Carriage House

For a long-ago architecture class at the Rhode Island School of Design, Jeff Carpenter designed a plan to convert an abandoned boathouse into a home. Though he decided to pursue painting, not architecture, the project always stuck with him. Carpenter drew on this experience two years ago when he and his then-partner, artist Sallie Ketcham, renovated an oversized carriage house in the Art Museum area into a nautically inspired home. Carpenter, a representational abstract painter whose work has appeared in museums like the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, was living in Massachusetts in 2009.

The planned demolition of a Frank Furness carriage house was canceled yesterday - for now. Ted Goldsborough, president of the Lower Merion Historic District, received the news at 7:30 a.m. after two weeks in which he and other Lower Merion historic preservationists mounted a hasty campaign to save the dwelling. Believing that demolition would come this week, the group had planned to gather at the historic tract in protest yesterday. That was canceled, too - for now. "I can't be more pleased that [the owner]

Artist Daniel Anthonisen lives in a rustic carriage house in Point Pleasant, Bucks County, that basically consists of one room and a loft. For Anthonisen, 41, it's a perfect fit. His tiny carriage house sits next to a historic home that dates to 1794 on the expansive property of architect Alan Ritchie and his wife, Rosa, an interior designer. Ritchie is a partner in the New York architectural firm of Johnson-Ritchie, which has designed buildings including Trump International, the Chrysler Center, and locally, the Business Center at Drexel University.

The owner of a large house on North Church Street will not be permitted to subdivide it, according to a recommendation by the West Chester Planning Commission. Robert Schunn, who owns a house at 411 N. Church St., next to the West Chester Public Library, asked the Planning Commission in January whether he could subdivide the carriage-house property from the main house, renovate the carriage house and sell both properties. Doing so would result in a nonconforming lot. The commission recommended last week that the application be denied because siting and construction of a driveway would be awkward, drainage from the driveway had nowhere to go, and plantings would be destroyed.

Jean K. Wolf, the chair of the Lower Merion Historic Architecture Review Board, got the first phone call. A historic building was scheduled for demolition, the director of the township building department told her two weeks ago. The permit would be issued promptly. That was enough to set the phones ringing in Lower Merion's toughest preservationist circles. Today at 11:15 a.m., many of those people will gather at the edge of the Gladwyne tract to let its new owner know how much this aging Frank Furness carriage house means to them.

The year was 2007, and Daniel Traub was thinking of coming home. A photojournalist and fine-arts photographer, Traub, 37, had been away a long time, living in Beijing, Shanghai, and New York, but he thought it was time to return to his native Philadelphia. He hadn't seen much of his parents, architect David S. Traub and artist Lily Yeh, during his years away, and time, as we all know, waits for no one. But where to live? About the same time, his father was looking to move, too - out of his pricey office space in Center City.

On a street in Germantown, around the corner from Cloverly Park, Hap Haven is creating what he calls "a rowhouse for the 21st century. " On the outside, it looks like the rest of the rowhouses on Earlham Terrace, all about 1,100 square feet and all built in the 1920s. Each of the two-story houses has a fake dormer designed by the builder to give the appearance of a third floor, without providing one. The difference with Haven's rowhouse is that the dormer is part of a cathedral ceiling in the front room, with the dormer window providing a clear view of the afternoon sky. You see, Haven's rowhouse is green and solar, with the right amount of light, insulation and ventilation to keep energy costs at a mininum while providing a clean, comfortable environment.

If you blink while driving through the heart of Gibbsboro, you almost certainly will miss the Gibbsboro Book Barn and Bindery, situated on a pastoral side street among modest homes. Or you might assume it is just a rickety old barn - which, in fact, it is. But inside the red, two-story structure on Washington Avenue is a collection of written treasures, some of which are far older than the barn itself, a former carriage house built in the 1880s. "I thought the barn would make a neat setting for a bookstore," said Book Barn owner Bill Walton, a 52-year-old Cherry Hill resident.

A tenant who was told he must move from a carriage house on the 500 block of County Line Road because of a zoning code violation said yesterday he was stunned and did not know where he would relocate. "I just heard about it (Wednesday)," said the tenant, a self-employed carpenter who gave only his first name, Joe. "I fixed up this place on my own for the past couple of years, and now I have to get out. Where am I going to go?" A quick tour of the hallway and his apartment showed the premises to be tidy and well-maintained, but tenants in the carriage house and adjacent mansion must move out because they are violating the township's single-family zoning ordinance, township officials have ordered.

A Burlington County Superior Court judge has reversed a decision by Moorestown officials that stopped repairs on a carriage house two years ago in a dispute over the lack of dormers and "eyebrow arches" on the roof. Neighbors had complained that a redesign of the 1917 carriage house behind 607 Chester Ave. - after a fire damaged the second floor - was out of character with the rest of the historic homes in the neighborhood because three dormers were eliminated. Owners Earl and Sandra Waxman wanted to expand the upstairs floor by enclosing the space between the dormers.

