The humble house that Hope built
Family puts stamp on home built by pioneer of Northwest contemporary
Matt and Sarah Hill walked into this special possibility in the affluent Winderemere neighbourhood one Saturday morning just as another couple walked out.
“They said, ‘It’s not a house for a family,’ ” Matt recalls.
Even more discouraging, says Sarah, “They were very specific. They said it was a house for a single pilot.” The Hills — who have two young daughters and a dog named Maggie, and who are definitely not single pilots — had been looking for a while, along with Paul Moon of Paul Moon Design.
They were not discouraged. They all knew.
“There was something about it,” Sarah says. “The windows, all the wood.”
“And the property itself,” Matt says.
“All of a sudden, you’re secluded in the woods. There’s a lot of privacy and a full-size lot.”
Moon saw enough potential to cost him a commission.
“I said, ‘Buy it!’ in two seconds,” he says. “I went back to my staff and said, ‘Don’t tell them, but I would have designed this for free.’ It’s a parklike setting. The connection of the house to the outdoors was rooted to the lot, but it was disconnected — the architecture was all there, if we connected the front and backyard. It’s old Northwest contemporary, unique to Seattle.”
Turns out, the home had been designed in 1951 for, and by, Hope Foote, the former head of the interior-design department at the University of Washington and a pioneer in Northwest contemporary design.
“She camped out on this lot,” Matt says. In researching Foote, Moon learned her home had attracted quite a bit of media attention, including a 1966 article in the Christian Science Monitor in which she said, “Since this is the only house I ever plan to build, I wanted it to have stand-up quality, to be timeless.” Working with a team, the Hills thoughtfully adapted Foote’s timeless design for their family, and for their time.
And now, what had been disconnected and closed off is wide-open, freely flowing with straight-through sightlines front to back.
There’s a whole new, steppedup addition for the girls — “on stilts, to be sensitive to the existing roots of the large conifers,” Moon says. On the main level, “We opened up the dining room completely,” Matt says. “Everything on this entire floor was touched and redone.”
Single doors and little windows evolved into walls of folding glass doors and giant views to the new backyard seating area. A second bedroom and closet were transformed into a luxurious master suite, with one of the home’s three indoor fireplaces, a wardrobe instead of a closet and light-welcoming clerestory windows in the bathroom.
Off the living room, a new bar of forged metal and carved maple acts as “a throwback to when houses put bars in like this,” says Moon.
“One thing we love the most is that we use the entire space; that was a goal,” says Sarah. “To draw people away from the kitchen to the bar and living area is awesome, but I didn’t want to sit there solo. I still feel connected. It’s so open and flows so wonderfully. It just functions perfectly for the way we live.”
A thoughtful remodel will do that. But it will not alter the essence of a stand-up home with a serious legacy, or its timeless mission to connect with nature.
“This is a humble house,” says Moon.
“Architects have big egos and want to steal the show. In Seattle now, every project is shouting,” Moon says. “Instead (I thought): ‘If she walked into this house now, what would she do?’ ”