DESIGNER HOME SOPHISTICATED AND FAMILY-FRIENDLY
Designer show house is luxurious, yet family friendly
Hilltop has long been one of Denver’s prized neighborhoods, not the least because of its location a bit above the rest of the Mile High City. It boasts views of the Front Range from Cranmer Park and many stately homes among its leafy streets. Development has accelerated in the past few years, with older brick bungalows and Tudors being replaced by multimillion-dollar residences.
Among the latter is a house at 346 Elm St. which has seen a flurry of activity in the past few months. The site of the 2017 Designer Show House to benefit Children’s Hospital Colorado, it will be open for tours this weekend and next.
“Hilltop is special because of its parks, schools and residents who take great pride in their gorgeous homes,” said Trish Bragg, who with fellow LIV Sotheby’s Realtor Maggie Armstrong started the Designer Show House in 2010. “It’s highly accessible to Cherry Creek and downtown but removed enough to feel quiet and safe.”
This is the fifth show house to benefit Children’s and is a mustsee for fans of a style that has come to be known as modern farmhouse. Designed by Alvarez Morris Architectural Studio, the two-story residence is both sophisticated and family-friendly. Architect Carlos Alvarez has been creating homes in Colorado for 18 years, and collaborates with his wife, designer Carolyn Morris. The original home on the site, a 1950s brick ranch, had a solid foundation. So Alvarez kept the home’s base and put a new and expanded top on the property.
“It’s basically a modern farmhouse that’s gone vertical because the lot is urban,” Morris said as she was arranging furniture and accessories earlier in the week. “We like the clean aesthetics of modern
design, but some traditional elements as well.”
Along with Morris, about a dozen of Denver’s top designers and suppliers have outfitted the home, which has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, two fireplaces, formal and informal living spaces, and play areas for kids. The home’s big appeal is in its spacious living room-dining room-kitchen layout, which has glass doors that fold open to a landscaped backyard and patio.
“We wanted to have that indoor-outdoor space, which is great in Colorado’s climate,” Morris said.
The white kitchen has Aspen Leaf cabinetry that includes built-ins that disguise the Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer. Carrara marble countertops are a cool complement, while there’s drama in a backsplash of striking gray-veined Italian Striato Venato marble, both from Galleria of Stone in Denver.
“I wanted a light, airy, kitchen,” Morris said, adding, “white will never go out of style.”
For the living room, Morris selected white upholstered pieces by Jiun Ho from Town Studio and layered them with brown and ivory alpaca throws and pillows in shearling and wool. “My design philosophy is a mix of luxe and organic earthiness,” Morris said. The adjacent dining area with five white chairs around a Troscan table “is not super formal, more casually elegant.”
The two rooms are tied together by bold abstract artwork curated by Ann Benson Reidy, who selected paintings by Dale Chisman and Deborah Zlotsky.
More modern touches are found in the light fixtures, which range from a Sputnik chandelier in the stairwell leading from the main floor to the second story to metal and glass fixtures in the living room and dining area.
Bedrooms on the upper level have big windows and high ceilings due to the home’s gabled roof. Each of the bathrooms and second story laundry room have a Waterworks marble floor in a different pattern, lending a playful yet cohesive quality to the spaces.
This is the first of several homes Alvarez Morris Architectural Studio plans to develop locally. “We’ve spent our careers doing high-end residential custom home and are now doing our own projects,” Morris said.
The partnership challenges them. “We don’t agree all the time,” she admitted. “As an architect, he tends to see things more as they are oriented to the outside. I concentrate on how people feel when they are sitting in here.”
And that give-and-take is what makes a house appealing to buyers. The allure of the Elm Street house, said Bragg, who with Armstrong will list the property for $2.75 million after the show house ends, is its “striking exterior that is a combination of classic and modern design. Inside, it represents what people want today in a family home — high ceilings, a bright open floor plan designed with plenty of private spaces, a spectacular kitchen with a family room that opens to a huge back patio, and much more.”