Piazza Arriba!

Q and A with Jane Treacy of Treacy and Eagleburger Architects, PC  
By Beth Herman

Desiring a new kitchen and family room that fed into a garden space, Chevy Chase, Md. homeowners were also dealing with a deteriorating garage and non-existent backyard aesthetic. DCMud spoke with architect Jane Treacy of Treacy and Eagleburger Architects PC about reimagining the space to include a rooftop terrace—atop the garage.

DCMud: Describe the challenges of this project, which was both a renovation and new construction.

Treacy: When we came to the project—a bungalow built circa the early 1920s—there were multiple issues. These included an existing garage off the alley, which is about 8 feet down from the first floor. The yard itself was not at the exact same height as the first floor—it was reasonably higher. They wanted to keep the two-car garage, though it was falling down and popped up above grade—a bit of an albatross in the backyard/garden.

DCMud: What were the first steps?

Treacy: When we considered the family room addition, we placed it down a couple of steps so it could feed out to the garden level. We dropped the whole roof of the garage down by using a concrete slab for its roof to condense the height as much as possible and to get it to be at that same level.

DCMud: So the idea was to walk straight out and be on the roof of the garage.

Treacy: Yes, and we also terraced the stone paving over the roof. When the discussion arose about a screened porch, we decided to put it all the way at the back of the site, over the roof, and made an edge to the patio. It creates this kind of urban courtyard—a piazza. The area between the house and the screened porch is about 600 s.f. and the porch itself is 180 s.f.

DCMud: So to be clear, when you’re in the piazza with its screened porch and stone terrace, you’re on the roof of the garage.

Treacy: The terrace is half over the garage, and half over earth. So much of the design had to do with being able to pull the cars in from the alley, and then build over the top with the screen porch at the back of the terrace. There is also an enclosed stair that goes straight down into the garage.

DCMud: How did you create the family room?

Treacy: The kitchen, which we also renovated, is on the main level of the original house, and we stepped things down two steps into the family room. This allowed us to get a nice ceiling height in there—about 10 feet—and make that room very much a part of the garden space in the back. Three tall French doors with clerestory windows support the notion.

Treacy: The owners are ardent gardeners, so being able to push a really nice space into the garden as well as have a screened space out there was important. Following construction, they developed a beautiful, festive garden that integrates the space.

DCMud: You and your husband Phillip have produced such a vast body of residential work. Is there a particular D.C. architect who truly influenced you from the beginning?

Treacy: It would have to be mid-century modernist architect David Condon, who created Hollin Hills in Alexandria among other special properties. I have always been inspired by everything from his shed roofs to his fresh modern style.

A Tree Falls in Arlington

By Beth Herman It wasn't a Midwest-style twister, but a storm still powerful enough to deliver a neighboring tree to the top of an old, one-story enclosed porch addition to a post-war brick Colonial in Arlington. Sited on a busy, residential street, the home overlooks the Donaldson Run Bike Trail in the back, marked by lush vegetation and mature trees that tower over the residence despite the arbors' location on a deep incline. "The client came to us probably eight years ago, before the storm,” said Jane Treacy of Treacy & Eagleburger Architects, noting the porch was neither well insulated nor well heated, restricting the homeowners to limited use. “We did some schematic designs for making it bigger, maybe another story taller, and using the space better, but they didn’t want to do it right away.” Then three years ago, the storm wiped out the addition completely, and the phone rang. Eviscerated down to a supportive slab, the former 12-ft. wide porch was situated over a one-car garage of the same proportions, appearing almost below-grade from the front. It was accessed via a steep driveway in the back which rendered it useless in inclement weather, according to the homeowner. A decision to widen the slab to 17 feet, for a total dimension of 17-by-22 feet, resulted in its transformation to a family room, adding value and usable space to the home (the garage became storage space beneath). But the renovation’s focus was clearly skyward: to a second story. “This was just a little post war two-story box,” Treacy explained, noting there were hundreds built throughout Arlington County in the same time period. “They do make a nice scale in the front, though, and have a comfortable neighborhood feel, so we didn’t want to lose that.” To that end, and with an eye to creating a glass tree house of sorts that would appreciate the verdant view in the back, the architect made a decision to step a second story back about six feet from the new family room beneath, so as not to overpower the front of the house. Views out of this new master bedroom suite were to be directed primarily to the back, with a wall of rust-hued aluminum-clad windows and four clerestory windows –in what the architect calls an eyebrow—creating a light-inspired space. “We considered the eyebrow almost like a dormer,” Treacy said, “though not truly because a dormer is embedded in the roof.” In this home, the plane of the wall continues up and the architect “popped the roof” to accommodate it. On the interior, a flat, stained, slatted Douglas fir ceiling with recessed lighting and sconces also pops exactly where the roof does, to an apex of 11.5 feet, providing height to the moderate 16-by-17-ft. space. “The scale here is what connects you to the trees in a dramatic way,” Treacy affirmed of the project they aptly named "Rear Window." Stainless steel cable rails provide a barrier to enable the master’s French doors to safely remain open, catching a cool breeze from the adjacent forest, and also encircle a deck off the first floor family room. “I guess you could say that their hand was forced by the storm,” Treacy said of the homeowner’s ultimate decision to build the glass tree house. “Now the addition is completely integral to the house.” photos courtesy of Celia Pearson

Married to the Job, and Each Other

Answer: Margaritas and salt. Shoes and socks. Peanut butter and jelly. Question: Name things that go together unconditionally.

When DCMUD approached three area husband-and-wife architect teams about their formula for combining work and marriage, we wondered if for them, the concept was also unconditional.

