Category: Hot Properties

If you can’t follow Robert Browning’s advice to “be in England, Now that April’s there,” you might try a leisurely drive through Hein Park, which at this time of year is much like an English village with its winding lanes and meadow-like green expanses. The area was originally a dairy farm, part of which was sold for the campus of Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College). In 1923, the Hein, Mette, and Gerber families, who owned the Memphis Steam Laundry and the John Gerber Department Store, began selling lots subdivided from the property. They called the area Hein Park and wanted the development to have a broad socioeconomic mix. Lots sold from $500 to $16,000, and houses ranged from cottages to mansions.

Hein Park was one of many streetcar suburbs developed within or adjacent to the Parkways during the early 1900s, but its curving streets and deep front yards distinguished it from most other subdivisions with grids and houses set close to the street. Its design is a fine example of the City Beautiful movement, which was greatly influenced by the 18th-century English Romantic and Picturesque landscape movements. While there is a great variety of architectural styles in Hein Park, the Tudor Revival is predominant.

This Tudor Revival cottage has all the hallmarks of the style: a multitude of steep gable roofs, a prominent chimney, half-timbering, groups of small-paned windows, and masonry walls, in this case stone and stucco. The front door, made of stout boards bound by heavy strap hinges, looks like the entrance to a medieval fortress. The entry hall has a coat closet with a diamond-paned slit window through which you can see the porch and front yard. One end of the large living room is entirely open to a sunroom with French doors that lead to a side garden and patio.

The living and dining rooms are joined by a wide archway. Off the dining room is an unusually large breakfast room which has its original built-in china cupboard. The breakfast room, kitchen, and front entry have quarry tile floors. The kitchen has lots of cabinets as well as a pantry. The work areas are perfectly adequate, but the space could be easily expanded by combining the kitchen and its adjoining utility room/back-entrance hall. Remodeling to convert a back bedroom to a family room connected to the kitchen would create a “great room” with access to the pool terrace.

A long, wide hallway runs through the center of the house. Three bedrooms, the kitchen, a bath, and the stairs to the finished attic are ranged along the hall. The house still has many of its original details, including a tiny telephone niche and radiator covers with a faux bois finish to match the red-gum woodwork.

The original master bedroom downstairs has two sets of corner windows overlooking the back garden and pool terrace. It also has its own bath. A second master suite upstairs has a huge, sky-lit bath and a series of spaces which could be used as bedrooms, home office, or walk-in closets and dressing rooms.

The deep lot is not immense, but it has been intensively developed. The front lawn is a lush swath of green leading to the broad, open front porch. The foundation plantings around the porch spill out to the side yards. One side has the driveway; the other has a path that leads around to a garden that runs the length of the house and connects to the pool terrace, a fenced area that is surrounded by dense shrubs and specimen plants. The pool house forms one end of the pool terrace and adjoins the garage. This truly charming cottage is one of the reasons why Hein Park is one of Memphis’ great neighborhoods. n

685 Cypress Drive

3,300 square feet

4 bedrooms, 3 baths; $285,000

Agent: Susan Overton

Realtor: Re/Max Elite of Memphis

Agent: B.J. Worthy

685-6000, 754-5177

During the first quarter of the 20th century, America was swept up in a veritable bungalow craze. Advertised as “simple but artistic homes” for people of modest means, bungalows could be built for $500 to $5,000, affordable for a broad segment of the population. This type of single-family house with its own lawn offered style, convenience, and respectability — the fulfillment of the American dream. Bungalows and the bungalow lifestyle were zealously promoted in The Ladies Home Journal, Gustav Stickley’s Craftsman, and Bungalow Magazine. These publications included plans, elevations, details, and advice on appropriate gardens and interior decoration. They also featured poems and songs, including (really, I’m not making this up) “In the Land of the Bungalow” and a waltz, “Bungalow Love-Nest,” extolling the pleasures and benefits of life in a bungalow.

Memphis, like many other American towns that boomed in the early 20th century, has acres of bungalows, most of them built to accommodate the burgeoning middle-class population. This stone and stucco house on Linden, in the area once known as the Town of Idlewild, is a bungalow to sing about. At some time it was divided into three apartments, but it has now been sensitively restored as a single-family house. A deep porch with stone piers and a closed stone balustrade provides an outdoor living room that is somewhat screened from view. Unlike many bungalows, this one has a symmetrical facade with the front door in the center and banks of triple windows to either side. The front door has a grid of beveled-glass lights in its upper portion and is original to the house. A broad shed dormer is centered above the door.

The living and dining rooms occupy the entire front of the house. A sense of foyer is created by a columnar screen with box piers that separates the entry area from the dining room. Both rooms have robust box beams on the ceiling. The breakfast room between the dining room and kitchen has a bay window with leaded diamond panes and still has its original built-in cupboard. The original hardware found throughout the first floor, such as sash-lifters, door escutcheons, and bin pulls on the breakfast-room cabinet, is copper — a quintessential Craftsman material that seldom survives.

