Old House Journal Winter 2019

I AM JUST BACK FROM A TRIP to Dublin, Ireland, where I was amazed at how the city’s Georgian architecture is so well preserved. Walking the streets north of the River Liffey, I saw row after row of eighteenth-century brick townhouses—with strikingly colorful doorways—lining the streets. I was fortunate to peek inside a few of these national treasures, as some have been turned into museums, and their interiors are also perfectly preserved. Decorative crown moldings and breathtaking ornamental plaster adorn the Writers’ Museum and Museum of Literature Ireland. The buildings are as magnificent as the collections that they house. I couldn’t help but be impressed by the reverence the city shows for its past by honoring its historic building designs. Of course, these old houses have all the modern comforts of today:…

The mid-atlantic united states is hardly the Mediterranean, but you’d be forgiven for feeling somewhat transported once you arrive at a certain Barnes Vanze Architects project in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Wesley Heights. The home, with its unpainted natural stucco exterior and clay roof tiles, clearly evokes southern Italy or France. But the home’s interior was jarringly different from its exterior before Barnes Vanze Architects came along. “All the details inside the house were ‘colonial’,” says Anthony “Ankie” Barnes, FAIA, LEED AP, a partner at Barnes Vanze Architects—down to the generic trim and double-hung windows. Such disjointed design was common of spec homes built in the 1920s, as Barnes says this house likely was. Among the goals of the new renovation and addition was to make the house feel more “authentically…