has bar stools and a small multi-use table is pushed against one wall. Also missing, a master suite with spa bath/dressing room. Instead, a mother-in-law wing was added by the second owner, creating an L for Janie’s room, an office, laundry room, two children’s play areas and a guest bedroom exiting to the terrace.

Even a moat filled with alligators could not spoil this location.

Here stood the Highland Inn, which burned in the 1950s. “We still find old bricks and pottery in the ground,” Ginger says.

Weymouth, once an enclave of imposing residences built as winter homes for wealthy Northerners, is slowly recycling to younger families. On a nice day, moms in Spandex push jogging strollers along the narrow, winding streets. Historic “cottages” of the 1920s sport glamour kitchens and entertainment centers. Smaller gems like the Monroes’ are screened by pine groves.

Ginger (from Winston-Salem) and Ed (a Moore Countian) met in Charlotte, in 2004. She was familiar with the Pinehurst resort but knew little of Southern Pines. “For a small town it has such history and beauty,” which she compares to the charm of Winston’s historic residential districts. Ed wanted to establish a solo practice, easier in a familiar location. They purchased a house with tiny yard in Weymouth; after five years, given their growing family, relocating became a priority.

The Monroes are only the third owners of the house built by John Valentine, who occupied it until the 1980s. The pool is original — Ginger and Ed added a handsome wood fence — but the second owners built the L-wing. Ginger could either convert this space into a master suite or redo the kitchen. She chose the latter but opted to keep and paint the dark cabinets, replace wall-and-ceiling-mounted ones with simple shelves, enlarge a small window, push out the dividing counter, and install new countertops and appliances.

Flooring was already satiny hardwood.

The absence of a formal living room didn’t bother them at all. “The outside is our living room,” Ginger says. She brightened the dark floors, ceiling and built-ins with white-patterned rugs and white washable shabby-chic slipcovers on chairs, which stand up to three kids and a dog. A Seth Thomas clock, circa 1855, belonging to Ed’s great-grandfather, dominates the mantel, while his grandmother’s “secretary” desk anchors a corner.

Ginger loves fabrics — pillows are her trademark — using them for bursts of color everywhere, turquoise against burnt orange, bright navy awning stripes, deep money-green toile, faintly Asian reds and pink. Her showplace is the oversized dining room flooded with light from a bay window with window seat, a charming ’60s holdover. These vibrant colors, reflecting a year Ginger spent in Spain, play off her turquoise china displayed in an antique breakfront, also painted vanilla, from a consignment shop. They picked up the dining table at a yard sale.

One exception: an elegant crystal chandelier in the Paris Fern motif illuminating the front hallway.

Otherwise, Ginger admits, “We went furniture shopping at our parents’ houses.”

Somehow, this 3,000-square-foot house seems full without being cluttered. “I’m a minimalist,” Ginger continues. “Paint is the easiest and least expensive way to transform a room.”

Landscapes by local artists, family photographs and portraits line the walls, including one of the children dashing into the ocean by Ginger herself. Miraculously, she has embraced the passé architecture and décor of the ’60s, adapting it to the needs of a young family instead of moving walls. The children have ample play areas, including a room with a floor-to-ceiling world map and a raised playhouse overlooking the pool. The gracefully landscaped yard, nearly an acre, is fenced so Rosie can romp off energy. The wide veranda works well for summer entertaining. Ginger added shutters and window boxes for cottage charm. A detached double garage — what a bonus.

Ed is pleased with the result. “I kinda go along with what my bride likes,” especially since she included Woody, his cowboy mannequin floor lamp.

“The most important thing is how the house makes you feel, a warm, welcoming place,” Ginger concludes. Someday, she might replace the sliding glass with French doors, perhaps alter the footprint by extending the L, or build a proper master suite. But for now, “This is a loved house,” she says, where all is bright, all is practical, all is well and, as promised, all is happy.  PS

A Mystic Reincarnation

Letting a house speak for itself

By Deborah Salomon   •   Photographs by John Gessner and from The Tufts Archives

If only the walls could talk.

We can.

We walls surround a house now surrounded by others that once stood alone in an infant village with muddy roads and big dreams — a village which, as founder James Tufts wrote, “would attract only a refined and intelligent class of people.” Our double-decker wraparound porches were meant for sitting and watching . . . very little, at the start. Today, the world strolls by. Music and aromas fill the air. Porch chairs are occupied by progeny hungry for history.

We walls, some plaster, formerly white, now sport a rainbow of blues: blue and grey and grey-blue and teal and almost turquoise; some of us old walls remain covered in grasscloth, also painted blue. No amount of scraping, stain or polish disguises our heart pine floorboards — although carpets and rugs of all sizes, shapes, colors and provenance draw attention to their antiquity with this exception: Flooring in the back hallway comes from a longleaf pine felled recently by lightning on Pinehurst No. 2.

Our exterior shingles, once white also, are a misty gray reminiscent of haze over the Mystic River, which flowed near the Tufts residence in Massachusetts. Nobody knows why the door blazes burnt orange.

