HALPERN ARCHITECTS CONSULTS ON EDWARD LARRABEE BARNES' PRESTIGIOUS WYE WOODS

Architects Jeff Halpern (Halpern Architects) and Peter Newlin (Chesapeake Architects) helped The Chesapeake Spy look closely at Edward Larrabee Barnes' attempt to build a rural village on 86 acres overlooking the Wye River. They highlight Barnes' masterful manipulation of space that represented a transformational moment in American design history, similar to those found in Charles Moore's Sea Ranch in California or Barnes' own breakout design at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine.

1988

As we have been celebrating Halpern Architects' first quarter century, we took a few moments to look through slides and photos of some of the projects that the firm has designed over the years. Over the next 25 weeks, we will be posting some of the more emblematic projects that reflect each of our 25 years. We invite you to join us on our stroll down memory lane. We do so with appreciation to all of our clients who have placed their trust in us and made these projects possible. As the old expression goes, behind every great project is a great client.

The most memorable project from 1988 was a small custom spec. home that was designed for sailing commentator and author, Gary Jobson. In 1988 the firm was a partnership, Miller+Halpern-Architects. This was a project that Peter Miller had under contract at the time that we opened our doors. The project was a less than 1,200 s.f. house on a triangular site with a tiny footprint of which we strategically used every available legal inch.
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Halpern Architects Celebrates 25 Years

 

By the summer of its second year, Halpern Architects (at that point still the Miller+Halpern-Architects partnership) had grown to a staff of 6 professionals. The work load consisted of a broad range of projects; some commercial, some historic preservation, some institutional, with the majority of our projects being new homes and residential additions.

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1990

By 1990, Halpern Architects had established our reputation for designing high quality custom homes. This resulted in the firm providing services a number of custom waterfront houses. The first of these larger custom home projects was designed for Dr. David Matteson and Mrs. Denise Matteson. The home was situated on the north shore of Weems Creek. The owners had expressed an interest in a variety of Chesapeake regional architectural styles, and a goal of rooms with lots of light and privacy. The majority of the main living spaces and bedrooms had cathedral ceilings. Windows were placed strategically to take advantage of the views while providing privacy from adjacent dwellings. The design was a pastiche that celebrated regional massing, forms, and details, which were then were blended into a unified whole.

Although located on a comparatively large waterfront lot, zoning code and critical areas laws only permitted a building envelope that was quite compact.  To better utilize the available footprint, and take advantage of the natural terrain, the garage was located on a floor below the main living level of the house.

The project team included Jeff Halpern, Fred Sieracki, Michael Gilmore, Cheryl Kranik and late in the project, Jose Perez. Winchester Construction was the contractor.

1990 was also the year that the partnership with Peter Miller ended, and the name of the firm became Halpern Architects.
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1991

1991 was a period of growth for Halpern Architects. It was a year which saw us working on a new clubhouse for Eastport Yacht Club, a number of waterfront and historic homes, a number of residential additions, and one of our best known projects, Ram�s Head Tavern.

A change from primarily residential and light office use to commercial and assembly spaces presented a unique set of challenges to Halpern Architects. Halpern Architects maximized the impact of the available floor area through the creative interior space planning and the imaginative use of colors and detailing. The project challenges included bringing this collection of 18th through mid-20th century buildings up to modern codes. Halpern Architects also guided the owner, within a tight time frame, through the Historic Preservation Commission approval process so that the tavern could open on time. The project team included Jeff Halpern, Fred Sieracki, and Jose Perez. We also had the privilege of working with Ferd Johns on the preliminary design concept.

Eastport Yacht Club is probably our most emblematic project from 1992. In late 1990, Halpern Architects entered and won the design competition to design a new facility for the club. Working with the City of Annapolis, Halpern Architects successfully negotiated a series of Administrative Variances that allowed an expanded footprint on this critical area site. Coordinating the objectives of a successive collection of steering committees, Halpern Architects created a design that was intended to fit the context of the historic waterfront of Annapolis, meet the needs and goals of the membership, take fullest advantage of the views and the site features, address the critical area laws,  and to do this on a very tight budget.

