When Maryland architect Wayne Good was tapped to renovate and remodel Timberlane,
a Georgian Revival country house on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he was surprised
by its interiors. They had been "changed out piecemeal or indiscriminately
added on over time -- and not with the quality of workmanship that built the
house in 1937," he says. "The lapse was disappointing but fairly typical
of later 20th-century American taste to layer on the lowest common denominator."
Fortunately, Timberlane's newest owners shared Good's conviction that remodeling
could remedy the errors of previous decades and deliver a comfortable retreat
for them and their two young children. "Maintaining the building's period character
through rigorous updating meant borrowing from the original architecture to
make the changes seamless," Good says. "Respecting the architecture was key."
The two-year process was challenging because the original construction Good
so admired consisted of 6-inch poured-concrete walls with brick veneering, a
first floor resting on an 18-inch-thick concrete slab, a second floor comprised
of steel bar joists, and a steel-frame roof surmounted by concrete decking and
slate.
"The rumor about Timberlane's original owner, Hollyday S. Meeds
Jr., was that his family experienced a house fire when he was a child,"
explains Good. "Meeds instructed the Philadelphia architectural firm of
George, Edwin, Pope, Albert, Kruse to use no combustible materials in the construction
of Timberlane."
For his clients, Good envisioned a classic, open, Eastern Shore-style kitchen
that might have evolved from a hearth-centered plan one would find in a house
built centuries earlier. Unfortunately, there was no fireplace in the existing,
unremarkable, 18-by-24-foot galley space.
