A house of light and height in the forest
Cantilever design of northwest architect Ralph Anderson offers huge views amid tree canopy
SEATTLE— Steve Hoedemaker and Tommy Swenson were looking for a new house “kind of obsessively,” Hoedemaker says. And kind of skeptically, initially.
Then up popped a west Seattle prospect: part elevated tree house perched over a serious cliff, and part resort with four outbuildings, a shimmering pool and gardens that seem “like a cheerleader exploded here in spring,” Hoedemaker says.
“I was very curious, but I’ve been deceived by so many things online,” Hoedemaker says. “But every corner I turned, I was more and more sold. I couldn’t believe something like this existed.”
The home was built in 1966 for art collectors Duff and Dorothy Kennedy by their friend, noted northwest architect Ralph Anderson. The additional lot, with the outbuildings and pool, was finished in the 1980s.
Even more encouraging, Hoedemaker says, “My dad (architect David Hoedemaker) and Ralph worked together and had desks next to each other.”
And that was the end of that househunting obsession. And the skepticism. Hoedemaker — also an architect, with the firm Hoedemaker Pfeiffer — and Swenson, a nurse anesthetist, made an offer.
Now married and living in the midcentury-modern home with pups Tonka and Tripp, Hoedemaker and Swenson have honoured Anderson’s design and his legacy as an early, influential historic preservationist, with a gentle and modernizing update.
“(Such a legacy) can feel like an uncomfortable obligation when the house doesn’t do its job well,” Hoedemaker says. “This one is a study in approaching what works and what you might have done differently. The house is fundamentally the same.”
So much works so well — the unique southwest orientation, pointing right at Puget Sound; the remarkable and tall entry door; the indoor/outdoor skylight; the daring cantilever of the clifftop living room; the still-brilliant original lighting; the original, elegant brass sinks and Italian marble counter in the master bathroom; a masterful plan of compression and expansion, “how low the ceilings are in some spaces, and then this big relief,” Hoedemaker says.
There really was no reason for extensive remodelling or reworking — just strategic repainting, refinishing and refurbishing.
“Our style is determined partly by the way we collect: beautiful things of any age that often show history — eclectic, casual, natural, with elegant aspects,” Hoedemaker says.
In the living room, a custom paper light with a wire frame — “Moon Shine,” by
Seattle artist Yuri Kinoshita — “was designed to float as a 3D object,” Swenson says. A new stone top modernizes a table commissioned in the early ’50s by Hoedemaker’s grandmother. The fish trap in the corner “is vintage,” Swenson says.
“We wanted to make the living room a place we occupied as often as possible,” Hoedemaker says. “We spend a lot of time in here.”
Nearby, an 11-foot-tall door leads to a super-cosy, brick-walled room on the other side of the two-sided fireplace. “We call it the study, but no one would ever study here,” Hoedemaker says.
Here, again, he says, “Every object tells a story.” There’s a wooden ship from David Hoedemaker’s home. A Phi Beta Kappa key that belonged to Hoedemaker’s mother. And what he laughingly calls “a nice embellishment”: a collection of metal shivs from the New York prison system.
“We are fortunate enough to go to a lot of places and come home with something,” Swenson says. “It’s sometimes not the obvious thing.”
Yet it all matters. As does this treasured home.
“It’s probably my favourite house I’ve ever seen in the city,” Hoedemaker says.
“The fact that we get to live in it feels like a privilege.”