The new building was approximately 4,300 square feet and featured a large meeting room, bar and open deck with a supporting kitchen at the second floor level. The ground floor included Restroom/shower facilities, storage areas, the club office and a space which could be leased to a yacht broker in order to improve cash flow in the early years of the club, and which later could become a junior member room.  Halpern Architects assisted in the redesign of the marina to increase the number and utility of the slips.

The project team included Jeff Halpern, Jose Perez, and Fred Sieracki. The contractor was Northwinds Construction, which later became Waverly Construction.

1992 was a busy year at Halpern Architects. We had a number of custom home and remodeling projects on the boards or under construction. Halpern Architects was also working with Congregation Kol Shalom Synagogue to alter and expand a 1970�s era earth-sheltered house in order to convert the building to create a new sanctuary and religious school.
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1993

1993 was a year packed with a large number of similar sized residences designed for young families. So many of these families conceived children during the time that we were working with them, that it resulted in our in-house quip that we should probably change the name of the firm to Halpern Architects and Fertility Clinic.

Two homes in particular stand out from this year: the Olmert Residence and the Leshner Residence. The Olmert Residence is an example of integrating passive solar design principles into a traditional waterfront home. The interior the house is a blend of traditional elements that were proportioned for modern living.

Careful siting allowed the major spaces to capture the broad panoramic views while individual and more private rooms focused on specific significant elements of the view. The major living spaces, located on the south side of the house, are a single room deep, which allowed cross ventilation during the prevailing summer breezes, and some solar heating during the winter. All of the support functions for the house were placed on the north side and are tucked behind a row of trees in order to act as a buffer from north winds. Deciduous trees were retained on the south side to provide seasonal shading and provide the home with additional privacy in summer.

One of my favorite stories about the Leshner Home was that their still very young oldest and middle daughter had shared a bedroom in their prior home. Concerned about how they would feel about having their own individual bedrooms, the rooms were planned so that the head of the beds in each room were located in line with the doors to the room, and the doors to the rooms faced each other across a small vestibule. This allowed the girls to see each other from their beds and led to a ritual of being able to say �good night� to each other once tucked in for the night.

Twenty years later, the Leshners still live in their home and we are working with them on a design for an update to their kitchen and family room.

Like 1993, 1994 was another year in which Halpern Architects provided services on a number of similarly sized residences. The standout project of our 1994 year was the Cofran Residence. The Cofran Residence was designed for an American couple, who were attracted to turn of the century, mid-western homes, and who were living in England at the time, but were moving back to America. As a result, in those pre-internet days, by and large the house was designed via fax, FedEx and voice mail. 

 One of the challenges in designing this house was capturing the views of Kitty Duval Creek and the South River while protecting the privacy within the house and meeting the community association requirements to protect the viewsheds of the adjacent houses.

1995 was a year packed with waterfront home projects and remodeling projects. Given the range of projects from that year, it was hard to pick just one. But probably the most interesting project of that year was the Borrelli Residence, in Arundel on the Bay. The house was located on a very narrow site on the water. It was a low lying site and prone to occasional flooding. The site had been subdivided from an adjacent lot and originally had a small shed on it.

Glen and Louise Borrelli had spent their summer vacation in New England and came back with photographs of historic homes that they liked. As we reviewed the photos, they commented that they could not determine the style of architecture of these houses but they all appeared to come from a similar period in time. As it turned out, the houses that caught their imagination were from two periods in time. They began as Greek Revival style houses that had been remodeled during the Queen Anne period of the Victorian Era. And so it is that the Borrelli Residence was designed to appear to be a Greek Revival home which had been remodeled in the Queen Anne style.

The owners were trying to construct the house on a very tight budget. Working with Bob Lundvall from State Capital Builders, we made a range of �value engineering� decisions, and identified aspects of the house which could be completed in the future.

These included an attic space which was designed to provide space for another bedroom, a crafts room, a play room, and some storage. Similarly, the Living Room was designed with comparatively extensive trim and built-in cabinetry on either side of the fireplace. To keep the house within budget, both of these items were roughed in with blocking and electrical where it would be needed, with the plan that they would be finished in the future.

One of the interesting aspects of being a small architectural practice with a wide range of �specialties� is that you can often have years where you work on a broad spectrum of building types. Because of that, the years that have no-two-alike project types are the expected norm.

