At first glance, this three-story red brick rowhouse on a quiet tree-lined street looks like all the others in Bolton Hill—stately and conservative—but open the heavy wood doors and step into the vestibule and you realize immediately that looks can be deceiving.

The small space is completely covered in Andy Warhol’s Dollar Sign wallpaper—flashy in-your-face symbolism that satirizes wealth and consumerism—that then opens into a long runway-esque hallway lined with artwork.

Brendon Hudson and David Monteagudo live in the 4,950-square-foot house with Pablo, their sweet Maltipoo. The couple owns the Roman bistro Allora in Mt. Vernon, along with Liliahna Luxury Catering, Zander’s, and Piccola Allora.

They’ve been together since meeting at the Culinary Institute of America’s Hyde Park campus eight years ago. After graduation they moved to San Diego in 2016 for a year and then back to Hudson’s hometown of Baltimore to take over a delicatessen owned by his uncle and cousin—Hunt Valley’s Three Dog Deli.

“It was nice because we didn’t have to look for business—we were the only food establishment in an office building of like 4,000 people,” says Hudson, 30. Having consistent sales meant they could experiment a little with the menu. They kept the classics, like cheesesteaks, burgers, and hotdogs, but added duck wings, butter chicken, homemade pizzas, and full Thanksgiving dinners. “But people who have like 30 minutes for lunch don’t want, like, a seared duck breast with a red wine jus,” he says with a laugh.

So, they would run the deli Monday through Friday and then spend the weekends catering, where they could have more freedom with their offerings. Soon the side hustle was exploding and they knew they wanted to feed people beyond the office park—so they sold the deli in February 2020, just a few weeks before COVID seemingly stopped the world.

During the pandemic, holed up inside a townhouse in Pikesville, they watched as all their catering events were canceled. Hudson held online cooking classes and the two kept dreaming of having their own restaurant. In early March of 2021, they signed a lease and six months later they opened Allora.

It was at Allora that they serendipitously met designer and tech executive Bradford Shellhammer. “We just kind of like naturally gravitated towards him because we’re like, ‘He seems like fun. I want to get to know this person,’” says Hudson. “And so naturally my way of doing that is sending him every single menu item we have.”

Shellhammer was born in Pasadena and studied communications and media studies at Goucher College before going on to Parsons School of Design. He served as eBay’s chief curator and is currently the chief product officer for Reverb, a subsidiary of Etsy. He had come back home to Maryland from New York to nurse a broken heart.

The three quickly became friends—eating their way across Baltimore at Petit Louis Bistro, Marta, and CookHouse—which was right near Shellhammer’s house in Bolton Hill.

“This is a really cute neighborhood,” Hudson remembers thinking. He had grown up in Roland Park, attended Gilman, and only ventured out of his “bubble” to visit his grandparents in Lutherville. “I loved the old architecture,” says Hudson. It instantly reminded him of some of their favorite neighborhoods in Manhattan.

Shellhammer was moving back to New York but had a proposition—he wanted Hudson and Monteagudo to move into his Bolton Hill home, knowing they’d be the perfect caretakers for a place he had so painstakingly designed. “I don’t want somebody to come in and just paint everything white or undo all of the work I just did,” he told them.

“The house is just a big art piece for him,” says Hudson.

Hudson, who was already head-over-heels in love with both the neighborhood and Shellhammer’s design style, would have packed up their Pikesville home and moved in that night. But Monteagudo needed some convincing.

“It took me a very long time,” Monteagudo says. He didn’t want to feel like he was moving into someone else’s home, using someone else’s stuff, and living someone else’s life. “I was trying to figure out why it was that it wasn’t feeling like home, because home is super important to me,” says Monteagudo, 27, who grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Then he realized, he’d moved every single year since he was 18. “Pikesville was the first time that I was someplace for three years,” he says. Packing up and moving again felt like a step back—even if it was to go somewhere beautiful.

Even after they moved into the house in March 2023, he didn’t feel settled until he started incorporating their own furniture, artwork, books, and knickknacks among the items that Shellhammer had left behind. “That helped to make it feel like home, because I was doing something rather than moving into what was already done.”

But how does one incorporate stuff into an already stuffed house?

“You could definitely call it maximalist,” says Monteagudo, as he looks around the living room, affectionately dubbed “the blue room” for its wall, ceiling furniture, and rug color. Every nook and wall space is filled but it feels intentional, not chaotic. “It’s a calm maximal,” he lands on.

“It’s definitely maximalist in terms of him being bold with the choices that were made in here with colors and art and everything else,” says Hudson. But it’s balanced with a lot of Scandinavian design as well. So, to put it another way, it’s maximal minimalism—a combination of the open spaces of minimalism mixed with the personality of maximalism. There are strong bold colors and statement pieces but with room to breathe.

The blue room is one of four rooms on the first level—the entertaining level. There’s a small powder room with its loud Andy Warhol Queen Elizabeth II wallpaper—the better for guests to stare at while in the loo—and the bright salmon-colored walls and doorframe.

The dining room, with its yellow walls, Pier 1 table, six sculpted wood dining chairs (extras from Allora), and two Eames molded fiberglass armchairs in red-orange (purchased by Shellhammer), is their favorite place to hang with friends. The whole room is impeccably designed, but most noticeable are the Warhol art (we sense a theme), working fireplace, and Zettelz pendant chandelier by Ingo Maurer.

Each arm of the chandelier holds a piece of paper attached by a binder clip. Guests have left love notes, funny sayings, and drawings over the last year.

The staircase leading up to the second floor—where Hudson and Monteagudo spend the most time—cleverly incorporates the palette of the house, with each spindle painted a different color. (There’s also a massive dragon mural that takes up most of the wall space leading up to the third floor, left by the owners before Shellhammer.)

This level has their master bedroom, painted in various shades of black to create an ideal sleep cocoon. “It has depth and movement to it—it’s not just a black box,” says Hudson. And it’s home to their den (aka “the green room”), where they watch television, eat dinner, and work after hours. This room also has most of their personal belongings, including curios that Monteagudo’s mom brought back from visits to Bolivia, her home country.

On the third floor—you can take the stairs or the elevator, with its blue shag carpet—is Monteagudo’s “playroom” (it’s filled with an enviable amount of LEGO sets) and perhaps the pièce de résistance, the guest room. “This is my favorite room in the house,” says Monteagudo.

Understandably so, with its walls and ceiling in their flawless shade of cherry red, Marimekko floral print duvet on the bed, warm light filtering through the windows, golden-yellow chairs, and perfectly cheeky artwork hanging on the walls. The room definitely doesn’t take itself too seriously.

That’s the real joy of this home—it’s special and unique, but also loved and lived in. Nothing is too precious; everything can be touched, used, and enjoyed.

“I go into these bouts where I convince myself that the world’s on fire and nothing’s gonna work,” says Hudson, back in the blue room. “But then coming into the house and especially this room and even just walking by, it’s a little bit of a jolt,” he says. “It’s like—shut up. Look at the house you live in. Look at this beautiful room. You’re home now.”

This piece appeared in our March 2024 issue. For more great Baltimore stories, consider becoming a subscriber.

A bum leg caused Pete Ma to stumble into orchids.

A Silver Spring native, he’d taken an adventurous job in Palau after studying environmental science in the small Micronesian country for a semester. When a minor but untimely untimely soccer injury meant he couldn’t participate in a popular local run—he walked the forested path instead with some island women.

“Every other weekend or so there’d be these Hash House Harrier runs,” a non-competitive tradition started by British immigrants in Malaysia, Ma explains. “And people would follow on the blazed trail through the jungle and the women would collect orchids along the way. They’d take them home and grow them. They gave me a few and I immediately killed them.”

This was the early 2000s and Palau had little to no internet access. “I didn’t know about Google. I didn’t have the resources to learn how to grow these orchids, even though it was probably the best environment to do it,” he says. It wasn’t love at first sight, but a seed had been planted. “Failing and killing it, that bothered me enough that when I got back to the States, I wanted to try again.”

Opportunity knocked when a friend who was moving sought new homes for her orchids, which can take 5-7 years to bloom from seedling and can live up to 80 years. Although orchids can be found in nearly every habitat on the planet, including four dozen species in Maryland, they are notoriously hard to grow indoors, with many varieties requiring lots of light and humidity.

“They possess an exotic beauty—that is, if you can get them to flower,” says Ma, who’d come back to the area after grad school as a NASA data analyst, downloading satellite snapshots of climate and environmental imagery. “Something about that was intriguing to me.”

The art of growing rare orchids clicked in soon enough. As he speaks, Ma is surrounded by upward of 250 orchids in his DIY spaceship-like grow room in Bolton Hill. His 624-foot basement sanctuary is filled with high-intensity lighting panels, which move along ceiling runners, controlled climate and watering systems—and two chameleons (including one named Hei Hei by his kindergarten-aged daughter, after the animated Disney character).

The burgeoning home-grown cannabis industry, he notes, has provided an affordable tech bounce for plant growers of all stripes. A phone app allows for 24/7 temperature and humidity monitoring.

That some orchid species are believed extinct, and others considered endangered, only adds to their allure, of course. A few enthusiasts have gone to extremes to document rare species—such as the law-flouting protagonist of Susan Orleans’ best-selling nonfiction book, The Orchid Thief.

Less familiar is the story of former Virginia collector Michael Kovach, who pled guilty to smuggling a previously unknown orchid out of Peru the same year as the comedy film Adaptation, based on The Orchid Thief, was released. By secreting away his first-of-its-kind find, Kovach hoped to receive credit for its discovery. In that regard, he succeeded. Flowers from the first legally imported seedlings of Phragmipedium kovachii later won “Best in Show” at Wisconsin’s annual Orchid Quest.

In truth, the obsessive culture around orchids more closely resembles the dog-breeding comedy Best in Show, something you can observe for yourself at the Maryland Orchid Society’s annual spring event at the Timonium Fairgrounds. That said, Ma’s own kovachii buds—he purchased seedlings of the Peruvian native from the same Florida gardens where Kovach revealed his stolen treasure—(pictured below) bloomed in mid-December.

