Decorators Show House

This year's Baltimore Symphony Decorators' Show House has 35 rooms, a baronial facade, numerous fireplaces, a floor plan ideal for visitor traffic, proximity to Sherwood Gardens and a bedroom where a double homicide occured.The people who organize this grand event decided that Stratford-on-the-Green, the Guilford mansion of the late Dr. Walter E. E. Loch, would be "perfect" as a show house this spring even though Dr. Loch and his wife, Mary, were murdered upstairs less than two years ago.The elderly couple were bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat as they slept in their second-floor bedroom on August 14, 1994.

With its commanding view of roof tops and tree tops stretching endlessly north, Legend Hill in Timonium is similar to most previous show houses in that it is old and stately. Legend Hill, off Timonium Road, is named for legendary Baltimore quarterback Johnny Unitas, who owned the house from 1971 to 1987. "That's what women come to see," Carolyn Stadfeld, design chair for the Baltimore Symphony Associates, which produces the annual fundraiser, said. And they come in droves, more than 8,000 people, unstymied by age or infirmity. Some people come in wheelchairs and walkers with their daughters and granddaughters to help them through, Stadfeld said.

The same thing that's right with most show houses is also what's wrong with them. They are fantasies: gorgeous, faux-finished rooms crammed with beautiful furnishings. But you can't imagine real people living in them. "La Ruche," this year's Baltimore Symphony Decorators' Show House, balances luxury with livability better than most. Partly it's the house. The French country-inspired mansion on North Charles Street, built in the 1920s, has new owners; many of the 34 interior and six exterior designers who took part tried to work with their preferences.

Joan Brown Sadler, a nurse, avid gardener and volunteer for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, died June 28 of breast cancer at Mercy Hospital. The longtime Roland Park resident was 76. "She would always say she was a professional volunteer," said her husband, Dr. John H. Sadler. "She was always doing things," he said. Born Joan Brown in Atlanta, she was the second of three children. Her father was a diesel mechanic and heavy equipment technician, and her mother was a homemaker.

Although nobody talks about it much, established designers often don't take part in area show houses. Nobody is paying them to sponge paint those walls, lay down carpeting and create elaborate window treatments. If they don't need the advertising, why bother?Of course, some "name" designers do undertake rooms in the Symphony Decorators' Show House -- because it's the area's premier show house, or because they like the creative freedom, or because they want to support the charity. But Wynddon Estate, this year's show house, which opens next Sunday, continues the trend of recent years: Many of the rooms have been decorated by relatively unknown designers, design students and artisans.

See the marble baseboard that matches the marble fireplace? Look again. Look closer. Unless you are on the floor, nose-to-vein with it, or touch it with your finger, you'll think that baseboard really is marble. But this is wood, a trompe l'oeil design handpainted and glazed, with green and cream veining to mimic the fireplace marble. "I love marbleized baseboards. It adds weight and character to a room," said its painter, Charlie MacSherry, who has a Baltimore decorative painting business.

In recent years, the pleasures visitors have gotten from Baltimore's premiershow house and Maryland's largest house tour have been very different. The Symphony Decorators' Show House (opening next Sunday) traditionally offers glamour and fantasy, while the Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage (which starts April 27) features private homes with "real" interior design.This year is a little different. The decorators' show house, Stratford on the Green in Guilford, is unusual because it's so large and the rooms are so small.

In the 21 years that the Baltimore Symphony Associates has sponsored tours of decorators' show houses, the group has never featured a residence in or close to downtown Baltimore, and it has never featured a rowhouse.That will change next year, with the group's selection of a 55-room mansion called Solomon's Corner as the 1998 Symphony Decorators' Show House.The five-level, 16,000-square-foot dwelling, at 1201 N. Calvert St., is actually two rowhouses combined into one. It has never been on a public house tour.

The incorrect number for information on the Decorators' Show House at Lilburn was published in yesterday's Howard County edition of The Sun. The correct number is 410-313-1900.The Sun regrets the error.Pub Date: 10/17/97

Decorators' Show House set for Discovery FarmHistoric Ellicott City will hold its ninth annual Decorators' Show House from Sept. 25 through Oct. 24 at Discovery Farm, 12549 Folly Quarter Road in Glenelg.The house will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays, and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays.Admission is $8 at the door, $7 for seniors and students. Tickets may be purchased for $6 by Sept. 24 by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Mrs. Wm. Filbert, 4614 New Cut Road, Ellicott City, 21043.

