Holly Lawn is the site for this year’s Richmond Symphony Orchestra League Designer House. The circa 1900 mansion was extensively damaged in a storm two years ago, but has been restored to its former glory and will be open to the public starting Sept. 14. Photo © Richmond Magazine

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A news story — especially one about a violent storm — takes on a life of its own. So it is with this year’s Richmond Symphony Orchestra League Designer House at 4015 Hermitage Rd.

The home chosen by the RSOL every other year, which area designers decorate, always brings “oohs” and “aahs” from visitors. But this year’s house will resonate with Richmond residents for another reason.

“Holly Lawn,” a circa 1900 architectural jewel on Richmond’s North Side, became a news story after a storm wreaked heavy damage on it and much of Richmond on June 16, 2016. More than 160,000 Richmond residents lost their electricity in that storm.

One of its earlier homeowners named the estate “Holly Lawn” for the beautiful holly trees lining the grounds. But the storm uprooted a 175-year-old, majestic red oak in the front yard, and brought it down across the turret, tower and intricate roofline of the front of the house.

Inside, water damage was extensive. But the buff-colored, Queen Anne-style house, designed by renowned architect D. Wiley Anderson, withstood the impact.

The home has been restored and many of its rooms professionally decorated, and it will be open to visitors from Sept. 17 to Oct. 14 to help raise funds for the Richmond Symphony Orchestra. Every other year, the symphony’s Designer House raises more than $100,000 through ticket sales and special events on site.

A grand home, defaced

Sitting on 2.1 acres, Holly Lawn features five bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, a sun porch, a library, a living room, a formal dining room, a spacious foyer, a kitchen with a butler’s pantry, and a sweeping, Southern-style front porch. (An addition with four added living spaces, completed in 1973 when Holly Lawn served as home to Richmond Council of Garden Clubs, won’t be open to the public.)

With widespread awareness of the storm damage, most visitors’ first question now in walking up the lane through the beautifully restored yard is apt to be the same as mine in early August, when workmen blanketed the home to complete their work: “So where was the tree?”

Susan S. Williams, chair of the 2018 RSOL Designer House Committee and a past president of the RSOL, smiled and pointed to a general area to the right of the front door. “Most people can’t tell,” she said. This is exactly the reaction the owners, Frank Rizzo and Leslie Stack, want after a two-year restoration of Holly Lawn.

“As the tree fell,” Williams pointed out, “it tore off a section of a turret on the southwestern corner of the house. A branch that was 42 inches in diameter crashed through the master bedroom window on the second floor. The impact tore the radiators away from the wall, bursting pipes that poured water down to the first floor.”

Given the house’s architectural significance, Rizzo and Stack wanted to return the house to its original appearance as much as possible.

Because Holly Lawn is in the Hermitage Road Historic District and listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register, as well as the National Register of Historic Places, Richmond’s Commission of Architectural Review had to approve the plan before the city would issue a building permit.

Restoring an architectural jewel

For the mammoth restoration project, Rizzo and Stack chose Edwin Holloway of Glavé & Holmes Architecture as lead architect, and Restoration Builders of Virginia as the project’s general contractor.

As part of his research, Holloway studied photos of the house that were on file at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “They were recent and fairly high resolution, so we could zoom in,” Holloway said. “Without those, it would have been much more of a challenge.”

Thanks to the photos, Holloway was able to make determinations such as the number of boards used on the underside of the house’s distinctive radius dormer.

First, workers built a temporary structure over the house. Then they rebuilt the roof, the turret and the porch, and turned their attention to the house’s interior.

Workers replaced broken windows, and a local artisan used Italian plaster to repair the walls and the elaborate crown molding and ceiling medallions. “It’s a huge team that has done all this,” Stack said. “We’ve had as many as 40 workers at the house on any given day,” Rizzo added.

Another bit of research involved tracking down the Buckingham County source for the house’s original slate roof. Contractors harvested new slate from the same vein that had been used for Holly Lawn at the turn of the 20th century.

The goal might have been to make Holly Lawn look as it did pre-storm, but the house also got a few subtle improvements during the restoration. “The turret and porch now have steel beams to support them, instead of wood, and the porch has a stainless-steel roof instead of a tin one,” Holloway said.

Big reveal on Sept. 14

Almost exactly two years after the tree fell, work on Holly Lawn began to wind down, with the refinishing of floors and final items on a punch-list by mid-June of this year. Rizzo and Stack won’t move back into the house until Nov. 1 because of their agreement to have Holly Lawn be the site for this year’s RSOL Designer House.

Holly Lawn is the 18th Designer House in the past 36 years. Williams said the RSOL chooses the house at least a year in advance. To prepare for this year’s event, 18 designers decorated 27 spaces in time for the gala preview on Sept. 14. Designers will be in their spaces to discuss their work and answer questions, whenever their schedules allow.

Two striking foyer features include hand-painted designs on the walls, and a large 120-year-old framed mirror, possibly of French origin. Guests will also see the first of several plaster medallions in the house in the foyer’s ceiling.

Kathy Corbet of Kathy Corbet Interiors explained that medallions have a historical origin: “When the first chandeliers used candles, the ceiling above them became smoky, which meant ceilings constantly needed repainting. When medallions were added to the ceilings above those chandeliers, only they had to be repainted, not the entire ceiling.”

The designers, who volunteer their time to the Designer House project, often commission art for their decorated spaces and then lease it from the artists. But art and most of the furnishings in the decorated spaces are all for sale.

Designers don’t consult with owners in decorating a RSOL house, and agree to return walls to a neutral color if the owners don’t like the colors used.

Stack and Rizzo will be back in their home in time to plan for Thanksgiving. In the meantime, “We really wanted to end the project with a celebration,” Stack said, “and the Symphony House seemed like the perfect way to share it with the community. We have a lot of long-overdue celebrating and entertaining that we want to do,” Stack said.

Williams suggests visitors celebrate by making a day of it during the house tours: “Enjoy lunch after your tour, and have a glass of wine or beer as you shop in our boutique. Then pick up food to take home for dinner.”

Visiting the house

Admission tickets are $30 from Sept. 17 onward (advance tickets at $25 are available at Kroger through Sept 16).

A preview gala (black-tie optional) catered by Everyday Gourmet will take place Sept. 14, from 6 to 10 p.m. The Richmond Symphony will play from 8 to 10 p.m. for dancing in the backyard. Tickets are $200.

Home tours take place from Sept. 17 to Oct. 14, Monday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sundays 1 to 5 p.m.)

Thirsty Thursdays, which include music, food and a glass of wine or beer, are $55 and will be held Sept. 20 and 27, and Oct. 4 and 11 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Gourmet Café by Smoke Pit Grill will be open for on-site lunch or take-out weekdays from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; Saturdays from 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.; Sundays from 1-3:30 p.m.

There will also be a boutique where works by local artisans’ may be purchased.

The house is not accessible to those with mobility problems because of stairs; contact DesignerHouse@rsol.org for visit-assistance questions.

For more information, visit rsol.org.