James Tufts built our Mystic in 1899 for his son Leonard who, after his father’s death in 1902, moved his growing family to Pinehurst and took over resort operations. What a mansion it was — 14 rooms, vaguely Queen Anne, designed by the same Boston architects as the Carolina Hotel. The Pinehurst Outlook described Mystic as “having steam heat, throughout with electric lights, a large steel range and cold storage for preservation of meats and vegetables.” The second floor bathroom was “fitted with the latest improvements such as sanitary plumbing, a porcelain bath tub and one set of bowls.” Also: Antique oak furniture and “rich Brussels carpets.” The Outlook further commented: “Nothing has been left to be desired. Mystic Cottage has a home-like appearance notably lacking in homes located in other winter resorts.”

Palm Beach, perhaps?

After Tufts moved across the street to Mistletoe Cottage in 1913, we were occupied by, among others, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hunter, of Berkeley, California. Mr. Hunter, described as a cranky socialist and writer, took issue with Tufts over heating bills. “You charge the extreme limit for every service you render to the people of Pinehurst. You have driven away a large number of people . . .”

But not the lady ghost, rumored to be a lovelorn poet.

Nevertheless, the resort continued to grow, to prosper, and we continued to adapt. Our walls were reconfigured into apartments, offices, a bank branch and finally, Brenda Lyne’s home décor business. Lyne installed an elevator which, though convenient, seems anachronistic to us.

Then, in 2013, not without contention, Mystic was rezoned residential and sold to Richard Moore, CEO of First Bank, and his wife, Noel — definitely “intelligent and of refined tastes.”

The walls fall silent as another voice emerges.

“I fell in love the first time I went through (Mystic Cottage) when it was still a store,” Moore says. First Bank was moving headquarters from Troy to Southern Pines. He needed a place to stay during the week. He was also a Wake Forest history major, who had rebirthed Ashburn Hall, a 19th century meeting venue near Oxford.

But, the ever-practical walls query, why live on a busy village corner instead of a quiet cul-de-sac?

“I wouldn’t have picked downtown except for this house. I was happy to put money into a landmark that would be connected to First Bank,” Moore answers.

Banker-turned-rehabilitator Moore accomplished the redesign sans architect, quite the feat considering the scope of his plans.

“There’s practically nothing original on the inside — two fireplaces, one door,” also a darling wood-paneled dormered nest on the third floor, presumably the maid’s quarters. “I tried to be creative in where we put the bathrooms,” he adds, recalling the Tuftses and their three children had one and the Moores desired six.

Or is it seven?

No matter. Their vanities — repurposed antique bureaus — make the loos as elegant as the parlors.

What Moore accomplished was a maze of sitting areas (“so everyone could have their own space”), bedrooms (none vast), recreation (billiard room, TV nooks) and a kitchen, which, in an era of culinary ballrooms, illustrates restraint. “There was no kitchen; I just took a guess.” From the coffered ceiling — which Moore devised as a “strong statement” — to the painted cabinets and breakfast room with round table and pub chairs, Moore has created a contemporary kitchen shadowing the bygone.

Just imagine, in a renovation costing many zeros, no Sub-Zero!

“I went with Sears,” Moore says.

The walls’ primary purpose, aside from loquaciousness and connecting miles of moldings, is backdropping an art collection that would wow even persnickety James Tufts. Furnishings, none heirlooms, blend in; upholstery has been kept neutral lest patterns detract from paintings. Art of multiple spectra is the Moores’ passion, if not trademark. Above the living room fireplace hangs, of all things, an original Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol.

“When my wife walked through the house she said, ‘You need Marilyn there.’ So she bought one for me.” Even walls that stare at nothing else have trouble describing gilt-framed English landscapes by Duncan Cameron and American masterpieces by Impressionist/Expressionist Jane Peterson, also Dale Nichols, in the style of Grant Wood. Yes, that is pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, also, and a Toulouse-Lautrec print, but the enlarged photos were taken by the Moores’ son, William, when he worked for the United Nations.

Times, they have a-changed. Our chatty walls must learn a new script. Or amend the old one. Because once again, Mystic Cottage hosts a family of substance and taste, who appreciate both history and now-time. Other cottages may crowd its perimeter, but the interior still boasts “the latest improvements,” more likely zoned AC and Wi-Fi than electric lights. Of an evening, Richard Moore watches the world James Tufts sought to attract go by from a porch where Leonard’s children played on rainy days.

Whither the ghost? She hasn’t been seen for years. Just as well. Marilyn might scare her to death.   PS

Southern Pines Home & Garden Tour

Mystic Cottage and five other premier area homes will be on display at the 69th annual Southern Pines Home & Garden Tour, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 8. For the first time, the tour will take place on Saturday. Also included, the public gardens at Weymouth, Campbell House and Sandhills Horticultural Gardens. An exhibit of original watercolor landscapes will be on display at Campbell House. Tickets are $20 until April 5 at Campbell House and The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, and The Woman’s Exchange in Pinehurst, or at www.southernpinesgardenclub.com. Day of tour, tickets may be purchased for $25 at the houses. Profits from garden club events fund scholarships and beautification projects.