There are varied reasons people become consumed by orchids, which hold symbolic status, representing beauty, grace, love, and fertility, in many cultures. For some, it’s simply their aesthetic quality and fragrance. Ma jokes his hobby has become “an addiction,” adding with a laugh that his wife, a medical researcher and doctor, occasionally gets concerned about the attention he devotes to his orchids.

However, the way he talks about caring for them, it seems more of a healthy, even spiritual, practice.

“For me, it’s kind of a Mr. Miyagi and bonsai tree in The Karate Kid thing,” he says. “I can have the shittiest day and then go downstairs to the basement and just take a deep breath and it’s centering. The plants are going to be there, and if you’re nurturing them, and if you’re patient, and you do it right, you have this amazing flower that sometimes you’re the first person ever to see bloom.”

It’s hard to believe that Christopher Heller didn’t grow up in Baltimore.

The 46-year-old owner of the enchanted Margaret Cleveland home and garden shop in Bolton Hill is an avid city bike rider, a graduate of the master gardener program at University of Maryland Extension, and the newly minted owner of the beloved Walther Gardens, the northeast Baltimore nursery and gift shop with the oldest snowball stand in the country.

Not bad for a kid from Lancaster, who was always dreaming of bigger things. After graduating from college with a graphic design degree from the Art Institute in Philadelphia, Heller found himself working as a creative director for a dot-com start-up. That job landed him a bigger job in Florida, and while he watched his career skyrocket, he also missed the other things that brought him joy, including painting, floral design, and landscaping. In 2004 he decided to take a chance and start his own brand development firm, Helium Creative.

A few years after Heller started Helium, he hired a smart guy named Ryan Sirois to serve as head graphic designer, and the attraction was instantaneous. The two married in 2015 and their twins, Connor and Olivia, were born in 2017. Between marriage and babies, they also bought a Lancaster fixer-upper to serve as home base when they visited from Florida, and act as an Airbnb in between. “I spent 10 days ripping it apart. It was the first time I was able to be creative again,” Heller says.

As the toddlers approached their second birthday, Heller and Ryan Sirois Heller began wondering if Florida was where they wanted to raise their family. “We wanted them to be raised up north, to have seasons, and be in a place they could be enriched and grow into the beings they are supposed to be,” says Heller.

Lancaster was too far from the airport, Georgetown too expensive, and Philadelphia just didn’t feel right. On a whim, Heller drove into Homeland one afternoon on his way to the airport. “This neighborhood checks off every box, but it’s Baltimore,” he told Ryan. “Baltimore was not at all on our radar.”  They flew back the following weekend and looked at 15 houses—taking turns so one could stay in the car with the twins—until they both walked out of one house with the same feeling: “This is it.” They moved into a lakefront stone house in Homeland just in time for Halloween 2019.

Five months later, the pandemic forced Heller to slow down, travel less, and introduced him to Zoom. He realized his Florida-based business could still thrive with him sitting in Baltimore. When he started looking for an office space outside his home, Sirois Heller nudged, “Why don’t you launch the Margaret Cleveland in tandem?” It was an idea that had been brewing—a small, curated shop that would give him the creative outlet he’d been craving.

One day, his bike ride took him to Bolton Hill, and a storefront being used as an accountant’s office across from the restaurant CookHouse caught his eye. He called the owner and asked if they would ever consider selling the property. Five months later, they closed on the building and the Margaret Cleveland, named for his grandmother, a descendant of President Grover Cleveland, was theirs.

Heller may have stumbled across Bolton Hill by chance, but both he and his husband have ties to the neighborhood. Heller’s grandfather once lived on Park Avenue, a block away, and Sirois Heller’s mother attended the Maryland Institute College of Art and lived on the same block were the shop resides. “It’s such a special neighborhood in the city,” Heller says.

They spent the next year renovating—and turning the accounting office into a shop that felt worthy of the grand name. Originally, the walls were orange, the floors a light wood, and the space choppy. Now it’s light, airy, and dreamy, with floor-to-ceiling shelves stocked full of housewares and sweet knickknacks, plants, and gardening finds.

Heller also redid the landscaping, painted the building a light gray, and made it the kind of place where you press your nose against the window to get a glimpse inside.

“It’s the place that you’ve always wanted to go, with all the things you never knew you had to have,” he says. “A curated collection of treasures and keepsakes.”

The doors officially opened in October 2021—just in time for Bolton Hill’s popular Festival on the Hill.

Heller’s big concern was that with one extra thing on his plate he’d be spending more time away from the twins and his husband. “I didn’t want this store to take away from family and being able to be present.” Instead, both Connor and Olivia, now six, have helped unpack boxes and even suggested the family go on an antiquing excursion during a recent trip to Charleston, laughs Heller. “The store is going to add another layer to us both as people and as a family.” Over the holidays, budding salesman Connor presented an ornament to a shopper when she asked him to point out his favorite. “If you get it, you have to get three,” he said earnestly. (She did.) Unlike their other business, this one is tangible. The children can understand the concept and see the process.

The building, which also includes apartments and a courtyard, has allowed Sirois Heller to showcase his art. The carriage house is also being used as a space for his sound healing workshops and Heller’s floral classes.

“This building has allowed both of us space,” says Heller. “We’ve been one with Helium, but now we are each giving each other space to explore outside of Helium.”

He’d love to launch more Margaret Clevelands into the world, but also wonders if it can exist without him. “I want to be the one you are associating with the Margaret Cleveland. It means so much to me.” Right now, that means their hours are mostly “the first weekend of the month, by happenstance, and by appointment.”

“Retail is dying because it’s not what it used to be,” he muses. “But this is experiential. I want people to come in and feel something and be excited.” So far that’s included fresh flowers for Valentine’s Day and s’mores in the courtyard over the holidays.

Now he’s also dreaming of a plot of land off Walther Avenue. He bought Walther Gardens in March. It’s new to him, but he understands the affection the city feels for the shop, especially its neighbors. “That place is everything I’ve ever dreamed of,” he says. The plan is a spring re-opening of Walther and a long list of ideas, including fresh-cut flowers, a demonstration garden, and seasonal treats. The snowball stand will be called “The Peggy” after his great-grandmother.

It seems like a lot of new projects all at once, but Heller has this even-keeled, super-competent way about him that makes you believe he can do anything he sets his mind to. He says it’s his passion that drives him.

“If you don’t have the passion, you’ll never make it in retail. There is so much freaking work that goes into this. But I love it,” he says.

Standing on Bolton Street, while waiting for CookHouse to open on a spring night, my husband and I eagerly studied the menu as the bartender, Gabriel Valladares, with his smiley-face nail design, taped the night’s offerings to the window. Moments later, as we stepped inside the sun-dappled space with its velvet teal banquettes, mirrored backlit bar, and watermark-style wallpaper, we smiled, too. We had come full circle.

Almost two years since our first visit in mid-March, we had returned to the same spot. At the time, I had set out to review the Bolton Hill restaurant on the site of the former B Bistro. The spectacular space had been years in the making. Co-owner-chef George Dailey, who bought the 19th-century building, a former pharmacy, and his wife, realtor Jessica Dailey, had poured their heart and soul—and a ton of sweat equity—into the historic building, transforming every inch of it down to the last detail. When the restaurant finally opened in February 2020, the timing couldn’t have been worse. As we dined on Dover sole that day in March, Dailey went from table to table, and we naively told him we were looking forward to a return visit. “That’s if we’re still here,” he said, his voice catching.

It would be my last restaurant meal for the foreseeable future—and the last one that CookHouse would serve for months to come. Forty-eight hours later, the heartbroken chef, who also owns and operates On the Hill cafe, laid off his entire staff and shuttered in accordance with a city regulation banning indoor dining. Of the hundreds of meals I’ve eaten as a reviewer, that’s one I’ll always remember.

So here we were, back at CookHouse—so named because a century ago kitchens were set apart from the house in case of fire. The place looked the same. But of course, nothing was the same. Dailey was no longer wandering around the dining room with his head in his hands, but hard at work back in the kitchen. Long gone was the delicate dish of Dover sole, in favor of fare that was more casual, more comforting. We were changed, too—wiser, less critical about the small stuff, more moved by what mattered, like sitting in such a convivial space with such a diverse community of diners, all of whom were clearly happy to be there. The England-born, Venezuela-raised chef is happy to. “We’re on a roll right now,” he says. “We’re packed every day.”

Dailey’s original vision was to have an everyday cafe serving three meals a day to his Bolton Hill neighbors. When he was forced to close operations for daily dining, he transformed the space into a hybrid marketplace/coffee shop that really showcased his range, from smoking his own salmon to making pot pies and large jars of mango chutney, an ode to his English mother. Ultimately, he settled on dinner service four nights a week and a no-reservations policy.

The concise menu rotates weekly and changes with the season. But despite the size of the menu, from gnocchi with beef Bolognese to pork chops with sweet potato purée, there’s truly something for all palates, and you’ll rarely find the same preparation from visit to visit. Even the vegetarian option, a lovely mushroom tikka masala swimming in a tasty coconut sauce, was fantastically flavorful. The seemingly simple endive salad with ribbons of the vegetable tossed with hearts of palm, blue cheese, and pecans, was bright, light, and nicely dressed with a vinaigrette. It was a great way to start the meal without being overly filling.

Across two visits, we enjoyed a first-rate crab cake sandwich served on a house-made roll bathed in beurre monté and a satisfying truffle burger doused with truffle aioli, topped with porcini-truffle cheddar, and stacked with fried shallots on a brioche bun held together by a toothpick threaded with fabulous house-made pickles. (The accompanying fries were a bit standard issue.) The swordfish steak served with paella-style bomba rice doused with lemon-garlic sauce, flecked with green olives, and kissed by saffron, offered a burst of bold flavors. Small details, like the frisée greens poking out of the burger or the steamed shrimp appetizer served in an adorable basket and split down the middle for easy shelling, were evidence of the care that comes out of the kitchen.

