Bethesda Americana Redux!

By Beth Herman

In literature it’s been said that the real measure of mastery is when the individual becomes inseparable from the act, as when the dancer becomes the dance, or the musician is indistinguishable from the sound he produces.

For antiques dealer/restorer and interior designer Marilyn Hannigan, former owner of Dupont Circle's Cherishables Antiques, creating a four-level home addition for her and commercial real estate developer husband, John, was to be much more than just another example of her work. Like the dancer or musician, it would become synonymous with a life steeped in coveted Americana.

Purchasing their two-story 1,060 s.f. Edgemoor post war Colonial Revival-style residence in 1971, at the time the house was emblematic of their close Bethesda enclave. Now within a block of the community’s burgeoning, bustling cafes, bookstores and upscale shopping, homes in the area are considered prime real estate and are almost unrecognizable from their nascent forms, according to architect Michael Callison who helmed the multi-storied renovation. In fact the Hannigans had more than a typical update in mind.

Undergoing three earlier incarnations that expanded the home's footprint to 3,066 s.f. and involved the kitchen, living room, a bedroom and the home’s façade, an addition had been built on a concrete slab consisting of only a first and second level (the old basement and attic were restricted to the original space). Under Callison’s baton, the homeowners desired to extend their existing basement to match the home’s addition-created footprint, turning the below-grade results into a combination antiques gallery and entertainment space for their large dinner parties. What’s more, a new master bedroom suite was desired on an upper level, and above that the old attic atop the post war part of the home needed to expand into a newly-created, essentially fourth level space, creating a dormer-crowned home office with a bird’s eye view for John.

“There was no way to do any of this when you’ve got something built on a concrete slab,” Callison said, also citing the former addition’s inadequate under 8-foot ceilings, for which an additional foot was mandated. “We ended up tearing it all down and starting over.”

Molding, mantles and muscles

With the home’s Colonial Revival architecture and Marilyn Hannigan’s penchant for all things Americana, traditional, classical design details were imminent for the wood-sided, brick-based addition. In the new living and dining rooms, crown molding and substantial Adams casing—a 3½-inch wide wood casing—for doors and windows make a bold, muscular statement. “While honoring the residence’s style, we were trying to bring up the personality of the former house from the way it was originally built,” Callison said.

In the living room, an early 19^th Century hand carved mantle with acanthus leaves, dentil molding, carved ovals and quarter fans frames a limestone fireplace, with an equally elegant antique grey/green mantle—it’s the original paint, according to Hannigan—featuring elaborate moldings in the dining room.

A connoisseur of old calligraphy, Hannigan found a 19^th Century signed and dated eagle from Pennsylvania that frames the fireplace.

“Penmanship was so important in the 19^th Century,” she explained, adding it was taught out of hotel rooms, bank buildings, etc. As it became more detailed, contests were held for bird drawing with awards. “It’s called ‘flourish drawing’ so the pen never stops,” she said. Another flourish drawing in the hall features a bevy of birds: swans; eagles; a love bird; a nest, signed and dated 1885.

Inspired by illustrations of the natural environment with another home on the Eastern Shore, the homeowners display a grouping of duck prints by Alexander Pope (the artist: 1849-1924, not the essayist and poet: 1688-1744) at the base of the addition’s staircase, as well as various Audubon prints in the living room. Delicate early 20^th Century feather-like sconces appear in the dining room, which Hannigan said she’d never seen before despite decades in the antiques arena.

A serving table from history’s Sheridan period, a mahogany tea table, 19^th Century armchairs painted with gold leaf, a 19^th Century tall case clock and a small vanity from the same era stenciled with fruit complement the room with its floor-to-ceiling double-hung arched windows.

Stairs, sprigs and sunlight

Where flooring is concerned, 3-inch white oak boards in the living and dining spaces, as well as in the below-grade gallery, are reflected in a prominent stair banister, which Hannigan said was initially slated for a cherry stain. “We saw the flooring and just had to do (the banister) the same way,” she said, referencing warmth and color.