Checks and Balances

For Jane Treacy and Phillip Eagleburger of Treacy & Eagleburger Architects PC, working together was a natural expression of their relationship, though marriage came four years after the professional partnership. Introduced to each other as fledgling architects by other married architects who all frequented DuPont Circle watering holes around 1985 (Treacy, who had worked in several East Coast cities, was working for Hord Coplan Macht in Baltimore and drove in for D.C.’s social life), the Eagleburger’s found that for them compatibility had many faces.
“I think it’s peculiar to the profession that architects kind of live with their work, more so than other professions,” said Eagleburger. “I think that’s why you get a lot of architects married to architects, because they understand what the situation is.”

Formed in 1989, Treacy & Eagleburger, with a staff of four, focuses primarily on regional residential projects, though their award-winning work extends to Massachusetts’ toney Cape and Islands as well. With Eagleburger preferring “edgier design,” explaining that their firm walks the line between traditional and contemporary, he is admittedly “more of a polemic,” something he attributes to his academic and jury experience. Eagleburger credits his wife’s more pragmatic style with reigning him in at all the right times, however.

Speaking to their modus operandi, Treacy explained that when a project comes in to the office, typically one principal and one staff member take it. “We do tag team things though,” she added. “We pretty much split the work: We’re both involved in the business end and in the architectural/design end, each acting as consultant” to the other principal. “We know all the time what’s going on with the other partner,” Treacy affirmed, though the client may not realize it.

At home, and even after a long day together at the office, Treacy, who often finishes her husband's sentences (the reverse is also true), said they spend a lot of their personal time together, dividing up activities, with dinner duty falling to her husband whom she concedes is “the better cook.”

“If Jane gets too involved in the kitchen, I kind of kick her out,” Eagleburger quipped, conceding that Treacy is better at cleaning.

Victoria is in the Details

Douglas and Victoria Rixey of Rixey-Rixey Architects met at University of Virginia School of Architecture just before Douglas graduated. Marrying soon after, each obtained a masters degree (Douglas from UVA and Victoria from Rice University) and worked separately for various firms such as Hartman-Cox and Bowie Gridley. Opening their own office in 1985, Douglas Rixey explained that because they’ve been working together so long, it’s no longer as hard as it may have been early on.

“At any firm, no matter how big the project, there’s really one person running that project,” he said, acknowledging that possession of one’s own project is key in their joint stewardship of the practice. That said, the opportunity for them to solicit the other’s input or critique is also invaluable.

The Rixey's, who specialize in high-end residential work and operate without a staff, pride themselves on the boutique aspect of their firm (nothing can be relegated to a junior associate, Douglas said). Both agreed Victoria is better at the details, and Douglas is more interested in the big picture.

Raised in a cutting edge Ohio home on a wooded bank designed and built by her industrial design engineer father (lots of cantilevers and soaring ceilings), Victoria said she and Douglas both love modern architecture but in their own practice in the region, gravitate toward more traditional or transitional work – and lots of it.

“Work used to be everything,” Douglas Rixey said. “And it’s just too much.’

With that in mind, the couple wraps up any discussion of the day on the trip home, talk of drawings, structure, fenestration and cost yielding perhaps to the evening’s menu and movie choices.

“That’s always been the easiest part of the relationship,” Victoria said. “There’s never been any friction related to housework, cooking, taking out the trash, laundry, any of that. It just kind of magically gets split up – I think very evenly,” she added. “We really enjoy being together all the time.”

Yours, Mine and Ours

For Elizabeth (Beth) Reader and Charles (Chuck) Swartz of Reader & Swartz Architects, PC in Winchester, Va., working together is not only a couples’ affair, but a family affair.

“Our kids (Ella, 13, and Jake, 10) get dropped off from the school bus into our office and do their homework,” Swartz said, recalling that from the earliest ages, they got their parents’ old models to glue and play with. “They go on site visits with us.”


Meeting at Virginia Tech School of Architecture and Design in 1986 and marrying the following year, Reader and Swartz returned to Winchester, the latter’s home town, briefly working in the same office together and opening their own firm, currently with a staff of five, in 1990. With a substantial number of cutting edge commercial and residential projects on their dance card, Reader and Swartz have observed a kind of manifest destiny of late in their client base: D.C. ex-patriots finding their way to areas such as Winchester, building weekend or retirement homes.

“We pretty much eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner and see each other all the time,” Swartz said of their relationship, qualifying their actions by adding that “because (they’ve) done it for so long, it doesn’t seem strange.”

According to Reader, who is credited with running more of the firm’s business side of things, she takes her work home all the time and hasn’t found a way to separate it. “Our kids even complain about it,” she admitted.

In support of his wife’s shop talk predilection, Swartz, who enjoys the casual moniker of “spiritual leader” (translation: he keeps everyone going), said he and his wife “love doing architecture and don’t know how to do anything else. We get a lot of positive stuff riding down the road,” he explained.

Close to Home

When queried about conflict, the couples wasted no time in bringing up renovations of their own homes and/or the building of their own vacation home.

“We joked that maybe we should have divided up the rooms,” Phil Eagleburger said, reflecting on a renovation of their Cleveland Park home five years ago.

“It took us nearly two years before we could even start construction,” said Douglas Rixey of the couple’s vacation home in the northern neck of Virginia, “And it wasn’t so much that we disagreed on solutions,” he added. “We just couldn’t decide.”

According to Chuck Swartz, the way he and his wife deal with disagreements is to trust and respect one another. “The bigger difficulty was when we did our own house – the client was us as married people. There were a lot of people in the room all at one time,” he said. But in the end, he realized that “together, we make a pretty good architect.”

Photography of Reader & Swartz home by Hoachlander Davis Photography, couple's portrait by Nathan Webb