A study of contrasts defines Allen and James’ sleek kitchen, consisting of dark, glass-paneled cabinetry by Marsh Kitchens accented with white countertops, white octagonal subway tiles for the backsplash, white light fixtures and white ceramic pieces. The floating wood shelves above the farmhouse sink bind 20th-century Craftsman architecture with 21st-century sensibility — especially when topped with a dab of greenery and gold-accented glassware.
74 O.Henry
November 2019
hand-wrought details and furnishings over those that were mass-produced. Briggs points out other architectural details such as the Asian-inspired, wide overhanging eaves and sawn rake boards and “an amazing” living room mantel flanked by two pilasters that were fashioned with a technique called stop fluting, which infills the cavity of the flute. “The top,” he adds, “is decorated with an egg and dart motif.” Even rarer: the absence of a mantel shelf around the firebox.
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uch details were revolutionary in 1913, the year that a young attorney and rising politician, Carter Dalton, began construction on the house, but over the ensuing two decades, the Craftsman bungalow would influence residential building throughout the city. It would also become a fulcrum for the neighborhood. “Johnson Street,” Briggs observes, “reads like a sentence. This is the middle of the sentence.” The Prairie-style, BurnettMcCain House across the street, and the aesthetic of the Dalton-Bell-Cameron Craftsman create what he calls an “a nice conversation between these two houses.” Margaret Bell Lewis, whose family lived in the house during the postwar years, knows a thing or two about the interplay of neighborhood residents. “Johnson Street was full of young families,” she says of her childhood during the late 1950s and early ’60s. “We all played together and had a great time,” she recalls. “We all had big backyards. We could run across the street, because people didn’t tear up and down like they do now.” She remembers the Craftsman’s large rooms, including a playroom upstairs and a laundry room that her parents added to the original structure. “When they did that, they paved the concrete walkway,” she says, recalling how she and her siblings, Irene and Ted, “put our hands in the cement.” The Art & Soul of Greensboro