Living room fireplace is marble; walls are the original “pickled wood” – pickling was a method of making the walls look aged yet elegant.
2
Living room fireplace is marble; walls are the original “pickled wood” – pickling was a method of making the walls look aged yet elegant.
3
The living room faces west and opens at its corner to the newly rebuilt deck.
4
The living room faces west and opens at its corner to the newly rebuilt deck.
5
Fireplace on feature wall of living room, paneled in hardwood. The swanky, curving sofa seems custom-made for the room, but was originally in the Wong’s Pearl District office.
6
Fireplace on feature wall of living room, paneled in hardwood. The swanky, curving sofa seems custom-made for the room, but was originally in the Wong’s Pearl District office.
7
Trish Grantham’s artwork adorns many of the walls of the art loving Wong family’s house. The expansive living opens to floor to ceiling windows on two sides.
8
Trish Grantham’s artwork adorns many of the walls of the art loving Wong family’s house. The expansive living opens to floor to ceiling windows on two sides.
9
View from living room through the pass-through wet bar into the dining room. Such touches make the house a perfect setting for an elegant cocktail party, in the 1950s or now.
10
View from living room through the pass-through wet bar into the dining room. Such touches make the house a perfect setting for an elegant cocktail party, in the 1950s or now.
11
The dining room – view into the living room includes fireplace and pass-through bar.
12
The dining room – view into the living room includes fireplace and pass-through bar.
13
Child’s room includes Trish Grantham murals.
14
Master bathroom: sinks and fixtures (Crane hardware) are original – and buoyantly glamorous in keeping with the style of the house.
15
Glam details: transom lights flank the front door. The white-painted wood and geometric pattern are both intriguingly atypical of the popular, more rustic Northwest Regional Modernism so many architects were practicing at that time in the 1950s.
16
“Hi Honey, I’m home!” – The door knob of the front door is unapologetically oversized.
17
Stylized and spare wood ceiling of entryway. The brick clad entry is set back from the busy, curving street and flanked by a carport.
Surely, if Thurston Howell III had ever moved to Portland, he would have wanted to live in the house architect Richard Marlitt designed in 1956 for a sloping, eastward-facing site in the Southwest Hills. The house exudes a well-bred, quirky glamor that our favorite Island-dwellers shared. Sorry for Thurston, but lucky for us, Jennifer and Benton Wong live there now and are treating the house with the glamorous respect it deserves.
They generously opened their house for the Architectural Heritage Center‘s recent Heritage Home Tour. We enviously snapped photos of the period details and open, flowing yet formal procession of rooms. Take our Slide Show tour of the house to see this atypical mid-century Portland Modern gem.
The Wongs are particular fans of artist Trish Grantham, whose work adorns many of the walls in the house, as murals or as hanging paintings. They have maintained the house much as it was originally designed for Ralph and Ruth Williams (including restoring a few changes that had been made over the years to their original).
