Haven: 'Suburban home in the city'
HAVEN | Unusually for the city, "every room has a green view" in this Spring Garden house.
Marsha Weinraub and Stuart Schmidt embarked 17 years ago on the transformation of a barber shop and brownfield into a dramatic home with two gardens.
At the time, the couple were living with two young sons in a small rowhouse in Fairmount.
"I was carrying babies up and down steep steps," Weinraub recalls. Seeking more space, they checked out a storefront corner house and two overgrown lots for sale nearby in Spring Garden.
Three rowhouses had been built on the site in the mid-1800s. Sometime in the 1930s, two were torn down and, for unknown reasons, three large oil tanks were buried in the lots. The remaining three-story house became a rental, with a grocery and later a barbershop in front.
"We could afford the property because it was a toxic-waste site," Schmidt says.
After the sludge from the oil tanks was pumped out, 12 cement trucks were required to fill the tanks with concrete. "We anchored the whole neighborhood," he jokes.
Since the property was in a historic district, they had to negotiate with the Philadelphia Historical Commission for permission to demolish a tumbledown outhouse. But finally, work commenced on architect Edwin Bronstein's plan to create what Schmidt calls "a suburban home in the inner city."
To integrate the vacant land with the surviving house, Bronstein designed a narrow one-story, copper-roofed addition and created a T-shaped floor plan. Gardens were laid out on either side.
The dining room in the addition opens onto both gardens. Its slate floor harmonizes with the stone pavers beyond the glass doors.
Rocks are incorporated into the gardens, and there are several stone sculptures inside and out. Prints of stone etchings from a temple in Cambodia line one wall. Cool stone is offset by warm wood - oak cabinets and floors in the living room, birch kitchen cabinets, and a maple and cherry dining table.
Windows were cut into the rowhouse's party wall to let in light. "Every room has a green view," Weinraub says.
The indoor-outdoor theme is carried throughout the house. Ceilings in the stairwell are pale blue: "It's the sky," she says.
The living areas are painted the color of heavy cream, with gold and plum accent walls and plum trim. Loveseats in the living room are upholstered in mauve and gray patterned fabric.
Like the dining room, the floor in the kitchen is slate, but, surprisingly, the countertops are Corian.
"Granite is too hard and noisy," Weinraub says. "We entertain a lot and want to be able to hear people's conversation."
The couple collect Asian art, including stone rubbings and a statue of a Chinese goddess, as well as contemporary pieces by local artists, including two brightly colored abstract sculptures by Mindy Rodman and Paul White and a neon Miami palm tree by Len Davidson.
Architect Bronstein designed special shelves to display whimsical pieces such as a ceramic pretzel and a Mickey Mouse crafted by the couple's sons when they were schoolboys. (Jeremy was 4 and Ethan 9 when the house was completed in 1998.)
A sculptural steel, copper and stone fountain by Australian Rudi Jass was customized for a corner in one of the gardens. The fountain in the second garden, a bubbling bright blue vase, was ordered from Lowe's.
When they are home, Jeremy, a college student, and Ethan, a Navy officer, shoot basketballs into the milk carton attached to the brick wall by the driveway at the end of one garden. There is parking for two cars.
The former barbershop is now a recreation room with a Ping-Pong table and cushioned window seats.
On the first floor are a full bath and powder room. Upstairs are two baths, three bedrooms, and offices for Weinraub (she's chair of the psychology department at Temple) and Schmidt (he's a professor of human-resource management). They met at Temple and married in 1985.
Besides the sculptures, rocks and fountains, the gardens feature an arbor lush with wisteria and honeysuckle, beds of begonia and lobelia, black-eyed Susans, ornamental grasses, ferns, and fragrant herbs. A large hydrangea hides a composting bin.
Tending the gardens is a joint effort, Schmidt says:
"Marsha decides, and I execute."
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