The kitchen has been completely remodeled and has all new cabinets and appliances. A laundry room was added off the kitchen. A former bedroom had a wall removed, opening it to the kitchen and creating a den with a new corner fireplace. A broad deck connects an addition similar to the laundry room on the other side of the house, reflecting the symmetry of the front facade and providing space for a full bath with a whirlpool tub, a separate shower, and a linen closet. This new bath adjoins the downstairs master bedroom.

The stair to the second floor is under a broad arch opposite the front door in a cross hall in the middle of the house. The original bathroom, with claw-foot tub and pedestal lavatory, is at the end of the hall.

The second floor has a long hallway with numerous closets and enough room for a study or seating area at one end. The three bedrooms and a full bath are all large and pleasantly bright, but the prime space is definitely the center room with its five dormer windows. Each bedroom has plenty of closet space, not the usual walk-in closets but something more like “wander-around-in” closets with cavernous, irregular spaces formed by the odd nooks and crannies of the attic.

This restored bungalow is a great example of the houses that inspired such a devoted following in the early 20th century and are now enjoying a strong revival.

1959 Linden Avenue

2,700 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths; $234,900

Agent: Susan Overton, Realtor: The Neilson Group, 818-3230

Another shotgun. Well, where else can a single person or even a
young couple find a first home with a monthly note equal to the money you
spend in rent? Once you’ve plunged into home ownership, that monthly note
starts to build equity. Four or five years down the road, after you’ve paid
down the note and the house has increased in value, both of those sums add up
to equity, which allows you to trade up to a bigger house. It’s a double-
barreled approach to increase your net worth. But first you gotta buy a
house.

Sadly, few developers in Memphis are building starter homes under
$100,000. Signs advertise starter homes today beginning at $130,000. That’s a
mouthful for your first bite. New construction is currently all about how much
house can be built on how little land. While it’s increasing profits for the
developer, it’s not always increasing possibilities for new home owners.
Hence, two shots in a row — last and this week’s “Hot Properties”
column — about shotguns, the preeminent starter home.

Cooper-Young has been an area where, for the past 15 years, young
people could buy a well-maintained home that hadn’t been renovated and for a
good price. But even here the pickin’s are getting slimmer. This shotgun sits
only one block from the epicenter of this booming neighborhood, a block just
east of Cooper and filled end to end with shotguns. Many are still rental
properties, but occasionally one comes on the market.

This one was fully renovated four years ago. An original garage
behind the house sat right on the rear alley. It has been opened up to double
as a covered garden pavilion, but a new garage door flush with the rear fence
line also provides secure, covered parking. A brick and flagstone path through
the sunny landscaped backyard leads to the rear porch.

The kitchen and bath are located, as they would have been
historically, in the back. You enter the kitchen via a partially latticed back
porch just perfect for dining outdoors. The heart-of-pine floors and
beadboarded walls were wonderfully preserved. New appliances and an efficient
layout leave room for a cozy eating area. An antique pine door leads to a rear
ell, which has become a spacious bath. A neutral tile floor sets a quiet tone,
but when you enter the large shower, the retro color scheme of the tiling adds
a delightful touch of whimsy.

The middle and front rooms can be used interchangeably. Currently
the middle room holds the living area with separate closets to accommodate
both clothes and media. The original beadboard on the 10-foot-high ceiling is
the outstanding feature here. The front room has the luxury of a rebuilt,
wood-burning fireplace with a salvaged and stripped antique pine mantel. It’s
currently a sumptuous bedroom, but the arrangement could easily be reversed.
You would expect the fireplace to be the feature of this room, but it’s
upstaged by a pair of old French doors from New Orleans, which grace the front
and give this shotgun double-barreled appeal.

913 Blythe Street

800 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bath; $79,500

FSBO: Jim Marshall, 725-0707

This boldly modern house must have caused quite a stir when it was completed in 1977, because Memphis never really embraced modern architecture, especially in houses. High-style modern architecture of the late 1960s and ’70s reflected America’s heightened awareness of the environment. Modernist houses tried to be totally integrated into their site. They had strong horizontal massing, tent-like roofs with deep overhangs, and “open” plans with the main rooms flowing over changing floor levels that defined spaces and functions. Exposed beams, fieldstone walls, skylights, and dark wood trim emphasized the environmental look. Broad expanses of glass gave a strong visual connection to the outside, where terraces and built-in planters merged with gardens and water features. These elements originated in the 19th-century Arts and Crafts movement and developed through its descendants, the Midwestern Prairie School architects, most notably Frank Lloyd Wright, and the California Craftsman tradition of the brothers Charles and Henry Greene, best known for the Gamble House in Pasadena. This Memphis house evokes images of Wright’s 1930s studio at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Charles Moore’s 1960s design for the Sea Ranch residential resort in California.

