Mirror, Mirror

Q&A with Steve Lawlor of Lawlor Architects

By Beth Herman

After 10 years spent raising a young family in a 2,700 s.f., three-story, circa 1905 row house in Capitol Hill, just off of Lincoln Park, the homeowners desired a change and update. But instead of undertaking a massive renovation which would have required that the family – with its three children – move out for months, they purchased an identical adjacent residence from a favorite neighbor, embarking on a plan to create the indoor/outdoor refuge they’d always wanted. Steve Lawlor of Lawlor Architects was at the helm.

DCMud: What compelled the homeowners to essentially purchase their old home all over again?

Lawlor: They got the second house exactly for that reason—because they were familiar with it. It’s a mirror image of the house that they were living in, but this new house could be the clean slate they wanted. Unfortunately, the former owners were smokers and hadn’t done much maintenance for years. There was a lot of remedial work that had to be done: Water was getting in and had damaged a lot of the structure in the rear…it needed a new life regardless of who moved in there. It was really on its last legs.

DCMud: Describe the client’s wish list.

Lawlor: They wanted to have three bedrooms, including a master suite, and two full baths on the top floor. The original house had three bedrooms and one bath. We also moved the laundry upstairs, but to the second floor where they wanted some creature comforts. Then on the first floor, they wanted a big entertaining area—an open kitchen/dining room space. They liked to cook, liked the outdoors and wanted to animate the space with natural light.

DCMud: Given the period in which it was built, what did the first floor look like before?

Lawlor: You couldn’t see through the house for all the walls. Coming in through the main entrance, some strange diagonal wall pushed you off. Artificial fire places—part of a renovation at one time or another— abounded that were purely decorative; there were no elements to warm the home. We realigned all the openings in the house so that when you walk in (it’s a side entrance), we made a vestibule with coat closet and cubbies in which to put books, shoes, mail and more to organize. After you come in, you’re reoriented to the center of the house. We made a long, visual access that slices through the entire house so that at any point, you can look east or west and see the outdoors. Light penetrates deep into the house and you have that connection to the outside. It helps bring the house to life.

DCMud: What about the materials?

Lawlor: Some of the flooring is reclaimed heart pine. The kitchen is American cherry, and the island’s countertop is reclaimed white oak wood joists from a Wisconsin barn. The kitchen floor is cork, a renewable material, and the room is warmed by hydronic radiant heating which, with all the glass, makes it very comfortable.

DCMud: With outdoor space at such a premium in this neighborhood, in what other ways did you open the space to light and air?

Lawlor: Part of the whole manifest destiny of this house was to try to bring the outdoors into the house. Most row houses have very little outdoor space. This house occupied 80 percent of the lot, as opposed to a more typical 60 percent. With little backyard space, on the lower level (basement) floor we eroded the rear walls, installed new windows, and made brick openings. We designed a staircase that descends from the new kitchen down to the new terrace below, with the terrace accessed through the basement in which we lowered the floor and increased the ceiling height. A polished and stained concrete slab with radiant heat created a hard surface yet a warm surface at the same time. A family room with TV and library/guest room which opens onto the terrace is where they spend a lot of their time. Big French doors—actually we made the home’s old pocket doors into sliding barn doors—are used to isolate the space when guests are there. We really decided to make the downstairs as desirable a destination as the upstairs for this house.

DCMud: Speaking of desirable destinations, is there a part of the District you covet more than others?

Lawlor: I've lived in Capitol Hill for 26 years by design. My office is here. There are other parts of the city that are great, but Capitol Hill is the most modern historic area. All the things people try and put into an urban setting - access; walkability; public transportation - are here in what is essentially a small town in the middle of a big city.

An Addition Less Ordinary

by Beth Herman

Though art aficionados and friendly Francophiles Margaret Rubino and Sal Fiorito wanted more for their standard brick post war Chevy Chase, Md. home, an addition that spoke precisely the same language was not—in parlance of the country they adore—de rigueur.

Defying their standard two-story, 1,200 s.f. Colonial brick issue with a series of small rooms, including an inefficient kitchen also acting as a kind of hallway—a deterrent to their love of food and entertaining, Rubino, Fiorito and architect Steve Lawlor envisioned a kind of colossal glass room with a view, or perhaps two views.

One would extend outward to nature and the couple’s lush gardens, and the other, inherently more poetic, would foster an appreciation of an eclectic, intimate collection of the couple’s cherished art and objects. With all of that, the homeowners did seek some integration of the existing and new structures so that the addition wasn’t isolated “like an appendage,” Rubino said. Much like a disparate, though pleasurable piece of art categorized as mixed media, there needed to be cohesion between the elements.

