Home and Garden: Modern Renaissance

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Modern Renaissance

The first thing I thought was, ‘umm, no,’” recalls Tiffany Rhodes, laughing about the moment she and her husband, Anderson Horne, arrived at the low-slung, modern ranch house situated on a heavily wooded two-acre property in the heart of Parkins Mill. The couple’s mission was to find a place that would grow with their family after determining they couldn’t add on to the 1,100-square-foot bungalow they owned off Augusta Road. “The architecture was just too complete,” explains Anderson.

Their list of must-haves was pretty simple: Tiffany, an obstetrician and gynecologist, needed to be close enough to the hospital to get there quickly when on call, and they each wanted the architecture to be mid-twentieth-century modern.

Both native Texans, they had fallen in love with Austin (and each other) before Tiffany landed a position with Upstate OB/GYN Group and shifted the couple’s home base to Greenville. While they knew they couldn’t duplicate the slick contemporary dwellings amid the sand-and-sage glamour of rolling limestone hills and river-cut valleys of the northern “hill country,” they did want their new property to have some character.

So, on paper, the house in Parkins Mill—designed and built by Jim Neal, FAIA, in 1966 for his own young family—fit the bill. Anderson and Tiffany were immediately enchanted by the landscaping. Set into the side of a gentle knoll, the sunny front of the house gave way to the shady back portion populated with tall trees clustered around a small creek.

The interior of the house, however, retained the compartmentalized design that was popular forty years ago. The rooms somehow seemed smaller than they actually were; a fact that Tiffany notes was emphasized by the trees, now mature, casting a deeper shadow over the windows than they had when the home was built. Anderson admits they almost walked away.

Consulting with friends from Austin, architects John Maier and Ulrike Zelter, changed their minds. John’s extensive experience with renovating contemporary homes landed him a feature in Dwell magazine, and his design work has been included in Sarah Susanka’s book, Outside the Not So Big House.
He and Ulrike saw potential right away. John says, “We loved the property, and we saw in general that the house had good bones and an architectural style which could be exploited to create the more generous feel which I think Anderson and Tiffany were unable to imagine initially.”

With the trust established over the course of fifteen years of friendship, the four brainstormed ideas and Ulrike set to work, literally napkin-sketch style. John admits the process was easy because he and Ulrike didn’t approach it as a challenge. “It was more about unlocking and amplifying the latent potential of what was there.”

Though there was a large amount of glass in the house, he and Ulrike wanted to add additional sliders to bring the outdoors even closer. Indoors, he says, “We made it even more open by removing the walls enclosing the kitchen, which let in more light and created even greater connection to the woods.”

Jim Neal’s original design also facilitated the process, even though he pronounced it an “architect’s lot” when he first saw it in the 1960s. “The road in the neighborhood was not even paved yet, and the slopes presented all sorts of challenges,” he notes.

It may have been one of his early projects, but Neal’s contemporary design caught the eye of the editors at Southern Living who featured the house, and some of its more clever elements, in several issues in 1971.

To live there with his wife and their daughter, Neal says he designed spaces to be flexible. He employed folding doors throughout to conceal some areas when not in use. Mrs. Neal’s sewing alcove, cleverly tucked away in one corner of the study, was one; another was the slender broom closet.

Neal was brought in to consult on the renovations. He notes, “John and Ulrike had a great respect for what I had done. I was so pleased that they immediately understood the house and did things to enhance it. It is a good feeling to an architect to have their work modified some, but continued to be used for the purpose it was designed. They improved on what was already there.”

John and Ulrike tweaked the original sketch several times before it had everything the couple wanted. “I got my kitchen and Tiffany got her master bath, so we were happy,” says Anderson. Indeed, the professional couple needed work and play spaces of a slightly different sort. So part of the study redesign created a flexible room that could accommodate both Anderson’s legal work and a small wet bar, while the back room is a TV room and play space for fifteen-month-old Henry.

Eager to preserve and repurpose as much as possible, Anderson and Tiffany made careful use of existing materials. They recycled casement windows, rough-hewed plywood ceiling panels, and a dining-room buffet. The latter is now flanked by custom-made cabinets to harmonize with the other built-ins.

Anderson says it took just over a year to complete the work, which also included extending the back decks, adding eighty feet of glass, redoing the kitchen, and simplifying an earlier addition.

A walk through the front door today reveals refined interior spaces filled with natural light that are open to each other and the outdoors. Each room is spacious and bathed in cool colors, with plenty of wood accents. Carefully chosen furnishings are one-part stylish, one-part whimsical, and all-parts welcoming.
Momentarily distracted by her schnauzer, Scarlett, now snuffling around her ankles, Tiffany pauses to pat the dog before shooing her into the custom doggy tunnel that leads from the hall to the backyard. When she straightens up, she looks at her husband and considers the whole project.

“It’s the right house for us now. I can see us living comfortably here for a long time.” Anderson just smiles and gives her shoulders an affectionate squeeze.