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ELIZABETH BETTENDORFRemodeling costs spell doom for a '50s home, but a Stepford clone - more beautiful, more pleasing - will take its place.
HYDE PARK - The address is Bayshore. The view, a million bucks. And then some.
The 1950s ranch house? Well, just okay.
"I must have walked by it hundreds of times over the years," recalls Norma Gene Burr. "I always noticed the lot, but never the house."
Burr, the dynamic community activist and president of the F.E. Lykes Foundation, has lived in this Hyde Park neighborhood since 1987. She bought the house at the corner of Bayshore Boulevard and Orleans Avenue in June 2003.
Admittedly, she usually goes for gorgeous old homes "with 14-inch molding," homes she infuses with her own brand of sophistication, refreshing frowsy kitchens and bathrooms with a clean, contemporary look. It's a European idea, something she calls "new living in old spaces."
The Bayshore house she liked well enough to fix up.
She paid $797,000 for it.
What she was really buying was the postcard view. She converted the back bedroom into a yoga room and lived with a pink bathtub that only June Cleaver could love. The house, nestled on a point, commands from nearly any angle a painterly vision of balustrade, bay and sky.
A structural engineer told her she needed to raise the house more than a foot off the ground to avoid the potential ravages of summer flooding. She wanted to replace plumbing and wiring, and meet hurricane codes. Then remodel the interior.
She thought about it. And then she thought again.
"It was going to cost me $6,000 to have it knocked down and hauled off versus $100,000 just to lift it off the ground," she recalls. "It was like the tail wagging the dog."
Last week, the Tampa Architectural Review Commission approved her plan to demolish the house.
Burr is sorry to see it go. She loves the Hyde Park neighborhood that encompasses a swath of 1890s to World War II era homes.
"I've apologized to the house," she said a little wistfully one afternoon after salvagers stripped everything from floors to kitchen cabinets.
"I told it that I'm going to clone it."
Well, almost, she says, with a laugh.
Same DNA, at least.
This time, she's building an architecturally significant house in proportion to the modest, oak-shaded lot, one with simple terraces that rise and drop gently, creating a sense of unity with the property.
You can be sure of one thing, she says: It won't be one of those ubiquitous Mediterranean revivals on steroids.
Burr hired Richard Zingale of Urban Studio Architects in downtown Tampa to design an exquisite streamlined house that will stand in the same footprint as the old one. You might know Zingale's work: Among other things, he designed the uber-cool south Tampa eateries, Mia's and Sidebern's; as well as the residential property, Madison at Soho. And he was recently commissioned to design the new Bern's Hotel on Howard Avenue.
Zingale, who doesn't design many single-family homes, has already drawn up plans for Burr. His primary goal, he says, "is to combine the indoor and outdoor spaces," linking the experience of the two "from anywhere on the property."
He calls the house "midcentury" modern in feel, influenced primarily by the works of Richard Neutra, the Viennese-born California contemporary architect. It's "not heroic, not monumental," he says of his design, noting that it nods to the Eisenhower era without mimicking.
He says he's grateful ARC had the vision to see that such a contemporary design might be considered historical someday, preserved with the same fervor as traditional, older homes.
Burr expects the house to be finished in a year. "One year from demolition to pool party," she says, joking.
At 55, she is fit, funny and passionate, a grandmother of four who intensely loves her family. She lives apart from her husband, Charles Burr, a retired civil rights lawyer who once served the Florida NAACP. She calls the arrangement "romantic," a sensible decision that works extremely well for both of them. They go on dates and maintain side-by-side houses at Pass-a-Grille Beach.
They also share a love for causes: environmental for him, cultural and social for her. In particular she has been involved with Tampa's Greenprint Initiative, a neighborhood project that brings art, fountains and landscaping to neighborhood parks.
It's the art part that intrigues her.
"It's a way of inspiring kids without them knowing what's happening," Burr says.
Her foundation also recently funded "Into Public Art," a free, colorful brochure mapping the location of 65 pieces of public art in the Tampa Bay area.
She is the granddaughter of Frederick Eugene Lykes, a Florida native and the eldest of seven brothers, who started the family business, Lykes Brothers, at the turn of the last century. Burr tells the story of her grandparents' meeting on a blind date on the steps of the New York Public Library. They both wore white linen. He wore a Panama hat.
Her grandmother was a musician and ace chess player who spoke 13 languages. A flurry of correspondence between the pair still exists, his letters postmarked Havana, where he was overseeing business, hers postmarked New York, New Orleans, Boston - cities she found interesting.
She was very independent and had a keen mind, Burr says.
Again, the same DNA: Burr can discuss history, art and architecture with ease.
Unfurling Zingale's plans, she describes how her new house will be "proportioned and scaled and have a relationship to the ground and to the water."
"It's going to be very contemporary, very sleek with a Richard Shultz 1966-style pool furniture," she says.
The interior will feel open, commanding a view of the bay. She wanted hints of the '50s without feeling slavish, details like sliding glass doors, an indoor garden, hints of terrazzo floor and the palest, ice-blue cabinets in the kitchen.
Says Zingale: "It will sit perfectly on the Bayshore, inviting the whole day in."
Burr is in love with the '50s, the architecture, the interior design, the moment in history.
For an interview last week, she even looked the part, trim in black pedal pushers and a crisp white blouse, carrying a tangerine-floral paper fan.
Laurie Petrie with an edge.
"I loved the material, the mobility and affordability of the era," she says.
"The truth of the matter is I grew up in a '50s house, so I understand what it feels like to be in that space: the terrazzo floors, the jalousie windows, the coolness of it all."