But one of the curious exception to that norm is the phenomenon of �The year of�.�, in which a large number of projects of one particular and unusual type all happen in short period of time, and then the office may never work on that project type again. Sometimes �The year of�� is merely a some odd set of coincidences, such as �The year of the Williams� in which we had three residential projects and one commercial project for clients named Williams.

1996 was one of those �The year of��years. 1996 was the year of the Log Home; a year when we began work on three different log-home projects. Two were 18th century original log-cabin homesteads for founding families within our region, and the third, the �Luce Creek Gallery�, started as an Adirondack style cottage.  Of these projects, Luce Creek Gallery was the clear winner as our project of that year.

Located on a bluff high above Luce Creek, the restoration of this 1880�s log house included the modernization, expansion, and reorganization of the interior living spaces. To achieve the owners� objectives, Halpern Architects integrated an eclectic mix of old and new; expanding the structure to take advantage of spectacular waterfront views, and creatively re-purposing interior space that visually opened up the living areas, yet keep a historic character. Due to structural problems, the original structure had the east wing roof taken off and the entire right wing was disassembled to the foundation. A new two story addition provided the owners with a new master bedroom suite and a second floor with two-guest bedrooms and a guest bathroom.

The challenge of integrating the new and replicated portions of the house was met by creating a �new architectural vocabulary� for the new second floor and ground floor additions. The solution to making the new work appear original required the development of an infill material that worked with the strong character of the exterior log walls for the new second floor and creating a methodology to increase the visible surface area of the historic logs for the new portions of the first floor.

The stand out project from 1997 (spanning several years before and many years after) was the Maynard Burgess House. This project set the record for the longest project in our company�s history. By the mid-1990�s, Halpern Architects had been providing preservation services on a range of privately owned historic projects. In 1995, we had interviewed for, and been selected to do a Historic Structures Report on the Maynard Burgess House. Our client was the City of Annapolis as the building owner, and the Historic Annapolis Foundation as the project administrators.

The Maynard Burgess House was originally constructed by John Maynard, one of the earliest freed African-Americans in Maryland. He constructed the home from salvaged materials and agricultural structures in the 1790�s. John Maynard died in 1875 and was survived by his wife Maria. When the house was probated after Maria�s death in 1887, the probate officers surveyed the house and signed their name and dated their signing directly on the siding of the house. Those signatures are still present on the siding to this day. The officers included one Maryland State governor and one mayor of Annapolis. After her death the house was sold to a former boarder, Willis Burgess. Continually owned by two interrelated African-American families, from about 1850-1980, the house and its residents experienced changes in African-American lives that ran from slavery, to the Civil Rights movement, to the present day.

 Over a series of four major stages and a series of minor phases spanning from 1995 through 2012, the temporary framework was enhanced to provide more adequate support for the building and allow it to be lifted slightly, which then allowed the foundations to be stabilized, and replaced where missing. New sill timbers were fabricated and installed, existing studs and columns that were compromised by rot or insects were sistered in place, and the existing diagonal bracing reconnected to the corner posts and sill timbers. This permitted the temporary structure to be removed.

 The house was then made weather tight by replacing the roof and chinking the walls. The historic doors and windows were restored, and missing windows and doors replicated. The historic stair was restored in place. Handicapped accessibility was provided, with strategic locations set aside for interpretive materials, mounted on permanent, minimally intrusive stands designed by Halpern Architects.
 

1998

Over the years, Bob Lundvall�s company, State Capital Builders, has constructed quite a few of our projects.  In 1997 Bob had purchased an older home waterfront home in the Ferry Farms community for himself and his family. Bob had originally considered demolishing the old home and constructing a new one on the site. But as the impact of the critical areas regulations and zoning site constraints were plotted on the site, it became readily apparent that there was a strong merit in keeping much of the existing house, and expanding and remodeling it.

Halpern Architects was retained to work with the Lundvalls to develop the expanded design. Their goal was to double the useable area of the house, completely alter its exterior character and improve the sense of connection to the river and creek views and well as the flow to the pool area.

Cadillac- LaSalle Club Museum