Accordingly, a faux-Colonial fireplace was replaced with a gleaming marble surround, and openings between the rooms on the ground floor were notably enlarged so the inside of the house felt much more modern in light of the addition, Rubino explained. With Fiorito’s background in glasswork and architectural sculpture, an architectural glass front door he designed for the existing Colonial replaced a tired, traditional entrance, flanked by flush, contemporary porch lighting.

Mapplethorpe, machines and minestrone

“The addition itself is a reaction to the post war house—it’s not like we were trying to extract its DNA—we are playing off the house,” said architect Steve Lawlor. Referencing Leo Marx’s 1964 literary criticism “The Machine in the Garden,” a metaphor for contradictions in society and challenges to our own thinking or interior landscapes, Lawlor indicated the new space was to be a paean to the homeowners' unconventional tastes and ideals.

For globe-trekking interior and garden designer Rubino, owner of D.C.’s—and pre-9/11 NYC's—Rooms and Gardens (featuring early 20^th century French antiques, vintage and other kinds of French furnishings, art and garden art), a kitchen/gallery space in which to relax, entertain and quietly showcase decades of cherished art was the goal. Objects that included sculpture — such as polychrome bloody saint’s feet found in Paris, furnishings and photography(Rubino’d been photographed herself by Robert Mapplethorpe) featuring a Jim Sanborn radium clock image — clearly needed a platform, albeit an informal one. For Fiorito, a driving force for many years behind Washington’s emerging and burgeoning art scene, including the pioneering Washington Project for the Arts (WPA), a place to showcase his art collection as well as his love of cooking was high on the agenda.

Siting the new construction at the rear, the original living and dining rooms (the latter subsequently turned into a study) were left in the existing part of the residence, with the living room wall bumped out for a more fluid entry into the new space. The old kitchen became a side entrance, transformed into a mudroom and transitional point to the rest of the house. With the addition conceived of as one large space, a new terrace for al fresco dining can be accessed through ceiling-height glass doors that open to the outdoors.

Defined by sweeping glass and clad in low-maintenance Galvalume (sheet steel) siding and stucco, which worked well with the new space’s massing, the stark contrast to the existing structure’s nondescript brick is apparent. “Hardiplank or wood wouldn’t have looked right, and stone didn’t fit in with the aesthetic they were interested in,” Lawlor said.

Pendant lights and partial nudes

For the interior, the homeowners chose the finishes, and Fiorito built and/or installed them, including marble countertops, ipe flooring and a combination of stained, rift-cut wood and high-gloss lacquered cabinets. White walls act as a clean canvas. “It’s intended to be a relatively minimal palette to showcase the art,” Lawlor said, adding, “…it’s hard for me to tell in this project where the architecture ends and the interior design begins.”

Amiably called “provocative” in everything they do by the architect, the homeowners acquired a life-sized semi-nude (named Tanya) by photographer Chan Chao, featuring the result on a divided pantry door that projects into the space. “A partially-clad woman in the kitchen isn’t for everybody, but it’s exactly them,” Lawlor said, noting because most everything else is built in, the pantry door’s three-dimensional aspect makes it a real focal point.

“I can’t have full frontal nudity in the kitchen,” Rubino quipped, because of their young son. “But she’s actually more compelling the way she is.”

To court the sun and extend the addition’s vistas, fixed floor-to-ceiling light-cut windows, but with operable units at the bottom for ventilation, frame the garden as art.

When the sun goes down, eight Ko No aluminum pendant lights by Tre Ci Luce—six over the marble island and two over the kitchen table—that are lowered and raised manually provide ample task lighting on day-to-day activities. Additional low voltage recessed track lighting is “aim-able,” according to Lawlor, and can be directed toward the table, floor, walls or wherever favorite art and objects would benefit.

“The addition is probably more in the spirit of who the homeowners are than is the original house,” Lawlor said, noting the couple’s art is not just randomly collected, but infused with history and personal memories. “They wanted something different, something big and loft-like—an open space in which they can live with their art and feel comfortable.”

photos courtesy of Maxwell MacKenzie and Margaret Rubino

Virtue and Vroom! for Old Victorians

By Beth Herman

For Principal Steve Lawlor of Lawlor Architects, melding the old and new is little like architectural alchemy and a lot more than just a profession.

“If someone had said to me 20 years ago I was going to have a boutique practice focusing on modern work in historic houses, I’d have been surprised,” said Lawlor, affirming over time the work has become a great passion. “Older houses require a certain knowledge of how to work in them effectively,” he said, speaking to elements such as inadequate structural components and sub-par brick. “They have little sleights of hand; you learn how these people built houses and that informs what you can do to them going forward.”

