Grand Victorian enters new phase in its long life
Moving from Southern California to Findlay, Ohio, four years ago, Allen Beck had a couple of criteria when shopping for an abode: it should be a showcase for his antique furniture, and it should need some, but not too much, work to occupy him while he settled into the community.
"I wanted a project. I was afraid of moving and plopping myself in a house and not having enough to do to feel connected. I needed to nest, create a surrounding for myself," says Beck, 57. "I looked at new homes. I looked at old homes and ultimately bought this because it just felt right."
Built in 1888, the grand brick Victorian is royalty on an otherwise modest residential street.
At nearly 5,000 square feet, the five-bedroom Queen Anne-style home was in great shape, and it offered a generous yard where he's enjoyed countless hours gardening.
Top on his to-do list was masculinizing the first-floor rooms, with majestic 11-foot ceilings. He changed out the flowery decor with wallpaper, paint and window treatments in rich colors. Carpeting was lifted and the narrow-plank oak floors were gorgeously refinished. He sewed 56 yards of dupioni silk into billowy drapes for the dining and music rooms.
And he hunted for antique hardware and light fixtures in Findlay; Toledo, Ohio; Cleveland; Chicago and California, and hired craftsmen to repair huge doors and make stained-glass windows.
"I think the most fun is when my family comes. The great-nieces and -nephews love to find the hiding places and run up and down the front and back stairways," he says. "If they can't come here and enjoy it, then I really shouldn't have it."
Family was, after all, the primary pull back to Northwest Ohio after his 34 years on the West Coast. His sister, Carol Rowe, and her family lived in Findlay and their elderly parents were in nearby Fulton County. His mother died 14 months after his return in 2006.
Creative and handy, Beck lives here with Cooper, his nine-pound Shih Tzu/King Charles Spaniel mix. Sure it's a lot of house for one human and one canine, but it's all-relative - he used to work in California homes that rambled up to 20,000 square feet.
"In every house there are rooms that people don't use. I just happen to have more of them."
Several areas on the first floor - the main entry, living room, music room, dining room and stairway - look like tableaux featured in Traditional Home magazine.
Parlor walls are painted an oxblood red in barely discernible 4-inch stripes. He painted the entire room with a flat paint, followed by the same hue in a brighter eggshell sheen. (He'd make the stripe glossy instead of eggshell if he had it to do again.) "I was looking for a little more definition in the stripe."
Of an 1865 oil painting in a carved, gilded frame, its subject a young woman with an eager expression, he says, "It's not my style but it spoke to me."
A 4-foot-tall marble-and-wood pedestal holds a vase flowing with pheasant feathers. Next to it is a round hunt table, its base carved with wild boar, deer, dog and fox. Two Austrian beech chairs cozy up to the fireplace (now gas), and a Persian rug warms the floor.
Whereas the 21st-century trend in American homes tends toward large, open spaces spilling into each other, the 19th century dictated rooms with distinct purposes that could often be closed off with sliding doors for climate control.
Dividing the parlor from the main entry area are pocket doors, on top of which is lacy wooden fretwork Beck found broken in the attic and had restored at Architectural Artifacts in Toledo.
"It gives it back to the house the way it was meant to be," he says.
The entry is dominated by a curving staircase of cherry wood and a table. Previously white, these walls bear gold on black wallpaper with an oversized foliage-and-floral pattern. Beck covered the ceiling, which had some settling cracks, with a pale corn-yellow wallpaper, and brushed metallic gold paint along the upper strip of molding. He found a tattered antique chandelier in Cleveland and refabricated it with new silk.
The dining room is centered with a 9-foot-long Karges mahogany table that seats 12 when opened to its full 12 feet. Above it hangs a large antique bronze-and-frosted-glass chandelier; where it's attached to the ceiling is a medallion painted to match the frame of a 66-by-48-inch mirror on a nearby wall.
The paper on these walls has broad vertical stripes in a quiet burgundy-and-gold pattern enlivened with a sliver of dark green.
Above the dining-room fireplace is a tall window, which indicates that this is an unusual split chimney. Flanking either side of the fireplace are tall windows, dressed with 10-foot burnished gold panels that pool on the floor.
"It's no big deal. It's just straight-line sewing. My mother sewed. I learned to sew in my business," when he needed wide ribbons or runners and panels.
"I'm not worried if colors match exactly. I can put two to three different colors of red in a room." He accessorizes based on "usability, quality and whether I want to live with it or not."
Beck was the sole son among five children raised on their parents' grain farm near Archbold, Ohio. He milked cows, cleaned hog pens and felt pressured to take over the farm. But what he loved was his after-school job at an Archbold florist, and an observant teacher urged him to enroll in an 18-month floriculture program at Michigan State University.
After completing the program, he worked for a Toledo florist who entered his designs in a contest in 1973. He won, and continued to the national level in Las Vegas where a California florist saw his work and offered him a job. Within three weeks his car was packed and he was driving west.
Five years later, he opened his own store stocked with flowers, decor, gifts and antiques. The floral portion grew quickly so he dropped the gifts and antiques, eventually establishing a studio and splitting his work between walk-in customers and special-event decorating. Over the years he bought antiques, reselling some in his business and keeping others in his home and shop.
In 2005 he closed the business and now works as a consultant for a Houston event company, flying to locations around the country to create spectacular floral displays, mostly for charitable and corporate gatherings.
The large kitchen and pantry were updated in 2002. Off the kitchen, overlooking the yard with the stream and koi pond he built, is the sunroom, one of his favorites. It was added about 100 years ago and was expanded seven years ago to about 12-by-24 feet with double doors leading to the large deck.
He's filled the room with plants he hauled inside for the winter: kumquat, mandarin, lemon and 25 orchids.
Off the upper foyer is another favorite: the study, strikingly different from the ornate chambers of the first level. Walls and ceiling are white. There's a desk, computer, comfy couch and television tucked into a closet.
Five other rooms fill the second story, including a bath, small nanny's bedroom with bath, guest bedroom, sitting room and master bedroom.
"This was the first room I painted," he says of his bedroom. He replaced its pink walls with dark red, hanging paintings with oriental motifs. The 71/2-foot-tall posts on his Ralph Lauren bed are deeply carved with a tobacco-leaf pattern. Next to the bed is one of his favorite pieces, a Northern Italian writing desk, the top of which he had recovered in black leather.
Opposite the bed is a tall French armoire, circa 1850, with two doors made of double chicken-wire grille. It displays an antique grain holder, porcelain pieces and family heirlooms. Armoires are useful in old homes that have relatively tiny closets. Beck would like to renovate the bathroom, which has a large white tub shod with silver feet, forest-green tiled walls and cable-knit wallpaper in soft green and beige.
The house has a mirror-image twin (the floor plan is flipped) across town, known as the Bigelow House. It was designed by the same architect and built by the same builder. His house, however, has lost its 20-foot-tall square tower and Porte cochere, a covered drive-through at the side entrance.