We also enjoyed a round from Valladares’ gorgeous cocktail menu, including his bracing version of a Manhattan (almost blackened by Foro Amaro). On our most recent visit, we indulged in the crema Catala (think Spain’s version of crème brûlée). As we settled with our server, she asked if we’d enjoyed the meal.

“We’re excited to come back,” we said. And as we headed out into the night, we knew with certainty that CookHouse—and its wonderful staff— would be there waiting.

Before George Dailey opened CookHouse on the site of the former B Bistro, his hope was to offer an everyday cafe for Bolton Hill denizens and visitors. “Then the pandemic happened,” he says.

In fact, mere weeks after opening CookHouse, the England-born, Venezuela-raised chef, who also owns the nearby On the Hill Café, consolidated his operations, as they struggled for survival.

“I married On the Hill with CookHouse, which has more space,” he says.  It also has a liquor license, so “we can sell liquor and wine.”

In all the uncertainty, Dailey was forced to let go of most of his team. To date, he is one of three people on staff and the only person handling food preparation, from smoking his own salmon to making lasagna family meals.

Tables, once used ever-so-briefly for indoor dining, are now pushed aside for a hybrid café/market. In their place are baked goods in a display case, to-go soups in the cold case, and dry goods like pasta and wine stocked high on the shelves.

In the months ahead, Dailey is hoping to restore On the Hill as an all-day café and recast CookHouse as a full-service restaurant, as he’d always intended.

“I have to start from zero,” he says. “Hopefully it will work out.”

Where did the name CookHouse come from?
One hundred years ago or so, kitchens were not in the same building as the house because of fire. They called it the “cookhouse.”

What was your plan when you reopened?
When I reopened, I didn’t have a plan. I just went into the restaurant and reorganized everything and made a little market. I started working and people were coming in to get coffee. What they were really missing was a latte, so I started making that and added pastries.

With so many varied offerings, how do you decide what’s on the menu?
I was raised in Venezuela, so I know a lot about Latin cooking, and I thought, “Let’s make something that people can grab and go that’s easy.” I make hand pies and pot pies and things that people can take to go. I’m not saying I’m happy that this happened, but it actually opened my mind to making other things, like doing 10,000 gallons of tomato sauce and selling it in the jar or smoking my own salmon. I make whatever I want.

How did you learn to cook?
My mom, who passed away in 2019, was my inspiration for cooking. She taught me everything. She lived in England for many years and did a lot of English cooking. She made her own mango chutney. I found her recipe in her apartment and started making it. Now, I have quart jars and pint jars. I’m making curries for family meals and making curries for pies. Also, reflecting the Latin part of my upbringing, I make empanadas. But I don’t have many set menu items. One day it might be Cubanos, another day it might be a Swedish meatball sub on a pretzel roll.

Can you share a favorite memory of your mom?
She was an amazing cook. She had a black pot with a blue lid. You knew that when you saw it, something good was cooking. She taught me a lot about many things, like how not to burn the garlic and how to brown meat. She had people saying, “My god, this lady cooks like heaven.”

HISTORICAL MUSINGS: The architecture [in Bolton Hill] is what first drew me in—I love these houses. The crazy thing is that this is the first block I ever walked in this neighborhood. I would kill for the blueprints of some of these houses because they’ve been changed so much.

EYE FOR DESIGN: I got into interior design when I was 10 or 12. I think it comes from my grandmother—she had stacks of interior-design magazines. My taste has changed over time, but my home growing up was so far from what I wanted that [dreaming of what my aesthetic could do] built up over time. Typically, for me, I work with whatever I’m interested in. I don’t try to fit into a taste.

CUT AND PASTE: I made the collage above the fireplace. For a long time, I was looking for a large piece to put there. Collages, for me, are like puzzles. I like art forms that require arranging: interior design, floral design. It takes the pressure off, I think, because I’m a perfectionist, so I like things I can move around. Even decorating my home, I go back and forth.

ONE FOR THE BOOKS: I had the bookcases custom-built for my first apartment from a guy on Etsy. I’ve been a reader all my life. Books were a luxury growing up. It was a dream to have a ton of books, and it’s been a lot of fun as an adult to see that come true. A lot have come from The Book Thing. I haven’t read all of them, especially the older books. Some aren’t well-written, but I’ve saved them for the art and design. That’s the fun, though. It’s like owning your own library. You can grab something you’ve never read. There’s no such thing as too many books.

LASTING COMFORTS: This blanket from the pre-Civil War era is actually the oldest thing in my place. It was a popular style and was actually used in the war. I started looking for them after I saw one in an interior-design magazine. I like the juxtaposition of something old and modern. They’re typically blue and white or red and white—occasionally they’ll be rainbow colors.

People can’t believe I use something this old. There’s something beautiful about something ser ving a purpose for that long, from the 1840s until now. I think people have more of this awareness now: to go back to well-made things versus mass-produced.

ART FOR ART’S SAKE: I’ll hang anything on the walls. I’m bad at planning in advance, so behind these pictures are about 10 holes. Some of these are family photos, two are vintage panoramas from a girls’ summer camp that I liked, and some are photos from my friends who do photography. There’s a calendar I bought in Nepal—it’s been 2013 for a lot of years now.

COMING SOON

CookHouse: Bolton Hill locals have long been waiting for the debut of this all-day restaurant from chef George Dailey—who also owns On The Hill Cafe in the neighborhood and has lived there for nearly 20 years. For months, the English-born chef has been hard at work spearheading the remodel of the former B. Bistro space, and he has finally set a grand opening date of Tuesday, February 11. Boasting a custom built bar, blue velvet banquette seating, and artsy light fixtures, the 75-seat space will offer breakfast and lunch service during the day, and a menu of European-inspired fare—including steak frites, lamb ragú, and house-made pastas—by night.

Water Song: You might be one of the lucky diners to have caught this authentic Chinese food purveyor, which emphasizes dishes of the Yunnan province, at pop-ups and festivals around town. But come spring, Water Song’s Mixian rice noodle bowls—traditionally served a touch of meat and lots of chili oil—crispy battered fried pork chunks, and other fan-favorites will be easily accessible from a new brick-and-mortar shop in Federal Hill. Taking over the former home of The Local Fry on East Cross Street, the restaurant is currently being renovated and expected to open in March.

NEWS

Larder Launches Brunch: This sustainably-sourced eatery in the Socle complex, which also houses Fadensonnen and Sophomore Coffee in Old Goucher, recently began offering Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Expect options like buckwheat blintzes with apple butter, sweet potato with a miso mousseline sauce, and scrambled eggs with house pickles and sourdough toast. And, of course, prepare to wash down all of the eats with a strong drip coffee from Larder’s neighbors at Sophomore.

SHUT

Plug Ugly’s Publick House: After eight years on O’Donnell Square in Canton, this mainstay pub is closing its doors later this month—but not before having one last blowout to celebrate its run. A closing party on February 22 will offer a complimentary buffet, drink specials poured by original bartenders, and $3 shots every hour from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. in honor of every year the bar has been open. Though the celebration will mark the end of Plug Ugly’s as we know it, owner Mark Bogosh recently told the Baltimore Business Journal that he has plans to rebrand the bar with a Western theme this spring.

L’Eau de Vie Organic Brasserie: Sadly, this Valentine’s Day will be the last for L’Eau de Vie, the plant-based restaurant that has been open just over a year in Fells Point. In an email announcement, owner Elena Johnson explained that the decision was made amidst irreconcilable negotiations with the building’s landlord. “Even though this chapter is ending, we are grateful for every guest who appreciated our vision for a sustainable, ethical business model,” the message reads. For those unable to redeem gift cards before the restaurant closes on March 1, Johnson is offering for customers to use them with restaurant’s catering business, Nourrie Cuisine, which offers personal chef services, classes, and prepared meals.

Tumble down the rabbit hole. Trip through an immersive installation. Stumble upon an interactive performance. At Hidden Paths: An Exhibition About Walking As Art presented by Cardinal in Bolton Hill, audiences can experience artist-led tours to experiential and visual artworks situated in communities around the gallery’s walls.

“We’re inviting people to go on these artist-led walks and learn from artists how to look at their neighborhoods,” says Alexander Jarman, Cardinal’s co-founder and curator. “Some people will be walking down streets they’ve never walked down before.”

With installments running through November 8, the exhibit features seven artists—many of whom are Baltimore-based—including Todd Shalom, Miguel Braceli, J$Fur, Malcolm Peacock, Ada Pinkston, and Graham Coreil-Allen. They offer a broad range of in-person and virtual tours designed to illuminate lesser-known facts and newly imagined encounters in the area.

The exhibition opened with an improvised tour from Shalom, founder of New York City walking-as-art festival Elastic City, which included a printed guide and talk about “tactics and strategies for how to show up and occupy a place when creating walking art.”

Throughout September, interdisciplinary artist J$Fur shared ambient soundscapes from around Baltimore, and Braceli and award-winning textile artist and MICA professor Susie Brandt hosted talks about their current projects. The last three tours in the series will be presented by conceptual artists Pinkston and Peacock, as well as visual artist Coreil-Allen.

During Peacock’s walk on Saturday, October 5 at 2 p.m., he will present “I Guess I’m Stuck With Me,” which he describes as “a work that explores themes of codependency and interdependency focusing on a range of lived experiences that took place in Baltimore between the years 2016-2019.” The interactive piece encourages audiences to come in pairs to the main branch of the Enoch Pratt Library with a fully charged cell phone (or device with internet access) and headphones.

“This work has to do with presence, physical presence and the absence of it,” Peacock says. “I want whoever experiences it to have an experience that places them in a position of reflection, but also urgency in regard to the ways they are navigating their past experiences—which are really palpable and alive in the present.”

At the conclusion of the tour, Peacock will post links to downloadable audio files so that others who could not attend can still have the opportunity to experience the work.