In the dining room, the homeowner’s collection of Sprig China redolent of Jefferson's at Monticello features green sprigs with blue and a smidge of red in the center of its flowers. Enamored of the pattern, Hannigan recreated the sprig element in a band that encircles the room on the white oak flooring. A mahogany Sheridan-to-Empire period banquet table with twisted legs circa 1830 creates the right foundation for the china.

According to Callison, while an elevator was installed that traverses all four levels, the robust stair was designed to descend from the main living space up to the master suite and down to the gallery level, bathed in considerable light from a bank of windows. To maintain the profusion of sunlight in the subterranean environment, a large 12-by-16-foot well redolent of a patio courts light inside. Because its walls are high, Hannigan created a custom covering and uses the illuminated well space as an additional room.

Dreams, drawer pulls and dormers

In the 18-by-18-foot third level master bedroom, a painted wicker headboard, club chair, country sofa table, Sheridan period birds eye maple chest and shutters create a comfortable oasis. His and hers master baths include elements such as limestone flooring, limestone wainscoting and glass shower stalls, and in her bath a vaulted ceiling crowns a generous oval-top mirror created by architect Callison, who is also a furniture designer.

Though not officially part of the addition, walls for what was formerly a utilitarian kitchen were bumped out two feet, and Montgomery Kitchen and Bath was called in to partner in Callison’s warm country kitchen-style transformation. Punctuated by soft, recessed lighting, pendant lights, strong molding and fine design details such as drawer pulls in the form of clock faces, a decorative laser-carved tile element behind the stove was created by Bethesda’s Bartley Tile Concepts.

Mentored and employed for 23 years by visionary James Rouse who’d created Columbia, Maryland, later on under the auspices of Federal Realty Investment Trust John Hannigan helped build California’s toney Santana Row and also Bethesda Row. His new home office sits atop the addition in what is considered the fourth — or extended attic — level. Its three classical but buoyant dormers afford him a handy view from the top, both literally and figuratively.

“They almost doubled the size of the existing home to 5,382 s.f. with the new addition,” said Callison, who’d previously undertaken a 20-year transformation of his own Chevy Chase residence. “They ended up with a brand new house.”

Photo credit: Rey Lopez

Mr. Callison Builds His Dream House

By Beth Herman


Clearly architects, film buffs and maybe a few former Hollywood civilians, such as I, know the Cary Grant classic (see story title) by a similar name, where unwitting advertising executive Jim Blandings, wedged into a cramped NYC apartment with his family, takes leave of his home and his senses when purchasing a deeply plagued fixer upper in the hinterlands of post-war Connecticut.

For D.C. residential architect and furniture designer Michael Callison, the idea of renovating his own 1,000 s.f. two-bedroom 1922 Chevy Chase Arts and Crafts bungalow catalogue kit house, conceived in the style of the Sears catalogue houses of its day, may have seemed less of a challenge at the outset than Cary Grant’s, given Callison’s profession. However the 20-year-long road to renovation – a voyage from what the architect called “self-conscious design” all the way to an epiphanic result that would essentially let the house simply stretch and breathe –was purely unanticipated, the process kindling a brand new architect. In the end, the emergence of a four bedroom, four bath, 2,200 s.f. home that entirely preserved the original structure’s character was a journey, Callison said, that transformed the way he practices architecture.

Citing 20 years’ worth of sketches to augment his own bungalow, the renovation process is something Callison had explained to clients many hundreds of times, advising them to move in to a newly purchased house and live with the property to develop a master plan before making any changes. But where his own home was concerned, in addition to fabricating a master plan, the architect said it took two decades to work through preconceived notions he’d acquired training as an architect in the modernist tradition.

“The thinking (in that vein) is to express your ideas as an architect, regardless of what the house is,” he said, revealing that he and others grapple with the idea of “showing the neighborhood – the rest of the world – what a clever architect you are. I had to get to the point where I was really more sensitive to what the house was telling me,” he said of his very personal discovery. “The style of the house; the lines of the house -there’s that vital symbiosis between innovation and tradition.”

