Turning Back the Clock

After a century of bad renovations chopped up this D.C. home, it was finally restored to its former glory.

- interior designer Fowlkes Studio/writer Alyssa Longobucco photographer Stacy Zarin Goldberg

EACH HOME SPEAKS ITS OWN language, a vocabulary made up of its architecture, locale, and the design choices of previous owners. When Catherine and VW Fowlkes of Fowlkes Studio were hired to upgrade an architecturally confused home in Washington, D.C., for a family of five, the pair stepped into the role of translators as well as designers, deciphering what story the house was really meant to tell. When they encountered it, the 8,750-square-foot home was filled with “slightly overwrought ideas of glamour,” Catherine says. It contained a series of meandering rooms and misguided design accents including Sistine Chapel wallpaper on the ceiling of the primary bathroom. Though the original structure was built in 1926, years of disjointed renovations had muddied its historic charm, so the husband-and-wife team decided to revive its faded grandeur while streamlining the layout to fit a modern family. As VW puts it, they sought to create “a much more natural and easy flow” that spoke to the current owners’ needs.