Neighborhood News

The Wall Street Journal
Own Magazine
September 2010

Neighborhood News

Whether your preferred lifestyle is stately, trendy, salty or spicy--or a mix that’s all your own--the neighborhoods of Washington and the towns that surround our capital city offer as many options as Godiva has fillings.

Georgetown

Deborah Gore Dean is hunting for a new location for her eponymous shop, which has been selling high-end home furnishings and gifts in Georgetown for the last 20 years. She's not going far. "Where else are you going to put a store?" she asks rhetorically. "Georgetown is one of those truly unique places. It's Paris, it's London, it's Manhattan. Everyone knows it. Whether it's for the shopping, the history, the university...there's something very romantic about it and I love it.”

After the Smithsonian and White House and the Capitol, Georgetown is the most popular destination in Washington, and perhaps the most coveted residential area –  both in fact and fiction. JFK and Jackie Kennedy lived here in their salad days, over 100 novels have been set here, and who can forget those tumble-down stairs from the film The Exorcist? 

Like several other historic areas of DC, Georgetown is protected by a preservation society, preventing visible modernizations to homes that range from imposing Federal and Victorian-era mansions to frame houses so low ceilinged that 6-footers need to watch their heads.

Second Life

Wall Street Journal

Own Magazine

September 2010

With mortgage prices at record lows and vacation home prices ready to soar, it's time to stop dreaming and start shopping for a second home.

Dupont Circle residents Tim Ayers and Christine Smith have long been dividing their time between the city and a weekend retreat. First there was the condo in Ocean City, now there are ten bucolic acres in Sperryville, Virginia with a view of Old Rag Mountain.

Beach vs the mountains? "You don't go to Ocean City for tranquility," he says. "We finally liked the mountains better. It's extraordinarily beautiful."

The couple, "I'm in PR, she's in HR," he quips, are part of an expanding pocket of city that have discovered this western smidge of Virginia, just a  couple of hours from downtown D.C., where people often live on plots the size  of small towns.

Going the Distance

The Wall Street Journal

Own Magazine

September 2010

No more "leave on Friday back by Sunday." With Smartphone, Netbook and iPad in tow, New York home buyers looking for a second site are heading for greener, calmer -- and balmier -- pastures, sometimes several climate zones away.

Now, with telecommuting becoming the coveted mode--and traffic to and from some of the more typical getaway hot spots remains as challenging as ever--retreats in exotic (or at least temperate) locales are worth contemplating.  In fact, some might be in quicker reach than Fire Island on a holiday weekend.

Washington Area Residences Offer Great Views, But they Come at a Price

by Stephanie Cavanaugh

Special to The Washington Post

Saturday, July 3, 2010



Spectacular views of Washington can crop up in the oddest places, delighting -- and occasionally startling -- the observer. There's a fine view of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception from the parking lot of a Home Depot in Northeast, for example. And the Washington Monument is the featured attraction from at least one Adams Morgan fire escape

Read on:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/01/AR2010070107349_2.html

The House Transformed

The Wall Street Journal's
Own Magazine
June 2010

Forget the preconceived plans. Combining rooms, eschewing unnecessary amenities and making space for holiday sleepovers -- today’s designers are building and renovating homes based on the lives of the people who inhabit them.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

Fat was once a sign of prosperity, butterfat being entirely too rich for the poor.  And then the Duchess of Windsor proclaimed that we could never be too rich or too thin.

Being pale was also most fashionable, and then Coco Chanel flashed a body bronzed on the Cote d’Azur and...well, we should all have bought stock in Coppertone. 

Just such a revolution is beginning to happen with home design, spurred by a wobbly economy but goosed by factors as diverse as the aging of the baby boomers, environmental sensitivities and the blossoming of the digital age.

As our lives are changing, so are the ways we use our homes.

Homeowners still extending living spaces to the outdoors

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

Special to The Washington Post



Jack Stein and Peter Meccariello had just finished renovating their narrow Victorian in Capitol Hill's Eastern Market neighborhood when they caught an episode of "Landscapers' Challenge" on HGTV.
On a whim, they applied to the show for a backyard overhaul and faster than you can say crabgrass, the show's producer called and the homeowners found themselves choosing among three garden designers to transform their jungle into an urban paradise.
"We wanted water close to the house that we could see and hear," said Meccariello, recalling their fantasy list. "And a grill area." 

Read on

Beauty Meets Function in Sweden’s Tiled Stoves

For Home & Design Magazine
By Stephanie Cavanaugh

Sitting atop a hill overlooking a river, the winter wind whips raw around Bengt Swenson’s home in Franklin, Michigan. Here, temperatures sometimes dip to 20 below. The Swedish-born architect’s studio claims the hill’s highest point, enjoying a vista that is at once marvelously dramatic and excruciatingly cold. But all is toasty within—and quite stunningly so—thanks to the 140-year old wood stove that occupies a prideful corner.