The Italianate Affair

An 1861/1885 house is brought back by a serial restorer.

Just two years after Oregon gained statehood, the very year Abraham Lincoln became President, a modest Italian Villa was built in a rural area of Southwest Portland. Although it was surrounded by cow fences, the house was elegant, as it was home to George Law Curry, Oregon’s last territorial governor, and his wife, Chloe Boone, a great-granddaughter of Daniel Boone. We can imagine its towering, arch• ing windows hung with delicate lace curtains. In 1885, the 1861 house was enlarged by about 520 square feet, and subsequently it was moved. “The house was supposed to be razed, in 1964, to make way for a freeway,” current owner Karla Pearlstein explains. “Its then-owner Margaret Powers decided to split the original house apart from the addition to facilitate the move … to a sloping lot with a pre-existing, split-level foundation that had been built for a car-repair shop. The grease pit looked like the ruins of Pompeii.”

A serial restorer turned preservation consultant spent 20 years bringing back the 1861 Governor Curry Mansion—a tall order, as the Italian Villa in Portland, Oregon, had been added to, moved, and abused.

setting the house onto the daylight foundation (on a sloped site) created some unfortunate adaptations: two odd bump-outs, a spiral staircase leading from the 1885 addition to the basement, and a poorly designed master-bedroom addition at the back of the 1885 section. That, and the 1960s kitchen was in the front parlor! Its vertical layout required use of a ladder to reach most cupboards. One original floor-to-ceiling window had been cut in half to accommodate the sink. An early priority, Pearlstein says, was to find a woodworker who could replicate the old windows.

When Pearlstein and her family purchased the house around 2000, she engaged Portland architect William J. Hawkins III, a knowledgeable architectural historian, to “ameliorate the effronteries.” Hawkins assigned Matthew Roman the job of architectural designer for the project. Roman says the books of architect and landscape designer A.J. Downing were his inspiration for how to create an Italian country villa. (Roman would go on to open his own company in 2006.) His vision was successful.

From the back of the hillside today, the view takes in the “tempietto” and plantings, vintage street lanterns, a swimming pool, and finally the sequestered Italianate house—and it does indeed feel like countryside. “It’s an illusion,” Roman says; “the house is

LEFT The view from the landscaped hillside takes in the little temple and the house’s north façade, showing the ca. 1885 addition.

been stripped BELOW Details before had the house was moved in 1964, but front windows were intact. Porch parts found in a scrap pile were used as models for replication. Original balusters were re-created from an archival photo. OPPOSITE Before the 1885 addition, a chimney stood here with parlor stoves on each side.

RIGHT The ladies’ writing desk is rosewood, ca. 1840s–50s, an antique deemed perfect for this house by consultant Steve Austin.

ABOVE The parlor’s ornate mirror was restored.

ABOVE RIGHT A carved marble stand holds a classical Parian bust.

LEFT The rare, mid-1800s upholstered armchair has a metal wire back, not a wooden frame, for comfortable “give.”

ABOVE The scenic paper continues around the south end of the parlor; the rare, three-legged Lindeman half-moon piano, 1865, has a finished back, allowing placement anywhere in a room. The 1870s sofa is a transition piece out of Rococo style toward the Aesthetic period.

BELOW The dining table and chairs, as well as the buffet table, are ca. 1820s-30s. The Scalamandré wallpaper was recolored to complement the carpet. The mirror with a reverse-painted scene is pre-Civil War.