Papercity

If there’s one thing that sold interior designer Lisa Rowe on her two-story mid-century house in Memorial, it was probably the downstairs wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that span the entire back length of the house. Or maybe it was the view of lush grounds with a ravine that empties into the nearby bayou. Most likely, though, it was the quirky juxtaposition of a façade that telegraphs “I’m a traditional brick-front house” with a back that’s unapologetically modern.

Rowe is the third owner of the house, which was built as a custom home for the Alder family by Houston architect Ben Brewer (the late husband of Sunset Settings owner Carolyn Brewer) in 1961. The 3,600-square-foot house was the only residential project in the commercial architect’s career.

Rowe has lived here for more than three years now, but her love for modern mid-century structures goes back decades. When she was growing up, her mother worked with The Menil Collection, in the early days when Dominique de Menil converted the garage of her Philip Johnson home in River Oaks to the curator’s office. “I spent many summers and afternoons after school in that art-filled house,” Rowe says. “The exposure had a huge impact on me and my design aesthetic.”

The Johnson-designed Menil house, too, has enormous windows along the back, which allow for an unobstructed view of the garden and its priceless sculptures. “I also loved the mixture of modern furnishings and period pieces in the interior,” Rowe recalls. “That house was so simple and functional, yet elegant all at once.”
While she favors mid-century French and Italian furniture arranged in a room with period English antiques, she’s also attracted to clean lines and the very simple design of things. “Yet I like the unexpected, too — a little whimsy, a pop of something interesting,” she says.

When the designer and her family first moved in, she plied her trade and brought some drama into the space: ball-skirt-like silk-taffeta curtains in the living and dining rooms, fun Rose Cummings–designed navy zebra-patterned wallpaper in the half bath and a David Hicks pink-patterned geometric wall covering upstairs in her children’s bath. And did we mention those glossy Benjamin Moore black-painted doors? Everywhere there’s an entry or an exit, you’ll find one.
Upstairs, past the bedrooms of her children (ages 6, 11 and 13), is the master suite, where a gracious sitting room beckons just off the bath. Through the double doors on the opposite side of the room is a calming gray, lavender and white bedroom. Just beyond, Rowe enclosed a screened porch in glass and converted it into her light-filled office. This addition by Dillon Kyle Architecture is a continuation of the outdoor porch that runs the length of the house — a feature original to the mid-century structure. “People would come over and say, ‘That’s so nice you have a screened-in porch,’ but I never used it,” Rowe says. But once she enclosed the space with floor-to-ceiling glass walls like those she admires downstairs, she never looked back. “It’s one of my most favorite things I’ve done to the house.” She’s scheming next to tent the dramatic space with solid fabric and scalloped valences for “a touch of 1960s glam.”
But her evolving vision for the house might have to wait awhile as she readies for the launch of her newest venture, Row by Rowe (rowxrowe.com). She spent the better part of the last 12 months working with Deuce Creative to build an identity for this new interior concept. The catchy name evolved in part to incorporate her own surname and aesthetic, and in part because people often tackle a design project room by room. Through Row by Rowe, she aims to do something that few have ventured to do before. “When I first started out, I would take any job that came my way, but now that I’m more project-based for economic reasons, I still get asked to do small jobs, and I hate to turn them down,” Rowe says. “This new business is a way I can accommodate smaller jobs, because not everyone has a big budget.”
Created as a do-it-yourself online design service, Row by Rowe makes efficient use of everyone’s time. Clients upload photos of their house, the specific room they want to redo, its dimensions and floor plan (if there is one), then fill out a questionnaire to give Rowe an idea about how they want to live and the environs in which they’re most comfortable. After four to six weeks, a linen-wrapped keepsake box arrives by mail, filled with a design board, floor plan, color palettes and a list of local and Internet resources, among other goodies — everything necessary to walk homeowners through updating their space.