On October 19 at 2 p.m., trans-media artist Pinkston will present the “Post-Colonial Historical Monuments Tour Artist-Led Walk”—an interactive, ritual-based, performance on the corner of Mosher Street and West Mount Royal Avenue.

The work explores and interrogates the history of confederate monuments in Bolton Hill. During the performance, Pinkston will read excerpts from womanist scholars, including Audre Lorde and bell hooks, on a loudspeaker to facilitate dialogues about the relevance of confederate statues.

—Ada Pinkston

—Ada Pinkston

After the performance, visitors can grab a copy of Pinkston’s zine that documents participant responses to workshops conducted by the artist in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Dallas about the removal of confederate monuments.

Hidden Paths will conclude on November 8 at 7 p.m., with a 90-minute tour led by Coreil-Allen, a public artist and OSI Community Fellow. His piece titled, “Arches and Access Evening Wander,” leads audiences through Druid Hill Park. Attendees will meet the artist at the Druid Hill gates on Madison Avenue to, “explore monuments to community connectivity and a riptide of traffic priorities between the Druid Hill Park gate and the Jones Falls Expressway.”

The work is presented as part of The Access Project for Druid Hill Park (TAP Druid Hill), led by a coalition of artists, residents, city officials, and community partners to increase activation at the park.

Coreil-Allen is especially looking forward to exploring, “the challenging impacts of surrounding highways on local neighborhoods, engineering behind the ongoing reservoir construction, and efforts to better access Druid Hill through participator transportation planning and public art.”

For the 20 years I’ve lived in Baltimore, I’ve often fantasized about leaving the leafy comforts of the suburbs and moving to beautiful Bolton Hill, with its 19th-century rowhomes and diverse community, from MICA artists to empty-nesters, as well its alluring history as a place that writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, BMA benefactors Claribel and Etta Cone, and former president Woodrow Wilson once called home.

Now, with the opening of The Tilted Row, located on the first floor of the new Jordan Apartments at the corner of McMechen and Jordan streets, once again, I find myself casually considering real estate listings in the 21217.

Whatever your zip code, The Tilted Row, named literally for the titled marble-stepped rowhomes in the historic neighborhood, is worth a visit. Owned by Ziad Maalouf, who also operates the Mediterranean spot Cafe Fili, The Tilted Row is the quintessential gastropub.

It has all the graces of a fine-dining restaurant—well-prepared fare with high-quality ingredients, inventive drinks, reliable service, a convivial vibe, attractive ambiance, and something for everyone on the menu— but at a price point that tips toward more casual, albeit elevated, dining.

Open for only four months, The Tilted Row has already established a crowd of regulars. Several diners told us that they’d eaten there more than four or five times, an impressive feat for a restaurant still in its freshman season. And after eating there, I can understand why it’s a place you’d visit again—and again.

The offerings include about six snacks, as well as five small plates, large plates, and mains, all of which are shareable and well- portioned for the price. There are also Blue- Plate specials such as fried chicken for $20, including dessert. Given that Maalouf is a native of Lebanon, you’ll find plenty of Middle Eastern influences on the menu, from the Fili hummus to the Israeli couscous with Baharat (dried rosebuds, cinnamon, black pepper). But chef Andrew Thomas (formerly of The Elephant and Donna’s Cross Keys), who can seemingly cook any kind of world cuisine, leaves his stamp on the menu, too, with English pub grub like fish and chips and Southern staples such as shrimp and grits.

The crab cakes.

Glazed carrots with fava-bean hummus.

Over several weeks, we sampled much of the menu, from the delectable zucchini fritters with feta cheese and herbs resting in a pool of dill aioli to the must-order Moorish eggplant tapenade served with a dollop of labneh yogurt, spicy harissa, and charred crostini. The glazed carrots with fava-bean hummus and a shower of garlic “streusel” was also a great starter, along with a clever cocktail or two. (We particularly enjoyed the lavender and lemonade with lavender-infused vodka.)

For the larger plates, there are numerous innovative items such as duck fried rice and pappardelle with lamb ragu, but we decided to stick with the basics. It’s just my personal M.O.; when visiting a restaurant for the first time, I like to know that the standards are mastered before moving on to the more complicated fare.

Our plan panned out. A broiled hanger steak cooked with local mushrooms, a jalapeño chimichurri, and mashed potatoes with truffle oil was earthy and satisfying. The cast- iron crab cakes baked with breading on the outside were an Eastern Shore interpretation and what Thomas grew up eating. This version served over a bed of succotash—fava beans, corn, and tomatoes—was a delectable farewell to summer.

The litmus test for any gastropub, however, is the burger. And this one is on its way to legendary status. For starters, there’s the flashy presentation that makes your mouth water even before the all- important first bite. The sky-high sandwich is served on a wooden board and comes with a knife for cutting. A mountain of duck-fat fries arrives alongside it in a paper cone. And, boy, does it deliver. The burger works in tandem with every element between the squishy, yet sturdy, house-made bun—from the piquant pi- mento cheese to the crisp bacon, pickles, caramelized onions, and a proprietary pub sauce that’s reminiscent of Thousand Island dressing.

Beyond the food, The Tilted Row shows its neighborhood spirit by engaging with the local community. The drinks menu, with a large selection of local beers and more than 120 local bourbons and malts, features a riff on the orange crush, “The Do-Gooder,” with $1 going to those “doing good in our neighborhood,” the menu explains.

The idea of community is also driven home when you order the house-made za’atar focaccia, which arrives—uncut—in a pan. It’s a reminder, says our server, to “break bread with our neighbors.” As my husband and I tugged at different ends of the lovely loaf, I found myself feeling gratitude, while also getting a little misty.

Eating out can be arduous at times—the food can be overpriced, the service sometimes stinks, and one is left with the sinking feeling that it might have been better to stay home. Not so at The Tilted Row, where I left feeling content and sated. On one visit, where we dined at the marble bar, our bartender, Hannah Baker, poured me a small sip of Pinot Noir. “I want to make sure that you love it,” she said. And I did. “I wonder if there are any vacancies at The Jordan Apartments,” I whispered to my husband as I took my last sip.

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THE TILTED ROW 305 McMechen St.443-552-1594. HOURS: Mon.-Thurs. 4-10 p.m.; Fri. 4-11 p.m.; Sat. 10 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun. 10 a.m.- 10 p.m. PRICES: Snacks and small plates: $6-16; large plates: $17-20; mains: $22-28. AMBIANCE: Sleek pub.

The Bolton Hill district continues to remake itself into an inviting cloister for residents and visitors alike. Narrower driving lanes, well-marked crosswalks, new curbs, and a dedicated bike lane have tamed Mt. Royal Avenue’s traffic, rendering it less of a speedway and more of a promenade. The tendrils of new openings probe this revitalized block, and Noona’s is the latest arrival.

Owner Phil Han’s credits include the Asian-inflected Dooby’s on North Charles and laid-back cocktail bar Sugarvale, as well as Fat Tiger and Old Boy’s in the newly renovated Broadway Market. Noona’s brings an Italian-inspired menu to students and longtime Bolton Hill residents alike, without white-tablecloth prices. On our visit, we were welcomed by an airy space with a minimalist aesthetic accented with cool metals, warm woods, and restrained dashes of color.

From bar stools to high tops to banquettes to outdoor tables, we had our pick of seating options. We took our seats inside and checked out the menu while sipping inventive cocktails, then began our meal with two small plates. We were delighted by fava beans in the farro salad, accompanied by roasted turnips, earthy sorrel, and bright pickled ramps. We also enjoyed the roasted broccoli’s interplay between zesty lemon accents and piquant tellicherry peppers.

As we polished off these delicious starters, we were enticed by the pizzas passing by, ultimately indulging in The Bambino. A toothsome and satisfying sourdough crust provided the foundation for a succulent dance of flavors—juicy fennel sausage, red onion, creamy ricotta, and spicy honey. We loved this spirited combination and were tempted to polish off the whole pie right there, but other plates beckoned to us, starting with the soft crab special.

This was offered as a sandwich or on its own, and we opted for the naked crab. Our crustacean arrived lightly battered and fried and accompanied by tartar sauce. The combination was beautiful in its simplicity and left us wanting another. Instead, we went with the roasted pork belly.

Here, chef Cai Lindeman (formerly of the Michelin-rated The Dabney in Washington, D.C.) revealed his understated creativity and sense of humor. Richly fatty pork belly arrived on a bed of charred cucumber, pickled mustard seeds, grilled onions, and radicchio. A dash of vinegar bound all these flavors together in a playful interpretation of a frankfurter accompanied with pickles, relish, and mustard. We wrapped our meal up with a sinful slab of lemon pound cake garnished with basil-infused blackberry compote.

Noona’s offers the wholesome yet uncomplicated casual dining that Baltimore needs—unfussy presentations, bright flavors, reasonable prices, and the deft hand of a good chef to bring them together. We’d like to see a bit more Italian-inspired focus on the wine list to support the flavors coming from the kitchen, but that’s a minor quibble for a restaurant with no fine-dining aspirations.

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NOONA’S 1203 W. Mt. Royal Ave. 410-424-0857. HOURS: Sun. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-9 p.m.; Tues.-Wed. 5-9 p.m.; Thurs.-Fri. 5-10 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-9 p.m. PRICES: Small plates: $7-10; pizza and entrees: $11-15; desserts: $3.50-8. AMBIANCE: Trendy casual.

Upon returning from a Burmese dining experience in Washington, D.C., Kylie Perrotti was feeling inspired. While enjoying the food cooked by two Burmese women, there was a palpable sense of community.

A recent New York transplant, Perrotti has a passion for all things food and for building connections online. She runs a recipe blog and is an active member of the Baltimore subreddit.

She started to think about how an operation similar to her experience in D.C.—but encompassing food of all kinds—might work in Baltimore. After putting out feelers and receiving abundant interest on her Bolton Hill neighborhood Facebook page, as well the subreddit, the Baltimore Supper Club was born.

“I was overwhelmed,” Perrotti says of the reception towards the club. “I sensed it would fill a need.”

