Greater Park Hill Community

The Brown-Weaver Home - 1651 Dahlia Street

Aug 25, 2006

When the owners purchased this historic eclectic style Park Hill home eight years ago, they set about both restoring its vintage qualities and modernizing its features to serve their family?’s needs.
Retained were the original ornate tiled fireplace in the living room and all of the built-in oak cabinets with Mission styling throughout the first floor. The living room gives way to the dining room and the sunny music room, painted in ?“baked terra cotta.?” What was originally a large formal dining room with a brick fireplace and oak mantle, is now a warm family room painted in ?“Shakespeare tan.?” The original kitchen was updated with both modern appliances and a large antique sideboard with a unique hexagonal-tiled counter. To modernize the family area, the owners augmented the original kitchen with a glorious light-filled breakfast room. With oversized windows, period light fixtures and painted a perfect shade of green, called ?“Felk Art,?” with trim in bright white, this airy and spacious addition is the focal point for the family. Through French doors the breakfast room opens out on to the patio, ample yard and garden to the back. The large garden with arbor is strewn with perennials and redolent of a French countryside.
The second floor experienced some updating also, but the bones of the house, including the roofline and dormers were not disturbed. With two young children, the owners wisely chose to move the laundry to the second floor. The children?’s rooms are charming in their color and d?©cor, and one features transom-like windows out to the central hallway. The master suite includes a large and airy sitting room painted in ?“artichoke heart.?” The d?©cor of these two rooms is elegant simplicity, with muted colors, minimal furniture and clean lines. A large master bath, added when the kitchen was expanded, echoes the sloped ceiling line making it appear to be part of the original home. The choice of hexagonal tiles and a pair of period pedestal sinks continue the turn-of-the-last-century feel.
The home rests on six lots and boasts the original and charming carriage house, now used as a guesthouse. The expansive yard features numerous mature trees, and with a hammock stretched between two of them for lazy summer afternoons, visitors will be left with the sense of an old farm house in the center of the city. In fact, Park Hill lore recalls that this home and property served a stint as the area pig farm. While there is no obvious remnant of this possible historical use, the home and property exude a mood of a different era, when Park Hill was a series of homesteads on the outskirts of a booming city. Thankfully, owners like these and others on the Tour have made a commitment to both modernizing and preserving our community treasures.