Stock in Band-Aids

Purchasing the home in 1987, Callison and wife Caitrine Curley-Callison, a professional potter and owner of D.C. women’s consignment store Secondi, immediately recognized that among many things, the property needed a rear addition, something then unaffordable to the young couple. “It was a small, one-story house with two bedrooms and one bath (plus a non-functioning semblance of a bathroom in the basement), a low-slung roof, as well as a rickety, disheveled sleeping porch on the back,” Callison explained. With little money to spare, the Callisons began what would become a two-decade long transformation by returning from work each night to chip away at the kitchen floor with a paint scraper, digging for mystery material beneath the decimated linoleum. When a pine floor ultimately emerged, the couple salvaged the best boards, hidden under the cabinets, and reused them for the kitchen remodel which Callison did with his own hands.

“I’m an architect and furniture designer, not a furniture maker,” he said of the kitchen cabinets he eventually crafted, noting it was a learning process in which he taught himself carpentry. “The kitchen took about a year to do and I used a little table saw in the back yard,” he said, also applying beadboard pine panels to the space, a theme eventually carried into attic space-turned-guest bedroom and the original bathroom.

Also where the original bathroom was concerned, Callison said the previous owners apparently had a proclivity for showering without a curtain, so all of the plaster had collapsed. Over time, structural and other practical aspects firmly in place, the couple decorated in part by incorporating a picture frieze around the space with a rail that supported old Polaroids from a personal collection.

Residential CPR

With other catalogue bungalows in the neighborhood consisting of rooms that were chopped and tiny, Callison said his home’s spatial sequence was quite favorable and in fact the living room traversed the entire width of the house. Similar to the large dining room, it had multiple windows creating a light-filled, casual environment something like a beach house. An unattractive but functioning fireplace in the living room was lowered and faced with marble mosaic tiles in the Arts and Crafts tradition. Wearing his somewhat more evolved carpenter’s hat at that point, the architect built cabinets on either side of the fireplace, along with a coat closets flanking windows and an electronic cabinet, wooden arch and window seat as well.

Constructing a great room and master bedroom suite – Callison hired general contractor Jorge Euceda-Rios for the major part of the renovation – and in deference to the Arts and Crafts style original that “had its own set of rules,” the architect decided that altering the roofline to build both spaces would not honor the classic bungalow. “My clients generally want a new kitchen that opens to a family space, and above that space they want the master suite,” he said, which wasn’t conceivable for his own home. Finding a way to “tuck it (the master suite) into the roof was the difficulty,” said Callison, with the suite ultimately built on the lower level, in place of the walkout basement, and with added floor-to-ceiling windows for a sense of openness and connectivity to the outside. Located beneath the new great room that was added when the rickety porch, which had blocked access to the yard, was demolished, the master suite became an oasis for the homeowners with a new 360-bottle wine cellar conceived on the same level.

“We telescoped the roof to do this,” Callison said. “In other words if you’d grabbed the edge of the old roof – just pulled it back towards the rear yard – that’s what we did to (accommodate) the addition.” And because the ceiling of the great room–which Callison calls the lodge room because it reflects the great lodges where he’s stayed as a fly fisherman–soared to about 15 feet as it absorbed some of the old attic space, turning what should be a warm, comfortable room into one that may overwhelm, Callison borrowed an idea from the dining room which utilizes molding around the perimeter at the ¾ level. The color above matches the ceiling, and the color below is darker, he said. “It’s a lot of interesting detail for almost no money–a way to take a large space and hold down the scale of the room, as well as connect it to the rest of the house.” Back in the dining room, the architect also retained the services of Barbara Billet of Billet Collins Decorative Painting Studios to paint a frieze that he created around the room. A flower design predicated on a Victorian stencil pattern, the frieze encircles the room with the exception of one special panel containing a passage about fishing, written by Caitrine’s father, an author. And in place of the Longleaf Pine flooring still in the original house, with an eye toward sustainability, Mountain Lumber Co. in Ruckersville, Va., specialists in reclaimed wood, used salvaged beams from an old Maryland barn for the great/lodge room floor.

Gilding the Defibrillator

“The house is a very simple, casual, unornamented bungalow, so over time my attempts on the inside were not to cross the line,” Callison reflected, adding that the objective, in addition to preserving the exterior character, was to find a way to breathe life into it with elements such as built-ins and friezes.