That presumption came to a head this past Saturday, as the club held its first official event on the rooftop of Robert Eastabrooks’s Hanover apartment building. Eastabrooks quickly reached out to Perrotti when he saw her posts, as he himself had been considering a similar idea, and the two connected. Attendees were encouraged to cook their favorite dish or a recipe that means something to them. Twenty-four people came, a number much higher than its organizers were expecting.

“Food has always been this beautiful bridge that connects cultures to one another,” says Eastabrooks, who has professional cooking experience. “We want to tell the story of the people of Baltimore.”

Members hope the future is bright for the club, which has its own Facebook page and plans for further events. Eastabrooks envisions partnering with local chefs and hosting dinners, holding events at communal spaces like R. House, and even elevating the dining experience to a three to four course buy-in meal. As it grows, founders hope that the club can build its own network where participants share recipes, cooking tips, and food experiences.

On a recent summer night, that is exactly what they did. From Perrotti’s harissa mac and cheese to a raved-about olive tapenade, there was a diverse array of food on display. Among those attendance was Stephan Hanley. He and his girlfriend live in Baltimore, and when he saw posts on a Bolton Hill Facebook page, he figured it’d be a good way to get to know new people. Like most people in attendance, the couple went in to the experience not knowing anyone else who would be there.

“It’s a good social experience,” Hanley says. “We talked about how neighborhoods are changing. It’s good to see people from different areas and backgrounds having a positive perspective.”

The gathering was just the beginning of a community bound together by food and an inclination toward spontaneity. With members who are up for anything, the club can take on many different shapes and provide varied experiences.

“I never would have done this without the help of the Internet,” says attendee Koby Samuel, a student at UMBC. “There’s a good and bad side to it and I’m happy that this is one of the good sides, where you can meet new people in your area. It’s a weird connecting force.”

Samuel says he was a bit apprehensive to fully embrace and commit to something foreign. There’s vulnerability in sharing something you’ve made with others, but at the Baltimore Supper Club’s first meeting, any nervous energy was quickly abated. People who had been strangers at the beginning of the night made connections about their upbringing, neighborhoods, and common interests.

“We want to make friends,” Eastabrooks says. “There’s a lot of people moving to Baltimore where this is their first Baltimore experience. I want to pay it forward.”

From Spike and Charlie Gjerde to Donna Crivello and Jerry Pellegrino, Andy Thomas has worked for almost every well-known chef in Baltimore. His most recent venture is The Tilted Row, a Bolton Hill gastropub inside The Jordan apartment building. We sat down with Thomas to chat about the concept, growing in the local restaurant industry, and the Tilted Row’s signature crab cakes that pay homage to his Eastern Shore upbringing.

What was your mission with this menu? We know that it has a lot of Middle Eastern influences because owner Ziad Maalouf, who also operates Mt. Vernon’s Cafe Fili, is Lebanese.
Before I even came on board, they had hired a consultant and had come up with the menu. When I came on the idea was for it to be elevated pub food with Mediterranean influences and Middle Eastern spice mixes like Chermoula—paprika, mint, and other things—and Baharat, which blends cumin, cardamom, allspice, cinnamon, paprika, and nutmeg.

I looked at the menu and it didn’t have any vegan or vegetarian dishes, which I thought were important for this neighborhood. I also brought things like fried chicken, zucchini fritters, and duck fried rice like I’d been doing for years. We wanted to have Middle Eastern influences, but we also didn’t want to have our hands tied by them. We didn’t want the menu to be overly complicated. We wanted to keep it simple at a price point that wasn’t too high.

I know you worked at The Elephant for years. Why do you think it didn’t succeed?
I believe that it was hard to convince people that this grand space was a neighborhood place—people only came for their grandmother’s birthday or prom. Two full floors of the space were not being used.

How did you eventually meet Maalouf?
We met on Craigslist. I was looking for a job and I answered an ad. I knew it was still under construction, but I didn’t hear from him. I went to Café Fili to give him my resume but he wasn’t there, then my good friends Jerry Pellegrino and Amy von Lange from Schola talked me up. I got a phone call from him the next day.

So that was it?
I worked part time doing some classes at Schola, then I worked full time at Fili. It was nice to ease into it.

How did you get into cooking?
I’ve always wanted to cook. I had an uncle who passed away when I was a young kid. He was a crab man with a truck that had a steamer and he’d park it on the side of the road and sell crabs. Here was this guy selling something people love. You sit down as a family as an event. He then had a crab steaming shop and he went to work in Old Bowie at this little old place called The Railroad Inn. It was a family-run place and I went there to wash dishes at 14. I made pizzas and got good enough to help the guys on the line. Then, in 12th grade, I did a work-study program at the Holiday Inn in Greenbelt. There was a real chef there and it was the first time I saw the line of people in white jackets. I knew these were my people.

Where did you go after that?
I went to Baltimore International College when it was on Gay Street. I did a two-year program in one and got a job at the Peabody Court Hotel in the brasserie, before going up to the 13th floor to work in The Conservatory. It was over the top with the silver and crystal and food under domes and then it became Michel Richard’s Citronelle, and I learned that it’s not just about cream and heavy meat reductions, but you can use olive oil and it can be well executed. It opened my eyes that food can be fun and fresh.

Didn’t you also work at Donna’s?
Yes, a friend of mine went to work there when it was at the Baltimore Museum of Art and I was his sous chef. Within two weeks, he had a nervous breakdown. I was 24 at the time, and they looked at me and said: “It’s your turn to step up.”

What a story. So now, here you are at The Tilted Row. Talk about some of your signature items, like the burger.
I just wanted to make a good pub burger. This one is from the original menu. It has tobacco onions and pickles. People think that burgers are easy to make, but they’re anything but. It’s the one item that people try to change the most, they try to take it apart and put it back together again.

Your crab cakes with succotash are excellent, but not what we’re used to in Baltimore.
I grew up with a crab cake that was different than the one in Baltimore. I’m from Prince George’s County and have family on the Eastern Shore. The only time we ate crab cakes was the day after we’d eaten steamed crabs on the back porch. We used leftover meat, not just jumbo lump, and would bind it in mayo, mustard, egg, and breadcrumbs. We breaded them on the outside and fried them in a pan. This is very much my version of a crab cake. There are people who are like, “That’s not a crab cake.” People have a very big opinion about it, but I stand by them. I grew up with the succotash, it had corn, tomatoes, and lima beans—but our version uses fava beans.

Give us your elevator pitch about why people should patronize The Tilted Row.
The neighborhood is this beautiful, historic place. People need to stop being afraid to come into Baltimore and embrace this town again.

The idea is for CookHouse in Bolton Hill to be the quintessential buzzy neighborhood hangout—featuring all-day service, outdoor seating, a full bar, and a thoughtful carry-out program. But there is one thing that chef/owner George Dailey says diners shouldn’t expect to see at his forthcoming restaurant.

“We’re not going to have TVs in the place,” says Dailey, a Bolton Hill resident who also operates mainstay cafe On The Hill in the neighborhood. “You’re there to eat, not to watch TV. They’re just really impersonal.”

Aside from wanting the focus to be on the food, the English-born chef says that he wants CookHouse to be the type of place where neighbors of all ages can come to connect and converse with one another. “They will still have their phones, though,” he says with a laugh. “So maybe nevermind that.”

CookHouse is slated to open in the former home of B. Bistro on the corner of Bolton and Mosher streets in October. Dailey and his realtor wife, Jessica, purchased the building from the Karzai family last year, and have been working to transform the look and feel of the space ever since.

“We removed everything and started over,” Dailey says of the slow-and-steady construction process. “It’s an old building, so it takes a lot of work, but we’re really hoping people’s expectations are met.”

One of the larger tasks that the team took on was breaking up the open floorplan with a mix of banquette and table seating, a newly built bar, and a seperate area for takeout service.

“B didn’t have a bar, so that was the first thing that we thought the place needed,” Dailey says, adding that the bar will highlight beer, wine, and classic cocktails like a Negroni and French 75. “It was also an open dining room, so when you entered, it was kind of like you were standing right in front of somebody having dinner.”

The “classic yet modern” design of the 75-seat restaurant (which will also have outdoor sidewalk seating) will pay homage to the historic architecture of the building, while also incorporating neutral tones, warm woods, marble accents, and textured wallpaper.

In addition to the drastically remodeled space, the food will also be unrecognizable to Bolton Hill locals. Dailey says that the menu of European and American staples will be completely different than the sandwiches, soups, and burritos that diners have become familiar with at On The Hill.

For starters, the CookHouse menu will be much smaller. It will offer full breakfast plates (think eggs cooked to order, French toast, Belgian waffles, and steel-cut oats with berry compote), and a curated list of salads and burgers for lunch.

The restaurant will close briefly from 3-5 p.m. before reopening for dinner service, which will feature more intricate dishes like steak frites, steamed mussels, Beef Wellington, and a classic sole meuniere with lemon and brown butter sauce. For the more adventurous eater, there will also be a small section of nose-to-tail cooking with dishes like pig’s feet and veal kidneys: “It’s this whole philosophy of, if you’re going to butcher an animal, you better eat it all,” he says.

Learning from his experiences at On The Hill, Dailey is also streamlining a takeout program with dishes that are specifically designed to travel well. “There won’t be any soggy fries or things like that,” he says. “I want people’s food to arrive in a good state.”

That focus on hospitality is a major part of the mission behind CookHouse. Because there aren’t a ton of commercial restaurant spaces in the area (Noona’s recently opened near Mount Royal Station and The Tilted Row will soon debut in the new Jordan apartment building), Dailey feels lucky to be able to offer two eateries in the place that he and his family call home.

“I fell in love with the neighborhood when we first came here,” he says of his move from Boston nearly 20 years ago. “What really drives me are the big beautiful buildings that have so much history behind them. You try to picture this neighborhood 100 years ago when there were horses in front of the houses and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool.’ We really want to honor that.”