Contemporary California architecture had a direct influence on this house built for Dr. and Mrs. George Nichopoulos. Dr. Nichopoulos was Elvis Presley’s personal physician. He said that he and his wife liked contemporary houses; they especially liked the way the living room and den were open to each other in Elvis’ house in Beverly Hills, and they wanted that same openness in their house. Prominently sited on the crest of a low hill, the house is clad in stone and redwood siding. A trio of shed-roofed dormers punctuates the façade; one dormer defines the entrance and creates a dramatic space in the entrance hall.

The foyer, living room, den, and dining room radiate from a central, two-story, glass-walled, skylit atrium. The living room is two steps below the foyer, the den two steps below the living room, and the dining room is several steps above the den. The dining room has a coffered ceiling and a shimmering cascade of prisms for a chandelier.

An open-riser stair with a robust wooden balustrade ascends from the foyer to the second floor, where the balustrade continues along both sides of a bridge leading to suites of guest rooms. From the bridge, you get a view of the entrance pergola, seen through the foyer chandelier which has a dozen smoked-glass globes arrayed at varying heights.

The living room and den have sloping ceilings accentuated by dark beams. Both rooms overlook the pool terrace and the backyard. A massive fieldstone wall with fireplaces and raised hearths separates the two rooms. A television is built into the stone wall on the den side. The bar in the den has a fieldstone base and a full-width, mirrored backsplash, modeled very closely on the bar in Elvis’ Beverly Hills house. An exercise room and racquetball court are behind the den.

The kitchen and breakfast room are between the racquetball court and the dining room. Their sky-blue cabinetry is a vibrant accent in these large spaces with white walls and high, sloping ceilings. The family bedrooms and a small chapel are in a wing opposite the racquetball court, across the pool terrace.

Whether seen as retro-chic or still avant-garde even after a quarter century, this thoroughly modern mansion would be a groovy pad for a large, active family or for entertaining on a grand scale.

5564 Cottingham Place

6,900 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6 1/2 baths; $589,500

Agent: John Giovannetti, Realtor: Traditional Properties, 788-1752, 753-4007

High Point Terrace is probably named for its elevated site, not its initial sale prices. The neighborhood is now experiencing tremendous growth in value. Certainly its central location is a factor, but its large lots also make for easy additions, leaving plenty of yard. This house is a prime example of how, several expansions later, these G.I. bill starter houses can become both spacious and gracious.

The house was built in 1948 by a young developer named Kemmons Wilson. It was still occupied by the original owner until five years ago. This owner made only two spatial alterations in an almost 50-year tenure. The east side porch was enclosed for an intimate TV room. Later a master bath and dressing room were added on the west end.

This being a Colonial Revival house, two flanking wings work perfectly. And because the lot is ample there was plenty of room to expand to the side. The current owners have been much busier than the first in their five years in the house.

The living room gained a fireplace with appropriate Colonial mantel and new, well-scaled ceiling moldings. The red-oak floors were uncarpeted, sanded, and clear-sealed to highlight their inherent color. The intimate TV room was converted into a two-person office with lots of built-ins and all the latest in telephone and cable outlets.

The back of the house was the real target. The original kitchen, breakfast room, and bedroom were all gutted and combined. Lots of glass was installed to fill these rooms with light and views to the very private backyard. The new kitchen’s painted cabinets up to the ceiling provide storage for everything imaginable. There’s even an island with butcher-block top and a cozy breakfast area. The other end is a keeping room. Bookcases have been added. In addition to an ample seating area there is a counter for stools facing the kitchen. This new space can accommodate a passel of folks and, when the weather is nice, opens to an adjoining rear deck.

Still not willing to rest, the current owners continued by adding a rear wing. It is a very spacious third bedroom and/or family room. It has lots of windows onto the backyard, and there’s still plenty of room if you wanted to make this a second master suite by adding another private bath and dressing room off the rear.

The backyard has a new ell to one side and a one-car garage to the other. The garage has enough room for a workbench and a paved potting area out back. The back of the property has been terraced with stones to form raised beds filled with sun-loving perennials. While the front, which faces south, is well shaded by two beautiful oaks, the back has an open, sunny demeanor that’s perfect for playing or just watching the grass grow. After this much work that’s really all that is required.

3792 Oakley Avenue

2,100 square feet, 3 Bedrooms, 2 Baths; $220,000

FSBO, 230-6943, e-mail: michael.reeves@alumni.duke.edu

http://www.geocities.com/highpointterracehome/oakley.html