When downsizing, more often than not there’s a move across town involved, but architect Mark Harrison headed across the street. “I almost rolled stuff over in a wheelbarrow,” he jokes now from his West End townhouse, as he shows me the view right across to his former home. “I renovated my old home in 2002, and they built this new townhouse complex three or four years later. I had a client who’d bought one and loved it, so when she told me this one was up for sale, I bought it from the developer.”
Harrison has lived in, and revised in some fashion, eight houses in his day. He loved the gold stucco Spanish bungalow he moved from (a home he’d reworked from a pink, L-shaped ‘50s ranch house), but he’d reached the point that his children had moved out and all the space wasn’t necessary. Of the buyers, he says, “We were a grown family moving out; they were a young family moving in. It was perfect.
“When I came into this house, I looked up and down the hall and I was concerned about the courtyard,” he adds. “When I saw that, I decided I could make it work. I think I made my mind up in about 45 minutes. It was an easy decision for me,” Harrison says.
Being an architect, Harrison added touches of his own, with the help of interior designer Damon Johnston. “I’ve never had so much fun working on a house,” says Harrison. “Damon and I were completely in sync with regard to what we thought needed to be done, and that produced great results.”
The living room provided a perfect example of the collaboration. Harrison wanted to add a fireplace, and both agreed setting it off center would work, rather than moving windows and reworking the room’s layout. The new configuration not only provides an eye-grabbing fireplace with stunning green marble (“I bought a whole slab of that; I wanted color,” he says), but provides three full, separate seating configurations, ideal for hosting a party.
With three grown daughters (ages 22-28), the layout makes Christmas easy, as the opening between living and dining room offers enough space and seating for everyone, including the boyfriends and friends that might show up. Indeed, much of Harrison’s planning centers around the need for space suitable for adult children, and eventually potentially husbands and grandchildren, to visit.
The house boasts many distinctive vintage and antique light fixtures. The remarkable dining room fixture has been in his last five homes. He bought it in Atlanta in 1992, The antique piece in the living room was found at Artifacts Antiques on White Bridge Road.
The draperies and upholstery—particularly on walls, as in both the downstairs powder room and master bath—deserve special mention. These are Johnston’s work. “Every piece of drapery he installed was perfection,” says Harrison.
For the dining room entry to the porch and courtyard, rather than drapes, Harrison designed a lambrequin shaped in tribute to the Parthenon’s Grecian style, which Johnston upholstered and placed. (You also see the Grecian influence at other points in the house.)
The aforementioned porch originally had no rails and led to a muddy yard. Aware of his good fortune in the views the house afforded, Harrison wanted to make use of the outside for entertaining. With design aid from John Thompson of Kaiser Trabue, the side courtyard was paved, and a wall with a stone lion sculpture set in added—providing an interesting visual from most windows on that side of the house, especially the kitchen. Behind the courtyard, a stair leads down to a three car garage...