Haven: A different kind of dream

Finding their ideal place to live should have been simple. After all, Steven Sokoll and Ira Sheres were sure they knew what they wanted and where they wanted it.

"We were looking for a modern house with space for an office in Gladwyne," says Sokoll, a psychiatrist who treats children as well as adults.

"We wanted a glass box with a swimming pool, tennis courts, and a location in the Main Line," says Sheres, a dentist.

Then they fell in love with a house in Haverford that was the exact opposite, and everything changed.

The couple and their children - Max, 6 at the time, and Rosie, who was 3 - were living in a Rittenhouse Square townhouse, which they liked, but they had decided to move to a quieter area.

"We looked at at least 45 houses online," Sokoll says.

A number of times, they had this experience: They would become interested in a house, only to find out it was going to be demolished by developers.

"This was going on all over the Main Line," Sokoll says.

"When we found the house in Haverford," Sheres says, "we told the homeowner not to bother fixing it up, because it wasn't what we were looking for, but we would visit anyway."

What they discovered on that visit was a stately three-story, 6,000-square-foot Tudor manor dwelling with Wissahickon Schist walls, high ceilings, many fireplaces, six balconies, and an acre of woodland surrounding it.

The structure was designed in 1921 by William Durham, a noted architect of the time.

"The house gave me a peaceful feeling," says Sokoll.

"I fell in love with it right away," says Sheres.

On the spot, the couple agreed to buy it.

"We didn't even care that there was no swimming pool or office," Sheres says.

They bought the property, installed a gym in one of the bedrooms, and settled in - until Bryn Mawr Hospital, planning an expansion, tore down the building that housed Sokoll's office.

That home-office idea was revived, a place where Sokoll could meet with patients in the green, bucolic setting of their home.

The problem: He and Sheres admired Durham's Tudor design and did not want to do anything to disrupt it or its symmetry.

They contacted Alison Towers, of Towers & Miller Architects in Philadelphia, who was sympathetic to that desire.

"I didn't want to tear through that historic wall to create the office," Towers says. "It was important not to interfere with the basic building design."

She conceived a 900-square-foot addition on two floors and introduced innovative substitution to accomplish it, using stucco with cross-timbers on the first floor, which upholds the original design without trying to employing other stone in place of the scarce Wissahickon schist.

The effect? Seamless.

The first level of the addition holds a 500-square-foot office and restroom; the second, a 400-square-foot dressing room and shelving area that leads to the master-bedroom suite.

In the master-bath portion, marble provides the cool, modern look that the couple was looking for all along.

For the office, Towers designed six high windows that encourage a panoramic vista of the woods surrounding the house for both patients and guests sitting on the simple black-leather furniture there.

A floor-to-ceiling bookcase stores books and toys for Sokoll's young patients.

The walls of the office are a sandy brown with details in a pastel green that, Sokoll says, seems soothing.

"I feel the . . . addition really works, and the office gives my patients a peaceful atmosphere," he says. "There is a good separation between work and home."

Having the office there brings the extra advantage of helping Sokoll be nearby when Max and Rosie are at school. (Max is now a senior in high school, and Rosie is a freshman.)

And, though the couple did not get their glass box, per se, a glass-enclosed breakfast nook off the kitchen offers a sunlit view of a terrace beyond.

Says Sokoll: "It is amazing that I feel this is like being in the English countryside, and it is my forever home now."