You could say that Alvin and Dorine Lerner met in the design business, but that's not exactly true. They first laid eyes on each other in the laundry room of an apartment building in Manhattan. He owned a textile-printing company; she was a lingerie designer trained by a custom-clothier uncle. He was the funny boy from Brooklyn; she, the focused fashion designer from upstate Pennsylvania. They married 50 years ago. Fifteen years after they said, "I do," Dorine opened her own studio and store in Millburn, N.J., and in 1976, the Dorine Lerner label earned its own space in Henri Bendel.

For a long-ago architecture class at the Rhode Island School of Design, Jeff Carpenter designed a plan to convert an abandoned boathouse into a home. Though he decided to pursue painting, not architecture, the project always stuck with him. Carpenter drew on this experience two years ago when he and his then-partner, artist Sallie Ketcham, renovated an oversized carriage house in the Art Museum area into a nautically inspired home. Carpenter, a representational abstract painter whose work has appeared in museums like the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, was living in Massachusetts in 2009.

Artist Daniel Anthonisen lives in a rustic carriage house in Point Pleasant, Bucks County, that basically consists of one room and a loft. For Anthonisen, 41, it's a perfect fit. His tiny carriage house sits next to a historic home that dates to 1794 on the expansive property of architect Alan Ritchie and his wife, Rosa, an interior designer. Ritchie is a partner in the New York architectural firm of Johnson-Ritchie, which has designed buildings including Trump International, the Chrysler Center, and locally, the Business Center at Drexel University.

When health problems forced Ave Topel, a hotelier and developer, to retire early, he and his wife, Vicki, decided to build a single-level house that would be easy to maintain and inexpensive to heat and cool. They also wanted a home that included timber framing and featured plenty of light and exposure to the outdoors. Their affection for timber framing - a system of construction that uses hefty posts and beams (as opposed to the 2-by-4s of conventional "stick-built" dwellings)

LOWER TOWNSHIP, N.J. - They began with little things. A couple of rusty old train lanterns, some farm implements, a device called a "toe-toaster" that let its users brown slices of bread in the kitchen fireplace and flip them with their feet. Eventually, their collectors' ardor wasn't satisfied by garage sales and flea markets and Patricia Anne "Annie" Salvatore and her husband, Joseph, began to scout "antique" buildings. Their passion led to 26 acquisitions - including a blacksmith shed, carpentry shop, and carriage house - at what is now Cold Spring Village, a 30-acre living-history museum on Route 9 about three miles north of Cape May. "These buildings are spectacular examples of the amazing history of this area, true treasures that would have been lost to time if they had not been found, moved here, and preserved," said Annie Salvatore, who last month received the New Jersey Historical Commission's highest honor, the Richard J. Hughes Award for superior stewardship and lifetime dedication to historical preservation.

As their family grew to include a son, a daughter, two parakeets, a dog, and two cats, Martin and Sherri Kimmel didn't sell their little orange-and-green carriage house in Devon. "When we bought the house," Martin says, "we saw the simple Shingle style had potential, and it was all we could afford. "We ignored Realtors who showed us a collection of drywall ranch-style boxes," he says. "But this house was authentic. We loved the location and the fact that it was built around 1902 on a huge estate that was subdivided in the Sixties.

When Blaine Applegate was a kid, there was a grand property in his Bucks County hometown whose ivy-covered carriage house stirred his imagination. "I thought it was the creepiest, scariest house," he says. Years later, the place that had intrigued him so was on the market - where it remained for quite a while. Until one day, when the sunlight was hitting the weathered carriage house in just the right spot and it didn't look so creepy anymore. Applegate asked the real estate agent to see just the small house next to a tall 1830 Georgian brick beauty with white columns.

Every five years, Kevin and Corinne Cody celebrate their wedding anniversary by boarding an airplane to distant destinations. When the emerald year, No. 55, arrived two years ago, the Doylestown couple dreamed up a 10-day journey to Italy, the birthplace of Corinne's grandmother. And they decided to invite the extended clan - no small enterprise. "Our kids live all over the country," Corinne says of her brood of five. "We go to Italy to get together. " Spouses, significant others, and grandchildren swelled the traveling party to 24, ages 5 to 77. Accommodations were the tricky part - what hotel or resort could fit them on one floor?

The year was 2007, and Daniel Traub was thinking of coming home. A photojournalist and fine-arts photographer, Traub, 37, had been away a long time, living in Beijing, Shanghai, and New York, but he thought it was time to return to his native Philadelphia. He hadn't seen much of his parents, architect David S. Traub and artist Lily Yeh, during his years away, and time, as we all know, waits for no one. But where to live? About the same time, his father was looking to move, too - out of his pricey office space in Center City.

When Maria Hasenecz sees a mess, she doesn't see chaos; she sees possibilities. The daughter of a builder, she watched her mother move into house after house surrounded by dirt piles, and she tagged along with her father to job-site inspections. The turmoil of a house (or a garden) under construction never scared her. Quite the opposite. Eleven years ago, when Maria and her husband, George, outgrew their Center City house, they headed for Wyndmoor to find more space - especially room where she could throw herself into her gardening.