Buffalo Spree Magazine

Show House 2007
Another Esenwein & Johnson gem

By Barry A. Muskat
photos by Jim Bush

Massive beams and beautiful wainscoting
frame the mansion’s large dining room. The room
will be decorated for a sophisticated dinner party
by Ethan Allen.

The Silverthorne Mansion has been selected as the 2007 Decorators’ Show House. Located along Delaware Avenue’s fabled Millionaires’ Row, it is an 8,600-square-foot home with seven fireplaces, eight bedrooms, and eight baths. This is a grand place that provides the perfect stage for a successful project.

This mansion is one of the few along the Delaware strip to have bucked the trend of conversion to corporate/commercial use or as headquarters for a not-for-profit agency. It’s on the tax rolls as a residential dwelling and is being restored as such—a regal single home with a luxury third-floor apartment. For that reason alone we should celebrate its glory years, along with the designers and homeowners who are now planning its future.

Watch for this upstairs sitting room. It’s being decorated by Michael Connolly, whose second floor living room was much admired in the 2005 Show House.

Time flies. It seems like the last Show House was just a year ago. But the Show House project has actually been undertaken every other year, and this mansion’s makeover is the fourteenth house in the series. Over the years, the Junior League of Buffalo (in collaboration with the Buffalo News) has raised over 2.6 million dollars, all of which has gone back to the community to fund various projects or charities.

There’s a tremendous amount of planning and effort that go into coordinating and pulling off an undertaking of this magnitude. I can personally attest that the Junior League volunteers (chaired by Julie Warman) and individual decorators, designers, contractors, and craftspeople don’t get enough credit for the spectacular results they achieve in a relatively short timeframe.

The Silverthorne Mansion was originally designed by August Esenwein & James Johnson, prolific architects whose popularity in the early twentieth century was apparently second only to that of E. B. Green & William Wicks. As it happens, the previous show house (dubbed the Century House on Lincoln Parkway) and the Schoellkopf-Vom Berge Manor (the 2001 Show House on Chapin Parkway) were also designed by Esenwein & Johnson. The firm worked in a variety of classical styles, all based on historical references, while paying fastidious attention to detail.

The master bedroom, just one of seven rooms with an original fireplace, has all the ingredients to be transformed into an elegant space. It’s being
redone by Decorator’s Hill.

Preliminary interviews lead me to think this won’t necessarily be a typical Show House. We’ll be writing an “after” article with reflections on the designers’ efforts, but I doubt that we’ll be incorporating adjectives like fluffy, ruffled, or Victorian to describe the results. Although recent Show Houses have followed particular themes, it seems that this effort’s finished product will be more straight-forward: straight lines and forward thinking.

The bones of this house are great, and it appears that its historic architecture will be respected and enhanced. Deep, rich mahogany woods are elegant; heavy moldings are massive; raised-paneling is extensive. With the exception of an exquisitely gracious curved center staircase, the angles of the house are strong and determined. Several rooms incorporate angled walls (resulting from the stairwell shape) to yield interesting geometries. Within thissetting, the
finished results should be sensational.

The central hall is grand, capped by a beautifully crafted stairway. Its curved banister follows its shape and provides an elegant transition to the second floor. The red carpeting will be replaced with a floor of Carrera marble.

The kitchen has been gutted and is, as usual, the centerpiece of the major construction for the house. (Another kitchen will be installed in the third floor apartment.) Downstairs, the kitchen cabinetry will play upon the rich mahogany of the principal rooms and match them in color, almost as an extension. Michael Poczkalski of room is planning the decorating and material design in conjunction with Eric Naish of Ridgewood Custom Cabinetry (cabinetry and layout). According to Poczkalski, they intend to tie in the old and new woodwork “carrying through into fairly detailed cabinetry with tones of cherry, caramels, and coppers to complement stainless appliances.”