When designers sign on to transform a house into a "show house," they aren't working with a blank slate. It's more likely they are working with a slate that has issues and challenges and charming quirks. A slate that needs some TLC. Homeowners hunting for the right wall color or trying to cover up unsightly elements in a room can probably relate. So we took a tour of this year's Baltimore Symphony Associates' Decorators' Show House in Pikesville, which opens to the public Saturday, to search out designer secrets that homeowners can use on their own slates.

Bette Eklof Chambers, an interior designer, artist and gardener active in Ellicott City, died of cancer Saturday at St. Agnes Hospital. She was 82 and lived in Ellicott City. Born Bette Lee Eklof in Ellicott City, she was a 1945 Western High School graduate and earned a degree in interior design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She was an interior designer and decorated the Bellona Avenue home that was based on the 1948 film, "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House." She then worked for the old Stewart & Co. department store at Howard and Lexington streets, where she set up an interior design department.

See the marble baseboard that matches the marble fireplace? Look again. Look closer. Unless you are on the floor, nose-to-vein with it, or touch it with your finger, you'll think that baseboard really is marble. But this is wood, a trompe l'oeil design handpainted and glazed, with green and cream veining to mimic the fireplace marble. "I love marbleized baseboards. It adds weight and character to a room," said its painter, Charlie MacSherry, who has a Baltimore decorative painting business.

Each year, top local decorators descend on a selected home -- painting and furnishing each room from scratch. Some create elaborate murals. Others haul in enormous pieces of antique furniture. They hang chandeliers, choose fabrics and roll out rugs. This year, that home -- site of the 23rd Decorator Show House -- is Woodford Farm, an 1880s structure on 140 acres off Old Frederick Road in western Howard County. Visitors can pick up design ideas and buy furnishings starting Saturday when the show house opens to the public.

At the century-old farmhouse in Sykesville that will be Historic Ellicott City's 2007 Decorator Show House, Cindy Miller of Ellicott City ruled out the bathrooms and hallways as possible workspaces for her and business partner Linda Farndon. Their business, Wild Goose Chase, specializes in fairly large antique furniture. As for the attic, "I'm not even going to look up there," Miller said, because it seems like, "if it isn't 500 pounds, we don't buy it."

Ellicott City Inc. will present its 22nd Decorator Show House, "The Lawn" at Lawyers Hill, in Elkridge. The 19th-century home, once a summer country retreat, was the first house built in the historic district of Lawyers Hill. The Decorator Show House will display the work of more than 25 designers and landscapers, and will be filled with furniture and accessories available to purchase. The Decorator Show House also features a boutique, garden shop, antiques and catering by Tersiguel's French Country Restaurant in Ellicott City.

In last Sunday's story on house tours, the designer of the Symphony Decorators' Show House solarium pictured in our photograph was misidentified, for which we apologize. It was designed by Hale and Rexrode Interior Design.The Sun Regrets the error.We're all a little curious about how the other half lives. That's what makes designer show houses and house and garden tours so appealing.Show houses offer the sort of fantasy rooms decorators come up with when they have carte blanche and no financial constraints.

Spring means it's time to put on comfortable shoes and tour some of central and eastern Maryland's most beautiful and historic homes and gardens, all for a good cause. The annual Baltimore Symphony Associates Decorators' Show House (April 25-May 23) raises money for the orchestra's educational and community outreach programs. The Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage, which begins Saturday in Baltimore, supports efforts to preserve and restore "architecturally significant properties" in the city and in Cecil, Talbot, Charles, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties.

The lessons of this year's Symphony Decorators' Show House reveal themselves the moment visitors walk through the front door of Villa Vista in Greenspring Valley. Murals, murals, murals. And ceilings, ceilings, ceilings. Around the entrance are faux fresco panels painted in charming pastels, including a pair of hand-painted canvas panels that, though they look like murals, can be removed. And, just inside, in the grand foyer, wrought iron railings that circle the second floor walkway are carried up to the ceiling in a trompe l'oeil trellis and gazebo cap that "opens up" to the sky, where swallows chase each other.