On a tree-lined block of Bolton Hill’s Park Avenue reminiscent of Brooklyn Heights, old brick rowhomes built in the 1800s share a storied history. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived on the street after Zelda died, as did renowned classicist and author Edith Hamilton. And the late artist Les Harris raised his three daughters there with his wife, Sally, hosting dinner parties and transforming his house into a work of beauty and a small mecca for creatives.

Harris flocked to the neighborhood along with other artists and teachers in the 1960s because it was affordable (he paid $14,000 for his rowhome) and in close proximity to several schools, where he taught and studied—Maryland Institute College of Art, Johns Hopkins University, and the Schuler School of Fine Arts (he also taught art and theatrical design at the Park School, and Stevenson University). After Harris’ death in 2008, his wife continued to live in the three-story brick home at 1323 Park Ave., built in 1885, but she recently put it on the market.

Harris was a Baltimore icon and a Renaissance man, full of magic and mystique. He and his wife were active across multiple artistic disciplines. They met when she hired him as a choreographer and set designer at her theater, The Gateway Playhouse, in Long Island, New York, where she grew up.

“It was a totally artistic household,” says his daughter Holly Harris, who spent the past two years boxing up the house. There was always someone playing the piano—which is still in the house—or painting or gardening.

Harris became known for his maximalist paintings exploring all manner of metaphysical thought, and much of his work is housed at his Amaranthine Museum in Clipper Mill, a space that reopened to the public in November.

But his house was a work of art, too. He designed and executed many renovations and decorative details: a brick basement that leads out onto a patio, a rooftop garden, a marble kitchen counter in the shape of a grand piano, a wrought iron railing running up a rear stairwell, coffered ceilings in three of rooms. Local artisans installed stained glass above the front doorway and above the handcrafted cabinetry in the dining room. His most obvious addition stylistically might be the long mural that wraps around the front hallway and stairwell, painted for the wedding reception of one of his daughters following a ceremony in the Brown Memorial Park Avenue Church across the street.

“The house is so filled with love,” says Holly, who was 1 when her parents moved there in 1962. “We had so many good times in there.”

His studio was in the basement, but when his paintings became larger in scale, he grew out of that space in 1976 and moved to a studio at Clipper Mill, which he also used as a museum to show his body of work, which he refrained from selling. When Clipper Mill sold in 2005, the museum relocated within the community and just last year relocated once again to a much smaller space. The family intends to sell his work, as they believe it will reach a wider audience.

To understand—or at least get a sense of—the man who said things like “matter is a superstition”—you must first go to Amaranthine, the legacy he left behind. Floor to ceiling paintings and sculptural work (including pieces hung from the ceiling) move through time and explore metaphysics through the lens of art—numerology, astrology, cathedrals from various eras—going from modern times all the way back to the origin of consciousness, as he understood it (the paintings are heavy with sacred geometry and hieroglyphics), perhaps developing his own cosmology along the way.

“He was gonna find God through the eyes of artists,” Holly says. “His search was for the divine in everything.”

Through the Age of Aquarius, the Age of Pisces, the Age of Romance and the Age of Reason—they all have their place among the work.

“Once he was inspired, he’d paint so fast,” Holly says. “Nothing here has two coats of paint.”

She also recalls how the rooms of the Park Avenue house changed often, each time her father got a new vision that “he had to fulfill” and would move things around and redecorate to realize his ideas. Sections of the house went under complete renovations repeatedly.

Antithetical to what is done today, he would paint the grand 12-foot ceilings in a darker hue to create more intimacy in the large rooms.

Growing up, Holly was surrounded by national and international artists and actors, she says. Her parents would habitually host people when they were in town for gigs.

They bought another house in Virginia in 1992, where his artistic eye went into landscape architecture, as he transformed nearly two lakefront acres into their second paradise.

“He was always all over the place,” says Holly. “Mom and Dad never looked back; they just kept going, kept building.”

You’re not a videographer or a photographer in need of a studio, so why should you care about the new Human Being Studios workspace?

Because it’s more than that.

Yes, the new studio, located near MICA, will allow 10 member artists to use its green room and its gear, and others can drop in and use the space for a flat fee, but it will also serve as a miniature community hub for creatives.

Matt Kelley, co-founder of Human Being Productions, which runs the space, said he and cofounder Greg Bowen plan to hold movie nights, invite groups for educational tours, and arrange artist talks, making this an interactive space for the wider community.

Kelley and Bowen are no strangers to holding get-togethers. They’ve been using that tactic since the company began in 2013, having recently hosted a holiday party at the Creative Alliance.

“We just like to throw parties and see who shows up,” Kelley says. “Every time we’ve tried traditional advertising, it didn’t feel real . . . We’d rather meet people and talk and grow our own creative community.”

The decision to open the space came about after Human Being Productions, which specializes in professional photography and videography services, moved its offices to a shared space with Post Typography in Charles Village while maintaining its workspace in Bolton Hill. “We’re only using the studio in about 10 percent of its capacity now,” Kelley says. “We wanted to share that asset.”

The space will essentially act as a co-op, with Kelley and Bowen acting as its engaged, hands-on leaders.

Past Lives

South Broadway
August 5, 2016

“Look around, what do you see?” asks the top-hatted, cane-sporting guide of the 30 or so Charm City visitors gathered Friday evening at the foot of Broadway for The Original Fells Point Ghostwalk. “Friendly part of town, right? Pretzel place. Ice cream parlor. Young professionals . . . that’s a new phenomenon, however,” he adds, somewhat ominously. “This used to be a dangerous part of town. Pirates here would stick you in the gut for the coins in your pocket.”

Among the ghosts said to reside nearby is a 10-year-old girl who has appeared in the second-floor stockroom above Bertha’s restaurant. She has been spotted over the years by employees, says the guide, glancing from the window to where the crowd now stands—reputedly a mass burial site from an 18th-century yellow-fever outbreak that may have claimed her mother.

On Thames Street, the discussion turns to the former practice of shanghaiing young men into service aboard a ship—known as “crimping” in Baltimore. One such young man, who apparently didn’t survive his initial kidnapping, is said to haunt Leadbetters Tavern. The Ghostwalk includes a visit to the family cemetery of Fells Point founder William Fell, whose long dead ne’er-do-well son is reportedly sighted from time to time walking down narrow Shakespeare Street.

Naturally, the best tales blend fact and hard-to-fact-check anecdotes. Melissa Rowell, a former medical illustrator who launched the Ghostwalk tours, admits to being skeptical even as she did her initial research. “Then something strange happened,” she says. She’d bought a T-shirt from an older Cat’s Eye Pub bartender and not long afterward found herself back there and asked about him. “I described him to the woman working—that he kinda looked like Abraham Lincoln,” Rowell continues. “And so she points to a photograph behind the bar. I said, ‘Yes, that’s the guy I bought the T-shirt from.’

“She says, ‘Well, he worked here. Doesn’t anymore. He’s been dead eight years.’

“True story.”

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Skylight

Park Avenue
July 17, 2016

In Europe, stained-glass windows have been associated with Christianity and appreciated for their beauty since the Middle Ages. But there’s also historic—if not quite as old—stained-glass inside Bolton Hill’s Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church. This Sunday morning, as part of Artscape’s slew of events, congregation member James Shuman is leading a post-service Breakfast With Tiffany tour of the Gothic-style, 1869-built church’s exquisite windows, which a glass art expert once described as “the finest collection of Tiffany windows in the country and quite possibly the world.”

Tiffany glass, Shuman notes, refers to the work of the prolific decorative artist Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the founder of the famous luxury jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co. The two largest windows at Brown Memorial measure 16 feet wide and stand three stories tall.

“These were made when there was no TV, no radio, and people came to church twice on Sunday and once during the week,” Shuman says. “They each preach a message.” The two biggest windows, which face each other, depict the annunciation to the shepherds and the heavenly city of Jerusalem, for example. From outside, however, the images in the windows appear, at best, in shadowy outlines.

“There was a boy, 8 to 10 years old, who made his mother bring him in 10 years ago,” Shuman recalls. “It gets a little rough a couple blocks west and there had been some shootings in the neighborhood around that time. He said he wanted to see the picture of the man holding the gun.

“What the image was,” Shuman explains, “was a seeker holding his arm outstretched with a cross.”

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Light Waves

South Linwood Avenue
August 5, 2016

On this warm Friday evening, the city pool at Patterson Park is playing the role of multipurpose gym, hosting the Robert L. Drake Jr. Middle School 17th Annual Science Fair, as a banner in the backdrop indicates. The move to the unusual venue, explains tonight’s emcee—an earnest educator named Miss Waters—is “due to an unfortunate ant colony incident.” But not really.

The bleachers here are actually packed for the award-winning performance art/synchronized swimming troupe Fluid Movement’s 15th project—Science Fair! The Water Ballet—which pays homage to the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton and Nikola Tesla, as well as science fiction. The Inner Harbor’s breakthrough trash-eating device, Mr. Trash Wheel, also gets a big shout out with his own song and swim number. (The fictional middle school is an homage, too—named after a former city rec and parks lifeguard and scuba instructor who passed away in January.)

The highlight of the evening is probably the second of the six choreographed segments—“Reanimation: Brides and Monsters”—which starts with a dozen and a half ghoulish performers in waterproof zombie makeup and red and black suits dancing on the pool deck to “Monster Mash.” Soon enough, they’re falling into the water, kicking a routine to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”

“The whole thing began in 1999, when I was working for the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation and looking for ways to promote the park, the usual concerts and things,” co-founder Valarie Perez-Schere says later. “Someone told me there was a woman [Trixie Burneston] who wanted to do water ballet at the pool. I said, ‘Shut the front door! Give me her number!’”

If homes could talk, a certain gray stonefront Victorian on a tree-lined block of West Mount Royal Avenue in Bolton Hill would have 135 years worth of stories to tell. After the three-story home was built in the early 1880s, it most likely housed a large, upper-middle-class family. Sometime around World War II—as families decreased in size and moved to the suburbs—it was split into apartment units. And in the 1980s, it became home to students attending the nearby Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

On a Sunday morning in the summer of 2000, Thomas Shipley and Christopher Taylor saw a for-sale photo of the beautiful 3,700-square-foot home in The Baltimore Sun. The couple was looking to trade in their rowhouse in Butcher’s Hill for something with more space.

