Art-loving retirees aren’t the retiring sort, and their four-story townhome shows it
Harriet Reitman absolutely, positively did not want to move again.
But her husband, Ed Reitman, loves to read real-estate sections in the Sunday paper and drag Harriet to open houses.
“I really thought he was finished dragging me because I never wanted to move. This was a shell when he found it,” Harriet said of their new home in Lampasas Terrace near the Galleria. “I was negative — until we moved in.”
Ed laughs as his wife describes in detail how much she didn’t want to move out of any of their homes. Somehow, he managed to sweettalk her into it, and once they’d moved she loved each home.
The couple — he’s a retired clinical psychologist, and she’s a retired special education teacher — lived in three homes, several years in each, until Ed got the itch for a new spot. This time, though, he wanted something brand new that they could finish to their own taste.
This four-story modern townhouse with 3,400 square feet was it. It didn’t deter him that most of his friends were getting sick and downsizing, spending their time talking about Medicare and their ailments.
“I got bored with those conversations and said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ So I said, ‘We’re going to live until the day we die.’ I believe it,” said Reitman, who is 84. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
An artful space
The first thing the Reitmans did to the home was to alter the foyer to accommodate a pneumatic elevator, a glass tube that looks like a piece of art all on its own. There’s a staircase nearby, and its dark wood treads seem to float on white beams.
Staring down the task of picking finishes for floors, walls, counters and cabinets throughout the home, the Reitmans called in decorator Marjorie Slovack, owner and principal of Slovack-Bass.
Slovack and Kathia De La Torre, a Slovack-Bass designer and Slovack’s partner on this project, walked every inch of the home, taking an inventory of what they had.
The design focus became the Reitmans’ art, gathered from their extensive travels — collecting Eskimo art in Canada and Alaska, weavings in Vietnam and pre-Columbian artifacts in Mexico. In America, they purchased pieces by Aldo Luongo, David Adickes and LeRoy Neiman.
For a soft background, Slovack and De La Torre chose Sherwin-Williams’ “Repose Gray” and “Mindful Gray,” both light neutral paint colors.
“We placed our big pieces first, then after that the rest filter into individual spaces based on size,” Slovack said. “The stairway had tall spaces, narrow spaces and spaces we could put collected groups. It wound up being very special all together.”
Special pieces even have a place in the home’s bathrooms. “It was fun to bring pieces in there to make the space unique and special. It’s so unexpected,” De La Torre said.
Each room’s character determined where other pieces would go. So a large painting of the Beatles went in the second-floor dining room, with its glossy black dining table and buffet and white leather chairs, all from Cantoni. A three-ringed chandelier dangles over the table, complementing the peace sign in the center of that painting.
A few steps away is the living room, with a light gray, Greek-key-design rug on top of dark wood floors. Their curvy sectional sofa was reupholstered a velvety white, and sits with two black chairs and two acrylic Ghost chairs.
The tidy kitchen that works bigger than it looks was designed for a homeowner who loves to cook. That’s Ed.
It’s lined with Poggenpohl cabinets that pull out to reveal wire racks that would satisfy even the most organized person. Corners are filled with butterfly-shaped shelves that pull out. An aluminum roll-up door reveals a three-shelf appliance garage.
On the edge of the kitchen is a clever screen that’s hidden in the ceiling, ready to scroll down via remote control to hide the kitchen from view during dinner parties. Ed took a photo of a butterfly landing on a flower, had it pixilated and transferred to canvas for the screen.
The first floor has a different feel — that’s where the artful elevator, Ed’s office and a more casual media room are. Ed’s office is filled with photography, art and artifacts. On one shelf above his desk is a carved lion, which Ed previously had sitting on the floor. Slovack, De La Torre and their art consultant, Steven Wagner, instead moved it to a shelf.
A new sofa — a leather sectional from Cantoni — elevates an otherwise casual media room. On one wall hangs a David Adickes painting with a bold orange background and two people standing side by side, a piece restored after being damaged in a 1995 house fire.
The master bedroom on the third floor has a coffee bar topped with a slab of Cold Spring granite from Daltile. Its bathroom has Daltile’s White River marble counters, and its shower walls are clad in Diamonte Ghiaccio tile with slices of Tiger Eye Caspian glass mosaic.
Up on the fourth floor is one more guest bedroom and a landing with bookshelves. The rest of the space is devoted to an outdoor patio with a fireplace and a view.
Still restless
Ed Reitman’s journey to this home has a long route.
After dropping out of school, he left his home in Atlantic City, N.J., to homestead in Alaska. After a few years in the Last Frontier, he joined the Air Force and was stationed in Colorado Springs, Colo., and, of all places, Alaska.
On base in Colorado, near the end of his stint in the service, he met a woman who told him he needed a college education and helped him with applications. He got his GED and decided he’d like to be pre-med. Most schools rejected him, but the University of Miami told him to pass science classes in summer school and they’d let him in.
Meanwhile, Harriet had moved from upstate New York to Miami, where she was waitressing. She ran into an old friend who said: “What’s a Jewish girl doing waitressing and not using her money for school?”
So she applied to the University of Miami, too.
Hollywood couldn’t write a better script: They met in their first two classes, fell in love, got married and started their big adventure together.
They were poor but happy, and eventually two children came along. Ed didn’t become a medical doctor, but he did earn a Ph.D — from the University of Houston — and became a clinical psychologist. In time, he made regular appearances on local TV shows before getting his own radio show, the “Dr. Ed Show,” three nights a week on KTRH.
After the couple moved to Houston in 1960, Harriet earned her master’s degree in special education from UH and spent 35 years teaching in Spring.
Although retired, Ed still sees the occasional patient, and the highenergy Harriet substitute teaches once in a while — because she can’t stand being retired.
Their first trip together was years ago, when they were poor students. They went to Cuba once in the ’50s and later drove all over Mexico.
“Every time we went on a trip, we brought something home,” Harriet said. More than 20 years ago, their home was destroyed in a fire, and they lost nearly everything. Since then, they’ve rebuilt their art collection.
When one granddaughter got married, they took her and her new husband on a trip to Italy, where they all took cooking classes from cookbook author Marcella Hazan.
They’re planning to take another granddaughter to Iceland soon.
“Our travels are not like other people’s. We never stay at a four- or five-star hotel,” Ed said. “Our requirements were they had to be clean, and we had to have our own bathroom.”