Deco

MIAMI BEACH -- Guests at the Leslie Hotel in the Art Deco District in Miami Beach must think they have been dumped in the middle of a rainbow gone a little haywire.Beds are dressed in hot pink dust ruffles. Purple and turquoise spreads are accented with huge pink pillows. Headboards may be yellow, orange or purple, but they aren't real -- they're painted on the wall.Windows sport wide bands of color and are adorned with mini-blinds in different colors; yellow next to orange cozying up to pink.

If Hampden's Cafe Hon decided to open a martini bar, it would be very much like the new Neon Moon in Canton: It's at once old-fashioned and amazingly Now.You have to love the looks of this place. The exterior has been painted bright yellow, with glass brick and blue neon outlining the front door.If I had to pick my favorite part of the decor, it would be the trompe l'oeil wall in the bar that looks like a night sky full of clouds. Sit here and sip a selection from the martini menu. But the dining room in back is great, too. The look is a sort of '50s retro deco -- eclectic, yes, but it works, with walls sponge-painted a soft yellow, sconces, more glass brick, brightly patterned banquettes and napkins in crayon-box colors.

When comedian Richard Lewis entertains at his Hollywood home, he likes to show off his impressive array of art deco and contemporary furniture. Invariably, his guests linger in the library."

Knickknacks are still there, but savvy buyers and online competition drive prices up The scene at a flea market in Santa Monica, Calif., says it all: Shiny black Lincoln Town Cars and Mercedes-Benz SUVs have packed the preferred parking spaces. Vendors look as if they belong in Nordstrom, not under a tent in an airport parking lot. As shoppers wander the aisles, lattes in hand, actor John Malkovich stops by one booth and eyes a French Moderne-style desk from the 1940s. Too late. It sold hours ago for $1,200.

When Loretta Stachowski noticed her Canton rowhouse's Formstone facade had cracked and faded, she envisioned a colorful future for the cement house covering that became a part of Baltimore's residential architecture during the 1940s. So a few years ago, Stachowski and her husband, Richard, decided to have the Formstone painted. It was a less expensive choice than the more trendy effort to remove the faux stones that hide many of the brick facades in Baltimore. And Stachowski liked being part of something new. "It's brighter, it's cleaner, and it's different," said Loretta Stachowski, 64, whose South Ellwood Avenue home is done in an ivory and brick-red scheme with black shutters and window planters.

If Lana Turner could have been a chair, she might have been the M 154 C from Heywood-Wakefield.Chic, curvaceous and kissed with a touch of Clairol blond, the M 154 C was the embodiment of sleek sophistication for the World War II generation.Born near the end of the Great Depression, hotter than hair cream in the '40s and '50s, and stone-cold dead by the late 1960s, Heywood-Wakefield was as popular in its day as country furniture has been in the last decade. Its streamlined, honey-colored looks were as optimistic as the New Deal, as egalitarian as Eisenhower and as space-age as Sputnik.

This year's Baltimore Symphony Decorators' Show House offers not only a look at the latest interior design trends but also a peek into the Timonium home of quarterback great Johnny Unitas. Unitas lived in the five-bedroom house on Timonium Road from 1971, when the he led the Colts to an AFC title match against the Miami Dolphins, until 1988, when he moved to a farm in northern Baltimore County. Unitas died in 2002. His widow, Sandy; daughter, Paige; and son, Chad, and other members of his family, will cut the ribbon to open the show house on April 28, giving visitors the chance see rooms decorated by some of the region's premier designers.

Rick O'Daniel opens his mouth and out comes the most amazing sentence: "My cat looks like a Holstein," he says.You can't help yourself. "A Holstein?" you blurt out, maybe a little too loudly."

Art deco has undergone so many transformations since its emergence in the 1920s that I sometimes hesitate even to use the term. There's strong interest today in the original art-deco look as well as in its myriad variations and derivations. In fact, I would argue that deco serves as the basis for the modern interior. It remains a distinctive and powerful style because of its insistence on clean, uncluttered settings, which can accommodate an eclectic blend of furnishings.Art deco was not really a new fashion when it first achieved popularity some 70 years ago. Even though it became a major component of the modern design movement, which did indeed revolutionize residential interiors, art deco's lineage can be traced back at least 200 years.

For more than 50 years, the art deco landmark in South Charles Village was the headquarters of Baltimore's school system, an elegant home for the city's top educators.When the school administration moved to North Avenue in 1987, community leaders were assured that the granite-fronted structure at 3 E. 25th St. and its two-story annex at 33 E. 25th St. would be recycled for uses beneficial to the neighborhood. Until this spring, both were scheduled for conversion to a $6 million housing complex called Lovegrove Court.