The kitchen incorporates a second room which Naish calls the scullery. Traditionally, a scullery is a room adjoining a kitchen—the place where the pots and pans are stored and the dirty kitchen work is done. Here, it will be a place that incorporates a sink and dishwasher along with lots of room for dishware and glass storage. The room also controls the perception of space. Its eight-foot ceilings, warm feeling, and dimmer lighting will enhance the kitchen and allow its main space (with ten foot ceilings) to remain open and grand.

A dark room off the kitchen will
become a Solarium. An atrium
doorway is planned to provide access
to a city garden at the rear of the home.

The new kitchen will incorporate a large center island with a work triangle (prep sink, range, fridge). Since all major storage will be in the scullery, the kitchen will have only base cabinets. A large wood-panelled hood (along with cabinet doors whose panels are deeper and heavier than normal) will carry the grand feel from the rest of the house. Naish says that walnut cabinets will be stained to capture the rich, dark woods in the foyer and dining room, noting that “with mahogany woods at a high premium, walnut is rich and stains great.” Exotic veneers of burled walnut will be book-matched in decorative panels on the center island. Naish describes “beautiful butterfly patterns” that will be installed in mirror image, as one enters from the dining room. Kitchen countertops will be concrete (often seen in design magazines, but fairly new to Buffalo) in a creamy off-white.

The living room (which is blessed with fabulous wainscoting) is also being done by room. David Brugh and Poczkalski plan a furniture layout that “focuses on the fireplace and radiates off it.” They see “the architecture and structure as art, with the architecture being exposed.” Furthermore, “the lines equate to a blueprint—the angled walls, the wainscoting. We’ll take the sensuality of the building, incorporate the architectural elements, and use pieces of furniture with clean lines to complement the room.”

(A tip from this observer is to watch for the custom window coverings Brugh and Poczalski are planning. The real sensation of the last Show House was the punched stainless steel screens with colored glass that they fabricated for an upstairs bedroom. This year they’ll unveil custom window treatments of “irregularly-intertwined wood”.)

The dining room will be decorated by Ethan Allen’s Cindy Slomevitz and Michael Michalski. Instead of a single dining room table, they describe the setting as “an elegant dinner party at two round dining tables, surrounded by a mixture of Chippendale and upholstered host chairs.” Their color palette of lavenders, quartz, and peacock greens will set the stage for original oils that will be hung above the wainscot panels.

Beautiful mahogany woodwork and doors are evident throughout the house. In the living room, the floor gleams. The original herringbone pattern has been stripped to lighten the woods. (This space will be decorated by David Brugh of room.)

Three small apartments on the third floor are being retrofitted into one large luxury apartment. An especially appealing space on that floor is the inglenook where built-in settees and simple woodworking nestle around an intimate fireplace. The cozy nook reminds me of the heart of a true Arts & Crafts cottage. Since this Neo-Classical house was built in 1906 during the height of America’s infatuation with the Arts & Crafts aesthetics, I have no doubt that the movement served as the original inspiration for this space. While the style probably wasn’t considered grand enough for the principal floors, it was fine to tuck away on the third floor. The simplicity and intimacy of the fireplace and surrounds are very pleasing. Although at some point over the years a resident chose to paint the surfaces, the room was probably originally finished to show natural woods. (In remodeling the apartment, I might have made this the apartment’s principal room, rather than what appears to be intended as a child’s bedroom—but the jury’s still out on that.) It’s a lucky decorator whose proposal won the bid to do this area.

New and old Show House designers are participating. A dingy room at the rear of the kitchen will be a solarium where a new door will replace a brick-filled opening to restore a rear entry. The ugly blacktopped backyard will be transformed into a city garden. Michael Donnelly is doing a second-floor sitting area; Jane Jacobson of Glass Roots is working in art glass. Kittinger Furniture has selected a first-floor den whose shape and location make it one of the best spots in the house. This Show House has a lot of positive vibes—it could turn out to be a show-stopper!

Barry A. Muskat is Spree’s Architecture critic. He led the design team for Buffalo Spree’s well-received Reading Room in the last Show House.

Back to the Table of Contents

Back to Top