Metamorphosis on the Bay
MAKING WAY FOR A SLEEKLY UPDATED INTERIOR IN PACIFIC HEIGHTS
Even more than the Golden Gate Bridge and those little cables cars that climb halfway to the stars, the wealth of Victorian and Ed-wardian architecture adds to the enduring appeals of San Francisco. Wood houses from the late 19th and early 20th centuries- some stately and decorous, others dripping with gingerbread and mad color- march up and down the hills, lending character to neighborhoods and drawing smiles from visitors and residents alike.
As charming as the houses can be on the outside, however, the interiors often have small, dark rooms. Looking to lead modern lives in a house more than a century old, one couple in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights district undertook a five-year project of truly herculean proportions, largely preserving the street-side appearance while gutting and rebuilding the interiors to create sweeping bay views and open space filled with natural light. Almost as remarkable was the designer’ ability to accommodate the couple’s divergent tastes- his contemporary, hers more traditional-gently melding them into a cohesive whole that works well with the formal, Second Empire exterior.
“We reconciled our clients’ differing tastes, “designer Paul Vincent Wiseman says of his collaboration with associate Dara Rosenfeld and Oakland – based architect William B. Remick on a Second Empire house in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights district.
Sitting on a lot that drops steeply to the rear, the house originally had three floors of boxy rooms, connected by the bulky staircase of short, segmented flights, and a partially buried bottom level with low ceilings. Working closely with interior designers Paul Vincent Wiseman and Dara Rosenfeld, of The Wiseman Group in San Francisco, Oakland-based architect William B. Remick developed a plan to open up the interior and reconfigure the space around a new stairway. Extensive below-grade excavation- requiring the house to sit on shoring towers for nearly a year- al- lowed for the addition of a guest room, a gym, a home theater, a wine cellar and a billiards room. The once cramped garage became a steel- floored, seven-car showcase for the sleek red Ferraris and other automobiles collected by the husband, who runs a telecommunications company.
The key to redesigning the house was the bronze-railed stairway. Soaring four floors in a series of wide ellipses that bring to mind the inside of a chambered nautilus, it ascends alongside the exposed, chiseled limestone at the core of the residence. “There’s an open flow to the stairway that continues onto each floor, “says Wiseman.” The stairway animates the house.”
To bridge the clients’ differing tastes, the designers turned to select pieces of 19th century Russian furniture that exhibited a restrained classicism and an emphasis on form over ornamentation. “It was way to include both antiques for her and clean lines for him, “says Rosenfeld, the senior designer on the project, “and many of our design details mirror recurring decorative motifs on the furniture.”
The Russian pieces appear throughout the house. A Russian demilune mahogany commode in the entrance hall, for example, is paired with a modern bronze sculpture and one of Hans Burkhardt’s earlier, Abstract Expressionist paintings, which the wife collects. In the small library, paneled in maple, with a domed Venetian- plaster ceiling and collection of vellum-bound books, two Russian Karelian-birch tub chairs perfectly reflect the room’s clean lined elegance.
The husband’s particular interest in certain rooms shows in their more contemporary feel. A curved, bronze wall acts as sculptural backdrop for the pool table, while the state-of- the- art home theater with its streamlined upholstered chairs and pearlescent-blue ceiling – is a modern take on an Art Deco theater. On the top floor, where a greatly enlarged, 24-foot dormer window overlooks a wide expanse of city, bay and sky, a contemporary sofa and club chairs are grouped around an elevated, two-sided fireplace with no adornment other than a simple cantilevered hearth. And then there is the garage, where the vivid yellow wall color matches paint bought by the husband at the local Ferrari dealer.
“My husband loves beautiful cars.” Says the wife,” but I love beautiful clothes, and I think Dara has captured that in the feel of the principal living spaces,” In fact, the main floor is imbued with a distinctly couture aesthetic – “very pulled back.” according to Wiseman, “with no wasted energy and no detail overlooked,” Bleached- walnut floors overlaid with magnificent Tabriz carpets run through the entrance hall and living and dining rooms, all done in a neutral palette so as not to compete with the art and the view. Formal yet somehow effortless, the space is punctuated by many couture-type details. The double lines embroidered on living room chairs, for example, were modeled after the linear brass mounts on many of the Russian pieces of furniture. In the dining room, centered on and 18th century mahogany French table, the chairs are skirted, lined with silk and embroidered with metallic threads in the pattern of Russian ormolu mount.
The couture detail continues one floor above. In the master bedroom, done entirely in tones of cream and ivory, thin, vertical bands of pleating on the silk-taffeta headboard and footboard echo the battens on the paneled walls. The wife’s extremely feminine “retreat” – a dressing room that she also uses as an office – glows with a silver-leafed ceiling glazed paneling inset with gold fillets, and the smocked and pleated draperies are worthy of Madame Gres, the legendary dressmaker known for her exquisitely pleated and draped creations. The centerpiece of the small room is an intricately hand-smocked ottoman inset with pearls and often used as a bed by the wife’s Yorkshire terrier, Coco.
“To me, this house is a pure reflection of my husband and myself”, says the wife. “It’s a perfect blend of our tastes and interests, and it reflects our own attention to detail in our lives“Wiseman compares the experience of entering the house to that of meeting an exceptionally stunning woman at a party. “At first you simply notice how beautiful and elegant she is in her dress,” he says. “Only after a while do you notice all the details of the dress and how beautiful it looks on her”.
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