Professing that the project changed him a lot, Callison said every residential architect that comes out of school wants to do a Frank Gehry-style addition, but there are choices to be made. “The reality is that you can promote yourself by doing something everybody notices and sees as a signature design, or you can try and make the house a really good neighbor, working with the original structure, adding to the community by careful design.”

Washington DC real estate news

Of Clocks and Claro Walnut

Despite a 30-year career focused largely on high end D.C. residential architecture, Michael Callison belies the image of the frenetic, laced up, buttoned up, urban practitioner. For him, pretense is not an option.

With an admitted “holistic approach to architecture,” the relaxed and circumspect Callison projects a kind of warm, homegrown though confident image, one that resonates both in his residential designs and his custom furniture.

“I’m as concerned about the garden and the furniture as I am about the architecture,” Callison said, which he adds is a kind of philosophy many architects have had over time. Referencing aptly-named “father of landscape architecture” Frederick Law Olmsted, who, Callison said, embodied holistic design, he maintains that everything in the environment is part of the design. “When Olmsted was helping with the Chicago Exposition (Midway Plaisance for the 1893 Colombian Exposition), he was concerned about the color of the boats that were in the pond. So that’s the level of detail that’s always attracted me to residential architecture, and furniture design is just a natural result,” Callison explained.

In the Beginning

With that in mind, Callison’s furniture begins with the design of the home itself. “You don’t just get to a point (with the client) and roll out a portfolio,” he said. “It (furniture) is site specific: The environment that’s being created will speak to a kind of furniture that’s appropriate.” Inherent in the project’s genesis for Callison is to explore the client’s own desires, and then pull everything together. “It also has to be more than reproduction, because what I do is not reproduction,” he said. “It’s about understanding the tradition of the design style well enough to add to it.”

An illustration of the process is a Tudor-style house in Wesley Heights on which Callison has worked over time. Inspired by the English Arts and Crafts style exemplified by British architect Charles Voysey (1869-1951), as well as the work of Scottish architect Charles Rennie MacKintosh (1868-1928), Callison designed a 7’3” grandfather clock which he explained is a “sort of mashing of their styles, where I found places for a little bit of originality.” Where MacKintosh’s work tends to be angular and rigid, Callison elected to create a more sensuous shape for the clock, which he indicated reflects its location in the house. Sustainable in its use of weights and pulleys as opposed to requiring electricity, the clock was a birthday gift from the wife to her husband and complemented – by virtue of its origins – a china hutch Callison had previously designed for the homeowners.

In the Wood

Working with Vermont transplants and master craftsmen Crawford C. Hubbard and P. Fife Hubbard of Hubbard Cabinetmakers in rural Butler, Md., who Callison says really understand the tradition of furniture making, the architect further develops and augments his designs (the clock and china hutch specifically) by choosing appropriate materials. He calls that aspect of the process “really fascinating,” recalling that because English Arts and Crafts furniture was often made of walnut, Fife Hubbard had presented him with something called claro walnut which has a rich northern California history. “The particular claro walnut we used for the clock was instrument grade, which is the top of the top,” Callison said. “When a board looks really good with a lot of nice checkered, wavy grain in it, they’ll set it aside for making fiddles and things like that.”

In his Head

“People become architects for different reasons,” Callison said, speaking to great inspirations. “Mine has been that I really enjoy making things, including making furniture, crafting interior spaces, and designing door hardware.” Crediting his proclivity for furniture design to years of working with interior designers such as Mary Douglas Drysdale, whose dance card includes more than 100 pieces of custom furniture, Callison revealed that in his sophomore year of college an overall aptitude test had placed him “off the charts on the bad side.” However his art aptitude “was also off the charts,” he quipped, “but on the good side.” Architecture seemed like a logical progression of his talent.

Though creating furniture is a great passion, Callison affirms he’s “an architect first.” Noting that furniture “is a small, specific thing,” and he embraces the opportunity to master the precision involved in chair height, for example (the difference between a seat that is 15 inches or 17 inches can mean immeasurable discomfort), he defines architecture as “bigger, involving a site; a neighborhood.” Furniture, however, is faster, he explained. “In architecture, you design something one year and in another it’s done. Furniture is done in six months. Having an opportunity to go back on a smaller scale that you can actually get your hands around is very satisfying to me.”