tour
Present House Description
The present house consists of 3 levels. The middle or main level has served as the primary living area of the house, probably since 1865. It includes about 2,500 sq. ft., 7 rooms, a hallway and an entry foyer. This level has two decks that are on-grade with the spacious back yard on the east and north of the house.
A main entry from a south facing porch leads to the entry foyer, which is the newest part of the house (2006) The foyer connects with a sun room on the left and great room (1984) that includes a family/living room and kitchen. The great room has a 19½ foot vaulted ceiling, a double arched window in the gable, matching the arched windows of the Victorian attic gables, and a random-width oak floor. A chimney in the great room is rebuilt and lined to accommodate a wood burning stove or fireplace. Doors from the great room open to an east deck and yard beneath a large black walnut tree as old as the Victorian house. At the north end of the great room is the kitchen, with solid cherry Amish cabinets, custom made by Schrocks of Walnut Creek, Ohio, two sinks, and built-in appliances by Sub-zero, Wolf, Thermador and Bosch. Off the kitchen is a pantry and exterior door.
From the kitchen, a tiled transition hall (formerly the mid-20th century kitchen) leads to the Victorian part of the house. The transition hall faces the deck overlooking the yard to the north. The yard borders Old Hickory Drive and includes enough area to double the size of the house with an historically compatible structure having a new main entry and driveway that could give the house an Old Hickory Drive address, while still conforming to zoning setback requirements.
The great room, sunroom and transition hall surround a dining room, the only interior room of the house and part of the pre-Victorian structure. However, the south-facing windows and door to the enclosed sunroom, a formerly open pre-Victorian porch, have been retained to add light to the dining room. The windows are Victorian windows, replaced in 1865. The primitive pre-Victorian woodwork in the dining room has been retained. The transition hall, with its angled wall, was laid out by Cincinnati architect Woodie Garber to extend the hall in the Victorian front of the house past the dining room with which it had directly connected. Off the transition hall is a full bathroom and laundry, which can be divided into a guest half bath and bathing/laundry area by a large pocket door.
At the end of the tiled transition hall, a wood-floored Victorian hall connects with three rooms, four closets, and a Victorian staircase to the lower level. The woodwork, floorboards, and windows in this part of the house are original Victorian, except for the pre-Victorian door to the south-facing master bedroom. The master bedroom and adjacent portion of the Victorian hall are part of the pre-Victorian structure that was altered with the Victorian construction in 1865. The rooms facing Camargo Road were part of the 1865 Victorian house. With the Victorian construction in 1865, a pre-Victorian fireplace was removed and replaced with a Victorian window in the south wall, and a cast iron, coal-burning Victorian fireplace was added.
The master bedroom has a door that opens to the sunroom and another door to a former bedroom that has been made into a master bathroom and sitting room. Across the Victorian hall from the master bath, is another bedroom with access to the full bath.
The main staircase descends to a lower hall and formal Victorian entrance from a covered front porch. On both sides of the hall are former parlors of the Victorian house built in front of the stone wall of the lower level of the pre-Victorian structure. The north parlor is a bedroom that connects with a radiant-floor-heated lower bathroom behind the stone wall. At the end of the lower Victorian hall behind the staircase, a stone wall portion has been removed to open the hall to a present day media room, which also has access to the lower bathroom.
The media room was the original kitchen of the pre-Victorian house. The wall opposite the lower hall is the stone base of a chimney that served a kitchen stove in this lower level and a fireplace in the dining room above. This chimney and the dining room fireplace above were removed in the Victorian construction of 1865. The outside wall of the media room was a stone wall supporting another pre-Victorian fireplace in the outside wall of the present master bedroom above. This wall was removed in the 1940s to convert the old kitchen into a garage, and then replaced in 2005 with a new foundation and frame wall.