Longtime dream
Home that Hungarian couple once could only imagine will be featured on Bexley House & Garden Tour
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As poor young newlyweds in communist Hungary, Peter and Edith Korda passed time by imagining their dream home in England. With little hope of escaping Hungary, they fantasized that the home would be grand, open and light. It would have high ceilings, a library and a large dining room for holiday gatherings. It would be decorated with paintings, vases and sculptures collected from world travels.
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Half a century later and half a world away, the couple built that home in Bexley.
“There was no way out of the Iron Curtain, but we dreamed and designed our perfect home in England,” Peter Korda said. “It was exactly this.”
Next weekend, the home they once merely imagined will be open to the public during the annual Bexley House & Garden Tour.
The tour will feature nine homes in a variety of styles and sizes, from a 1,400-square-foot Dutch colonial to a luxurious 1920s English Tudor mansion.
The Kordas, both trained as engineers, fled Hungary during the 1956 revolution. They made stops in London and Montreal before settling in Columbus after Peter received a doctoral degree from Ohio State University in 1964, the same year he founded Korda/Nemeth Engineering.
After raising their four children in a home overlooking the Scioto River in Dublin, the Kordas decided to move to Bexley to be closer to two of their grown children.
Unable to find the home they wanted, they bought a house on N. Columbia Avenue and tore it down to build their dream.
They had a design in mind — after all, they’d been thinking of it for 50 years — but, in planning the home with architects and the builder, Heinlen-Follmer, they started in an unusual place: the dining room.
“This is the design focus of the entire house,” Peter Korda said while showing visitors the dining room recently. “We wanted a carbon copy of the dining room in our Dublin home, someplace where the entire family can gather on Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
The resulting room, more than 23 feet long, has served them well.
“I don’t know how many turkeys were buried on this table,” Korda joked.
Beyond that, the couple sought a more formal and traditional home than their contemporary-style house in Dublin. Eleven-foot ceilings and wide entrances between rooms create a flowing openness to Nine homes will be showcased during the Bexley House & Garden Tour from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. next Sunday. Tickets can be purchased for $20 in advance at Graeter’s Ice Cream, 2282 E. Main St.; Bexley Pizza Plus, 2651 E. Main St.; and Bexley Coffee Shop, 492 N. Cassady Ave. On the day of the tour, tickets can be purchased for $25 at the Columbus School for Girls, 56 S. Columbia Ave. No strollers or children younger than 12 are allowed in the homes. The tour raises money for the Bexley Women’s Club. For more information, including details about Saturday’s preview party, visit www.bexley women.org.