Todd and Neely Dykshorn’s home in Church Hill (Photo courtesy Historic Richmond)
Historic Richmond Executive Director Cyane Crump set the tone at the group's first lecture of 2020, “Modern Living in Historic Houses,” at the Branch Museum on Feb. 27, when she opened with a quote from architect Duncan Lee’s 1933 essay in Architecture magazine defending changes he made to Carter’s Grove, a 1750s plantation house on the banks of the James River.
“An old building can be and should be faithfully restored, and left at that, if it is to be used in museum purposes solely,” he wrote. “But if a person buys an old house, pays a lot of money for it, and intends to use it as a year-round home, he is not going to be satisfied to take his bath in a tin foot tub and go to bed with a candle in one hand and a warming-pan in the other just for archaeological reasons.”
The panelists — designer Janie Molster, architect Todd Dykshorn and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Conservator and Materials Analyst Kirsten Travers Moffitt — agreed with Lee’s sentiment, noting that it’s important to strike a balance between being faithful to history and enjoying a home in the present day.
Moffitt was part of a team from Colonial Williamsburg that collaborated with Benjamin Moore to update the company’s Williamsburg paint collection so that the colors presented are faithful to the time period.
By examining chips of paint under a fluorescence microscope, Moffitt can see individual layers of paint clearly. Texture and composition help her determine the pigments used, providing a scientific path to revealing the color palette that colonists favored.
“We know that oil-based paint changed color over time,” she says. “What we’ve learned is that our ancestors really liked intense color.”
Molster, who often works with historic homes and interiors, spoke about one project, an 18th-century home filled with heavy millwork — trim, wainscoting and baseboards. Molster says she decided to “fight fire with fire” by using strong colors to “stand up to the dark wood.
“The owners were all about preserving the history,” she says of the mandate to leave much of the wood unpainted.
Noting that many Richmond houses have “soul and back story,” Molster says many clients gravitate to particular hues, no matter the age of the house.
“Color is consistent,” she says. “It’s how you use [clients’] favorite colors that changes.”
Architect Todd Dykshorn, who sat on the panel in place of his wife, freelance photography producer and stylist Neely Barnwell Dykshorn, who was unable to attend, described their house on Church Hill as both “super-historic and ultra-modern.”
Over 18 months, the couple restored the double tenement and reconstructed a shed that housed kitchen and bath areas. In the rear, they built a modern glass-and-steel, two-story addition. They received a 2018 Golden Hammer award from Historic Richmond for a project that “preserved the character of the historic building and minimized the scale of the new addition.”
Working with the city’s Commission of Architectural Review, Dykshorn says, “has always been an enjoyable process,” and the same was true for his own home, even as the commission required an original fireplace be rebuilt. “It’s now the room where we spend most of our time,” he says.
In the end, the panelists agreed that history can be respected and incorporated.
“I love that Duncan Lee has given us permission to do anything we want,” Molster says.
