big house was more difficult,
nothing lined up."
Sitting room chair covered
in toile slipcover.
Among the idiosyncrasies
encountered in the big
house were a fireplace that
was off center, "which we
made look symmetrical,"
says Sammons, an expert in
architectural proportion, and
"moving the stairway from
the front of the house to the
rear. Originally you had to
duck under the stairs when
entering from the street."
Today, the houses, more
aptly, a single residence with two street entrances, ooze
charm, and are at once cozy and grand. The spaces in the
smaller unit put one in mind of a doll house for grown ups,
with only a snug kitchen-sitting room on the ground floor
and a comfortable refuge of a bed chamber on the second.
The centerpiece of the big house is an impressive livingroom crowned by a 22-foot skylit ceiling. The lofty salon—
what a suburban real estate developer surely would call "the
great room" —is surrounded on three sides by a balcony off
of which there's a commodious bedroom. Tucked into a nook
off the room is an intimate bar dubbed "The Black Pearl", an
homage to Fairfax's childhood home in Hawaii.
Furnishings are an appealing blend of custom-made
HYLAND