Concentrating largely on Capitol Hill, Lawlor identified a 4,400 s.f. five-bedroom (plus au pair’s room), four-bath 1870s row house initially designed as a single family residence and later turned into apartments. Purchased by the client in deteriorated condition with the intent to restore it to single family status, the architects confronted a quantity of “cellular” rooms—certainly unconnected in theme.

“As with houses of this era, there was no coherent message or design narrative taken all the way through,” Lawlor said, citing historical thinking that gave each room four immutable walls. But by the same token, if artifacts are in good condition and can be preserved, the challenge is to contrast them with new elements creating a tension between old and new, he said. “I find that really satisfying—you can’t do that in a new house.”

Before work began, the house had become three apartments in the “darkest, dimmest, grimmest kind of place,” Lawlor recalled. Boasting a beautiful façade, maintenance had nevertheless been ignored just about everywhere.

Demolishing walls that had defined the building’s public spaces, abundant light was on the architects’ short list and ultimately achieved in an otherwise brooding space, according to Lawlor. An opening was created between the formerly closed-off entry and a 22-foot now combined living/dining space to the right. A largely concealed staircase was allowed to breathe, and a contemporary kitchen replaced a choppy full bath, bedroom, closet and small porch.

In opening up the home, the team was able to maintain all of the ceiling’s original plaster work, which included delicate rosettes, and also its fireplaces. Fluted columns, though contemporary, were installed to capture the spirit of the original house. A modern color palette was employed, and everything opened up to the brand new rear kitchen with sustainable materials such as bamboo and a light-filled exposure that was basically an entirely glazed wall. In this space, a new ceiling was covered with a wood panel that angles up.

In deference to the classic plaster ceiling design that pervades much of the home, the architects jettisoned the idea of recessed lighting for a suspended track. The result gives the space a gallery-like feel with the added benefit of illuminating walls that display the homeowner’s artwork.

“You have this old ceiling and these very pristine, technical lights playing off of that vintage look,” Lawlor said.

In the row house’s master suite, the historic fabric was preserved in crown molding that encircles the space. Old heart pine doors (with added hardware) and floors were also retained, and the architects put in contemporary bead board wainscoting to pull the room together but with an old-time feel. Because ceilings in the home range from 10 to 11 feet in height, the goal was to control the various rooms’ scale with elements like wainscoting so they don’t feel like “massive train tunnels,” Lawlor quipped.

Bricks and brightness

In another Capitol Hill row house, this one circa 1890, an addition that eclipsed the size of the original three-story home was on the agenda, something unusual for a DC historic district. Owning the home for 15 years before embarking on the renovation, the couple engaged Lawlor Architects to update and create more space, resulting in a contemporary and light-filled environment.

“In a renovation like this, what we often do is work on an addition but also work on the old interior at the same time, so that the entire house has a consistent level of attention. This way it doesn’t feel as though all the money was spent in just one area,” Lawlor said.

In a great juxtaposition of historic and modern, the addition incorporated the five-bedroom, four-bath home’s rear wall brick exterior into a brand new interior stairwell, balcony and window that looks out into the new space. A large skylight frames the top of the stairwell, illuminating the texture of the old brick and channeling light to the middle of the house.

According to Lawlor, 80 percent of the work was addressed the rear addition, which included the stairwell, as the façade was strictly regulated by historic district parameters.

Victorians and views

Also on Capitol Hill, in a project the architects aptly call “historic modern,” a similar-era two-story 2,500 s.f. row house was broken into two projects: a two-story addition where the back wall was bumped out to accommodate, and a one-story addition on top. Purchased some years back by newlywed homeowners sans children, while they appreciated the Victorian’s historic vernacular, a desire to “shake it up a bit” was precipitated by a growing family, said Lawlor.

With the husband working from home, the third floor addition became an office, embracing natural light and sweeping views that include rooftops and parts of the city.

Preserving artifacts where possible, the ground floor was renovated to include a new master suite, and a brand new kitchen linked old and new with a long bamboo dropped ceiling running its entire 32-foot length. Though walls around the staircase were peeled back, “…we left the stair hall, fireplace, railings, treads, risers, newel posts, balusters and front living room more or less intact with windows that frame the street,” Lawlor said, but the homeowners also wanted a space that was not the main family area of the house. To that end, everything past the living room was rearranged, reimagined and looks nothing like it did.

“You walk in this house, which (from the facade) looks like all the other houses around it—like a very respectful Victorian,” Lawlor said, referencing the “long tongue” of a wood ceiling with recessed and pendant lighting visible from the entry.

“It’s the element of surprise in working with these old houses, and you hope that every project has one. These houses can have brand new lives and personalities.”

Photos courtesy of Stacy Zarin-Goldberg