TUDOR TREASURE
Mt. Lebanon home reflects quality, comfort and owners’ lives
For the past 3½ years, interior designer Neill Stouffer and Bruce Harshman have been making a 1930s Tudor in Mt. Lebanon their happy place.
The couple, who have been married six years but together 19, knew they wanted the house the first time they saw it.
“It really wasn’t in a state of disrepair, but it was like Mrs. Kennedy lived here. The only time something was done to the house was when it fell off the house,” joked Mr. Stouffer, the owner of Neill C. Stouffer Fine Interiors in Mt. Lebanon.
“Nothing had been done for probably 80 years,” Mr. Harshman said.
One of the biggest projects they took on was completely revamping the kitchen. Electrical wiring there and throughout the house was brought up to code.
“We had an architect come in to make sure that everything was sound,” Mr. Stouffer recalled.
Then they got to work renovating and redecorating. The original leaded-glass windows were repaired, the floors were refinished and Mr. Harshman rehabbed the garden in time for the 2019 Mt. Lebanon Public Library Garden Tour. Its flower beds had been choked with weeds.
“I asked every friend we had if they had any plants they wanted to share, so a lot that is planted is from friends,” he said.
The rear stone terrace, which is now shaded by a black-and-white striped awning, had to be disassembled.
“All the stones were numbered and put in the yard, and the terrace was reinforced before they were all put back. So it is the original floor,” Mr. Stouffer said.
They turned the original washroom and utility room into a casual family room with plantation shutters.
“We tried our best to keep everything in the house as original as possible,” said Mr. Stouffer.
The interior designer wanted their home to reflect quality, comfort and their lives together. The walls are painted with Farrow & Ball colors and the carpets are Stark. Visitors to the Omni Bedford Springs Resort might recognize the Bradbury and Bradbury wallpaper in Mr. Harshman’s study.
“It’s on the walls at Bedford Springs, and Bruce loves it and it is his study,” Mr. Stouffer said.
The study also contains a striking Mark Hampton chest and a wall filled with Mr. Harshman’s family crests.
“My family has been traced back to the 1400s, and I discovered we are related to Lord Buckingham, William Penn and Johnny Cash!” he said, laughing.
On the walls of the center hall are a painting by George Hetzel, a portrait of Mr. Harshman and a portrait of Mr. Stouffer’s mother.
The home’s original 4½ bathrooms were a pleasant surprise. “That was unusual in 1930,” Mr. Stouffer said.
The couple have learned a lot about the house’s original owners, the Donahues.
“They were not the Donahues of Federated Investors. They were grocers,” Mr. Stouffer said. “They were an Irish family and had eight children and had a fulltime bodyguard and a fulltime housekeeper.”
The family hired a bodyguard fearing their children would be kidnapped. In March 1932, the infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne, was taken from their New Jersey home. His body was found two months later.
“They were like the Whole Foods people of today, and someone threatened to kidnap their children,” Mr. Harshman said. “That is why all the bedrooms connect, so [Mrs. Donahue] could grab all her children if she had to.
“The bodyguard played with them and took them to school, and they were not allowed to go trick or treating.”
“There is a lot of local lore about the house,” said Mr. Stouffer.
After the youngest Donahue child died, her son asked Mr. Stouffer if he would like to read his mother’s memoirs, written when she was young.
“Lo and behold, everything we heard about the house was 100 percent true,” he said.
Mr. Stouffer, who chose a classic Scalamandre wallpaper of zebras and arrows for the powder room, was surprised to learn it wasn’t the first time that motif had danced on those walls. The memoir details how the daring Mrs. Donahue had chosen red wallpaper with dancing zebras for the powder room in 1933.
“It was designed for a restaurant that year in New York City. It was brand new that year,” he said.
The housekeeper’s thirdfloor apartment has been converted to a guest suite with two cozy bedrooms.
“The buzzer was still in the kitchen. We kept ringing it, but she never came down,” Mr. Harshman joked.
Mr. Stouffer hired artist Barb Conner, art director of the Duquesne Club, to paint a mural in the dining room.
“I had sketched what I wanted, and she painted it,” he said.
The dining room set is from Baker Furniture’s Stately Homes Collection. All are reproductions of original pieces found in British castles and manor houses, Mr. Stouffer noted.
“The majority of the casegoods in the house are from the Stately Homes Collection.”
The designer sells pieces he has acquired to clients, who often become friends. He said he decorated his own house the same way he would for clients, with their personalities and tastes in mind.
“It’s a very personal thing,” he said.
The couple’s master suite has a very English vibe. With its small breakfast nook, it could be a suite at the fashionable Browns boutique in London. They took an adjoining room and turned it into a large dressing room and closet with built-ins.
The house has four new heating and air-conditioning units.
“We did that because the house is junior-beam construction, which means concrete floors,” Mr. Stouffer explained.
Amazingly the original furnace still worked. “But it was not very efficient,” Mr. Harshman said.
The library on the second floor is a work in progress. It is their last major project.
“We had the ceiling fall down in there,” said Mr. Stouffer.