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| Features |
Estates of Grace
Eryn Brown
06/01/2004
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However,
stumbling onto the right home can take months or even years. Aficionados talk of
keeping their eyes on special houses for years, waiting for them to come onto
the market. Actor and producer Michael LaFetra, who owns four significant
properties in the Los Angeles area, says that when he initially became
interested in buying a house by modernist Schindler, he compiled a list of every
Schindler structure in the city and conducted frequent drive-bys until he found
one that came up for sale at a price he felt was reasonable. Others emphasize
the role of serendipity. Cottrell recently rounded a corner in Bel Air to
encounter a Mediterranean-style home that had just come on the market. “I
wondered, could this be the next one?” he says. Wall Street executive Richard
Jenrette, who owns seven historic homes on the East Coast and in the Caribbean,
insists, ”I didn’t set out to buy any of the houses I have.” He adds, “They just
sort of found me.”
A second challenge: Owners who respect the integrity of
the architectural home may want to remodel, restore and redecorate the structure
to reflect the architect’s original vision. But this process can voraciously
consume both time and money.
When Regas purchased Ryerson House, as his
townhouse is known, in 1988, it scarcely resembled a home, let alone the
architect’s master plan. It had been converted into 18 separate studio and
one-bedroom apartments. To begin to bring Ryerson House back to its pristine
state, Regas and his contractors (most of whom specialized in restoring period
houses) first had to unearth Adler’s original drawings, then determine how the
structure appeared when it was first built. The team razed all the apartments’
kitchens and bathrooms, then reassembled the space into 8 bedroom suites, 11
bathrooms and 4 powder rooms. Some 200 radiators were ripped out, and central
air conditioning and heating were installed. New plumbing and wiring were hidden
in the crawl spaces Adler had incorporated above the house’s plaster ceilings.
Many of the renovation materials came from close-to-original sources. To rebuild
interior walls, for example, Regas salvaged pyrobar (a type of flame-resistant
gypsum brick that is no longer produced) from demolition sites in downtown
Chicago. He finished by adorning the house with family heirlooms and antique
French furniture his parents had purchased over the years.
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