“When we met the Realtor here and opened the front door, our hearts just fell,” remembers Shipley. “It was a disgusting mess.” Years of neglect had left an abused shell of a home, with little left of its original beauty. Tape held together cracked windowpanes, painted-over nails were hammered into woodwork, and carved initials covered the bright purple bannister. But original details that did remain—among them, dramatic keyhole-shaped Moorish windows and Palladian weight-and-pulley windows leading to the third-floor balcony—charmed the two into taking the plunge. Although they hadn’t planned on a renovation, they purchased the property from MICA in August of 2000 and moved in two months later to embark on what would be a 12-year “labor of love,” Shipley says.

There’s no trendy exposed brick or open-floor plans to be found in the home, which was restored as closely as possible to its original 1880 design. With few historic photographs or records to guide them (even the construction date of “early 1880s” is an informed guess), Shipley and Taylor used neighboring properties and magazines such as Victorian Homes and This Old House to guide their DIY project.

Original fixtures like radiators and transom window openers were repaired and saved whenever possible, or replaced with materials dating from the same era. When the kitchen’s sagging foundation forced the homeowners to replace and reinforce the floors, beams from the old Calvert Distilling Company dating from the turn of the last century were milled into pine flooring.

To reconstruct the original double vestibule front doors—which, along with the transom window, had been stolen—Shipley, a carpenter and former contractor, looked at doors on a nearby home’s entrance as a model. “I did a scale drawing of the doors and then Chesapeake Woodworking and I built those and put them back,” he says, “so they’re actually replicas of the doors that were there when the house was built.”

The rescued home’s traditional décor flowed naturally from the historic design. Often, a family heirloom or item discovered on an antiquing trip set a room’s tone. “When we found a great piece, we would put it in a box and store it,” Shipley says. “We [didn’t always know] where we were going to use it.”

The 18-foot-wide rowhouse welcomes visitors into a parlor in the front, which leads into a dining room, half bath, and kitchen before opening to the back patio. Twelve-foot ceilings, two fireplaces, and a columned archway set a traditional tone. The dining room’s medieval-era décor began with a table and chairs purchased from a shop in Ellicott City and extends to the accompanying carved wooden furniture, dark red walls, and Persian rug. The lantern chandeliers over the table were discovered by chance, peeking out of a pile of rubbish outside an old church that was to be torn down.

“As we drove by, I saw a trash pile and spotted a chandelier,” remembers Shipley. “We stopped and I bought these. There were only two that didn’t have the glass broken.”

Each item sparks a remarkable memory for the homeowners, who have a knack for sourcing vintage décor. The Estey organ in the parlor, which dates to the 1880s, was given to Shipley in 10 to 15 boxes to settle a $50 debt, and he painstakingly assembled it by hand over many months. Two crystal sconce lights discovered in an Eastern Shore junk shop turned out to be a match to the parlor chandelier they had purchased there years earlier. The mantle was discovered in an Eastern Avenue antique shop. And the rugs in the first-floor hallway were haggled for at the Grand Bazaar in Turkey and carried home in duffle bags. “Everything in the house has a story,” says Shipley. “It’s fun.”

From a seat on a leather couch in the warm and cozy second-floor den (the couch faces the wall-mounted caribou head brought back from a trip to Montana), Shipley and Taylor look through a photo album documenting the decade of work that went into restoring the home to single-family use and era-appropriate design.

“We were living out of plastic bags for years,” says Taylor.

“We would go to work in a three-piece suit and a diamond stickpin and someone would say, ‘What’s that on your shoulder?’ and we’d have plaster on there,” recalls Shipley with a laugh. “It was a mess.”

When asked why they wanted to take on such a daunting project, the couple didn’t have an immediate answer, as if renovating the home was more of a calling than a decision. After thinking for a moment, Taylor replies, “Because it’s got character. It looks like something.”

But Shipley admits it’s not for everyone. “It scares some people. But we saw it finished,” he says, likening the journey to Michelangelo’s process of seeing a finished statue within a block of marble, and then removing the unnecessary pieces to set it free.

“I always talk to the house and say, ‘Do you appreciate all we’ve done for you?’” says Shipley. “She and I have a good relationship. I know her every nook and cranny.”

HEIRLOOM HOARDER: I feel like a lot of people would describe my style as vintage bohemian, but I would just describe it as nostalgic. I like things that have a story with them.

GLOBETROTTER: There are a fair amount of things in my apartment from when I traveled across Asia. I try to collect little things along the way.

FORTUNATE FIND: I love the hutch piece against the wall that I actually bought off eBay. It was luckily located a couple of hours away and, at the time, I was driving a minivan, which was the only reason I was able to get it back here. It was awesome because, typically, if you find vintage furniture online, the shipping is astronomical.

WONDER WALL: The two things on the hangers are a scarf and collar that I bought in Laos when I was traveling. The portrait is actually just a print I bought off of Etsy, and it’s supposed to be a picture of a mannequin in the 1920s.

GREEN ELEMENT: I really love having plants around. They are supposed to purify the air, and I think they are a nice sculptural way to decorate—and they are pretty inexpensive. I am kind of an accidental plant killer. I replace my plants often when they start to look too pitiful. The fire escape is the graveyard of all of my almost-dead plants. When I feel too guilty to look at them anymore, they have to go on the fire escape. I always think deep down that they are going to magically flourish out there, but they don’t.

SUBTLE CUES: I look to old movies, magazines, and books for inspiration. I have some books of 1930s interiors and, a lot of the time, I won’t literally translate ideas from them, but I will definitely find inspiration.

TRENDSETTER: I have a lot of friends who get their own place say to me, “I don’t know what I want my style to be,” and that doesn’t really ever occur to me. I’m just someone who collects whatever I really love.

Admit it, that lonely geranium on the deck is looking pretty sad. And let’s not even talk about the eyesore that is the sun-baked concrete parking pad. If the little bit of outdoors behind your land-starved city home is that aesthetically depressing, why not consider a redo? After all, nothing is more soothing after a long day than relaxing in a lush, carefully planned garden. And, yes, even small spaces can yield big results. The proof? We found three city gardens that show all you need is a few stalwart plants, a hose, and a little imagination to transform a bland backyard into Babylon.

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City Stylish

When Ted and Emilie Carter moved into their Butchers Hill rowhouse in 2013, they took one look at the 600-square-foot backyard—little more than a deck, a patch of grass, and some ominous, overgrown cypress—and knew something had to be done.

But there was no cause to call in the experts, since they are the experts—Ted is the president of Pinehurst Landscape Co. and Emilie is a landscape designer at Design Collective.

“The environment doesn’t stop at the county line,” says Emilie. “If your backyard is nothing but concrete and furniture, think how much better it would be if you had a tree. We’re trying to make the environment a little bit better for our little part of the world.”

To create an entertaining space, the couple demolished the deck in favor of a stone patio and covered unsightly concrete block walls with wood fencing set horizontally for a more modern feel. An 18-inch wall offsets the patio from the larger garden, where a stone path meanders, giving a sense of motion and space that is surprising in the tight urban setting.

Mostly, Ted and Emilie agreed on the structural decisions. But when it came to plants, the conversation got tricky.

“We both have our favorites,” says Ted. “And I’m used to working with clients in the county where you have more flexibility. In the city, every square foot counts.”

Because of the urban heat-island effect, they avoided delicate flowers. Working with the long, narrow space and an existing maple tree, they planted for year-round interest. The flora explosion begins in March in shades of green, white, and purple, with daffodils, peonies, salvia, and alliums, and becomes more robust in summer as the hostas fill the shady areas. Then the hydrangea, coneflower, yarrow, and red-and-yellow daylilies come into bloom. In the fall, the camellia blooms and, in winter, the beautyberry brings color to a stark landscape.

To make the most of the space, the couple trained a crepe myrtle up a concrete wall and did the same with clematis and climbing roses. They also added a holly to create a habitat for birds.

Like all good gardeners, the Carters are never truly finished. They plan to add a container vegetable garden and are even kicking around the idea of a green wall.

“People don’t realize how rewarding it can be to grow something,” says Emilie, “whether it’s flowers you put in a vase or two good tomatoes.”

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Hanging Gardens

Christian Roth says he’s not a particularly whimsical person, but there is something decidedly fanciful about the garden he shares in Bolton Hill with his partner, Brian Causey, and their two British shorthair cats. The walls are hung with inventive bits of artwork, much of it collected on the couple’s annual spring pilgrimage to New Orleans. Little glass mushrooms peek out from shrubs and two water fountains burble pleasantly. And then there are the terraces.

Each of the home’s three terraces is bedecked with pots, hanging baskets, and window boxes overflowing with marigolds, petunias, geraniums, begonias, hibiscus, and herbs. But most striking is the wisteria, which has been trained up the three-story spiraling iron staircase, its branches thick as an arm, twisting around each curve.

“The back porch is a little Swiss Family Robinson,” Roth concedes.

When the onetime suburbanites made the move to the city rowhome in 2000, they decided to remove a cracked car pad and create a flagstone patio and flower beds. “In removing the car pad, it felt good, putting earth back where there was concrete,” says Roth, who is co-president of the Bolton Hill Garden Club.

After laying the new patio, the couple used the brick from the old car pad to create a path leading back to the alley, flanked on both sides by lush greenery. Three iron urns create a focal point in the very back of the garden while a Japanese maple gives the rectilinear space some height. Over the years, the garden has become dominated by perennials—ferns, hostas, lamb’s ears—with annuals thrown in for color, like the variegated coleus in the iron urns. “We wanted to evoke a woodland,” Roth says.

While there is an elaborate system of hoses and timers to irrigate the garden (Roth swears by Terra-Sorb crystals and gel mats for helping containers retain water in summer), the garden has become less maintenance and more oasis as it has matured. With the exception of the occasional police helicopter overhead, it’s easy to feel transported from the city.

“Don’t let yourself be limited by concrete,” Roth advises. “You can do a lot with containers or build a rectangle and fill it with dirt and go for it.”

And it hasn’t been just about the back of the property: Never ones to pass up a gardening opportunity, the couple recently ripped out the concrete pad at the front of the house and put in a new flower bed, along with another huge urn overflowing with flora.

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Constant Gardener

Roberta Hahn was tired of mowing grass, which is why she traded a large country home for a tiny plot in Bolton Hill. Now she gets her large-garden fix as a volunteer at Cylburn Arboretum and at her second home in New Orleans, where she spends the winter. But she was not going to live entirely without a garden in Baltimore.

When she purchased her home in 2002, the existing space was two straight flower beds running with military precision down either side of the yard, ending at a 40-year-old Japanese maple sitting on a brick terrace. It was also mostly shaded by neighbors’ trees, until, one by one, they started to come down. She planted a zelkova, a fast-growing, urban-friendly tree, to restore some shade, and ripped up the boring beds in favor of ones with organic shapes, reworking the original brick path into one that hugs the new beds.

“Having a meandering path is always more interesting, even in a tiny space,” she explains.

Describing the garden as a “plant zoo,” the avid horticulturalist introduced almost exclusively low-maintenance perennials and natives to the space: Joe-Pye weed, black-eyed Susan, coneflower, golden ragwort, bleeding heart, and azalea.

“I have one of everything,” she says.

Now she puts in the plants she likes, moving those that need to be moved, and giving away the flops to friends in the Bolton Hill Garden Club. She gets unique ferns and hostas from a friend who propagates them for fun. She planted deutzia simply because she loves it. Her spring-blooming hellebores are so happy, she splits off the babies and gifts them to fellow gardeners.

There’s always something going on in her “zoo”: Each spring, an espalier forsythia blooms beautifully; come autumn, the clematis along the back wall does the same. The constants in the garden are the birdbath (a rat-proof alternative to a feeder) and the angel sculpture created by a found-object artist in South Carolina.

“Gardeners are always trying new things, new plants, or plant combinations,” she says.

Perhaps her most ingenious decision was to remodel the back of her home with accordion doors that fold open to a screen porch, blurring the line between inside and out.

“It can be quite quiet back here,” she says. “Now, with my porch, I can watch the O’s play from the garden—without being eaten alive by mosquitoes!”

We’ve all heard the cliché: Everybody comes back to Baltimore eventually.

And so it was, too, for former Baltimore Symphony Orchestra public relations vice president Greg Tucker and his wife, Catherine, who, after living in The Hague for seven years, where he worked as a senior vice president for insurance and asset-management giant Aegon, decided it was time to move their family of five back to Charm City.

But the international relocation was not the only thing on their to-do list: To ratchet up the stress, the Tuckers tossed in the search for, purchase of, and renovation of a historic Guilford home—all while still living nearly 4,000 miles away. 

The first step, obviously, was to find that new home, since the one they’d left in Bolton Hill in 2006 was now being rented out. The Bolton Hill home, once owned by piano great Leon Fleisher, held special significance for Greg, 51, who’s also a classical pianist. So what they really wanted was a property with comparable architecture and charm.

Viewing homes online helped narrow the possibilities, but an Internet search can only go so far. A decision this big required a trip or two from the Netherlands to Baltimore to actually walk through, and get the feel for, some prospective homes.

With the help of a Realtor, they began the first of two whirlwind tours. The first foray yielded nothing that excited them much, and things were not looking too good during the second go-round either—until the last stop. It was a home the Tuckers had first spotted online, and was near three other homes they had looked at. Walking in the front door, they both sensed something special—Greg recalls thinking, “This is it.”

Located in Guilford, the historic home, designed by Palmer and Lamdin (the original framed blueprints, dated 1929, came with the house) had just about everything the Tuckers were looking for, including a place for Greg’s piano and space to create a dream kitchen for Catherine, an avid cook known for her dinner parties. And for Greg, the home “evoked a bit of Europe.”

“When I first saw it, it had a friendly feeling, with great workmanship, beautifully designed rooms, and nice proportions,” recalls Catherine, 45. “It felt gracious and liveable.”

One of the wonderful attributes of the home is that so many apparently original details remained untouched. The brass sconces in the dining room, the iron work of the banister on the main staircase, and the marble fireplaces all harken back to the 1920s.

While Greg was concerned it would “require more work than I had the stomach for,” both he and Catherine could see the home’s potential. While the process of managing a renovation from overseas would have its challenges, the benefit was that they could tackle projects without having to live in a construction zone. But with modifications dating from 1954 and 1962 that needed to be undone, and a kitchen last touched in the 1970’s, the question was how to tap the home’s potential and still make the deadline for their move back to Baltimore.

Enter Tim Hartman of Architectural Classics, who Greg calls a “a lifesaver,” likening him to Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life.

“Tim was very approachable, already had great ideas on the first day we met, and was enthusiastic about the home,” says Catherine. Having started out as a cabinet maker—a skill he continues to hone—Hartman worked his way toward historic renovations and now, after nearly 30 years, has plenty of experience under his belt. Passionate about his work, Hartman focuses on developing a collaborative relationship with the homeowner, and has kept his company on the smaller side so that he can provide a high level of service. And he knew dozens of specialist subcontractors he could pull in on short notice.

Hartman started by asking the Tuckers questions about how their family—the couple has two daughters, 16 and 18, and a son, 11—would use the space, now and into the future. Catherine points out that Hartman’s work is “a reflection of who he is. He has a high standard and knows quality.” Greg had always promised Catherine a “kitchen worthy of her talents” and, after 20 years of marriage, it was time to deliver on that promise.

Hailing from Louisiana, Catherine knows good food and loves to cook. She has always enjoyed being in the kitchen and it’s been a passion of hers to introduce her children to good cooking. “Cooking is an everyday part of our lives” she says. Which is why that aspect of the renovation was so crucial to her. Catherine “wanted a family-friendly space, but in tune with the style of the house,” she says.

When Catherine and Greg purchased the home, what had been a garage in the original Palmer and Lamdin design was in use as a family/laundry room. Greg’s first thought was, “You can either turn it back into a garage or make it a real open space.”

Connected to the kitchen by a narrow doorway, the room was part of the house but not of the house. The challenge was to connect the former garage to the kitchen in a meaningful way, in order to create a space where the family could gather, and where Catherine could work her culinary magic. And then there was the issue of making the staple-up ceiling, indoor/outdoor “grass” carpeting, and wood paneling go away.

And so, the process of renovating the kitchen and den began—along with a few other projects from an ocean away. Using a photo-sharing website, e-mail, and conference calls, Hartman and the Tuckers worked through the details of the project. Hartman presented the Tuckers with several options and budgets, tweaking and revising as he received input from them. The Tuckers were clear from the outset that they did not want to lose any rooms or alter the architecture of the home, and decisions were made with those goals in mind.

While the Tuckers agree that working through the details from overseas went surprisingly smoothly, there came a time when phone calls and technology had exhausted their usefulness—there was no substitute for standing in the space. So Catherine made a trip a few months later, accompanied by her sister-in-law, who is an interior designer. On this inspection tour, the focus was on paint colors and other interior design choices, as well as on what elements the kitchen should contain, “given that I wanted very much for the kitchen to have a timeless quality,” says Catherine.

The original kitchen area featured a narrow, adjacent room which held a breakfast nook and butler’s pantry. In order to more efficiently use this space, the wall separating the two rooms was removed, incorporating the pantry space into a much larger and more open kitchen.

An earlier iteration of Hartman’s plans included the elimination of a back staircase. In the original Palmer and Lamdin design, this was the service stairwell that descended from upstairs, made a turn, and led directly into the center of the kitchen. It was decided to keep the staircase, but rather than having it lead to the center of the kitchen, it now descends straight to the former pantry area, creating a warm, inviting entrance to the kitchen from the upstairs.
The service stairwell continued from the kitchen to the basement and was located near the doorway leading into the former garage. In order to maintain the integrity of the new, larger kitchen, this stairwell was removed and ingress between the kitchen and the basement was closed off. Hartman then opened up the space to connect to the den and kitchen, adding built-in counter space and storage cabinets where the stairwell had been. How to access the basement with the removal of the old stairwell? It was ingeniously relocated to a superfluous closet in the main foyer.

The new open kitchen accommodates a wine refrigerator and center island, and has a natural flow.

Catherine also now has plenty of storage space for her equipment in the kitchen, including built-in cabinets.

While the kitchen and den were the main focus of the renovation, Hartman worked room by room to bring the whole house into move-in condition, while staying true to the original historic aspects.

The exterior needed some work as well, with peeling paint on the window frames and shutters, minor roof repairs, and a 1920s-style reflecting pool in the garden that was alive with green algae. The symmetrical facade of the home was partially obstructed by two enormous holly trees flanking the central entry. 

Hartman removed these to reveal the ornately scrolled ironwork covering the lower and upper windows.

While Hartman worked to “get the outside bolstered tight,” there was also the tiny detail of asbestos in old ductwork and wrapped around old piping in the basement. The aging electrical system needed upgrades, as well. The schedule took a minor hit with the necessary removal of the asbestos, and the addition of the new wiring, but the project continued to move forward.

The Tuckers arrived in August ahead of their belongings, which would follow four weeks later. Having been away during so much of the process, Catherine indicated that it felt like they were on a reality home-renovation show, and she couldn’t wait for “the big reveal.” When that day came, they were hardly disappointed.

Thirty years ago, Catherine remembers her parents renovated the kitchen of their 1880’s New Iberia, LA, home, and, ever since, she has wanted a kitchen just like her mother’s. She finally has it, and in the end, the renovation as a whole turned out perfectly, too, absentee owners and all. The secret to success? Greg again credits Hartman, saying the key was “having someone who can work with you”—even from 3,800 miles away.