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Homes

Tour highlights revived Victorian

A decade ago, the 1895 home was condemned. On Sunday, it will headline the Tampa Heights Tour of Homes.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published March 11, 2005

TAMPA HEIGHTS - Deep down, Ken Martin and Nick Peterson know they probably should have bought new rather than vintage.

It might have saved them years of painstaking work on their grand dame of a Victorian house that once stood condemned, awaiting the wrecking ball.

But then again, had they bought anything else, they wouldn't have been able to fling open the door and say, "Welcome to Magnolia Hall" with such relish that it landed them on HGTV.

"We got an e-mail from our neighbors that HGTV was scouting locations in Tampa and looking for actively involved homeowners," Peterson said.

The couple promptly sent the network a link to their interactive Web site, which documents the seven-year restoration of their 3,700-square-foot 19th century home. A roll of the cursor reveals dramatic makeover pictures, floor plans, and a timeline of hard labor.

Pretty impressive stuff.

So impressive that a production team from Generation Renovation, which focuses on old-home enthusiasts with a passion for restoration, last month taped an episode at Magnolia Hall.

The house is the headliner on Sunday's 10th annual Tampa Heights Tour of Homes, which runs from noon to 5 p.m. and features a peek at some historic and new houses as well as the St. James House of Prayer, a church built in 1922 with stones dredged from the Hillsborough River.

"What brings people back year after year is the idea of what the neighborhood was and what it can be," said Jenni Frankowiak, a Tampa Heights resident and tour representative.

"It's also a chance to talk to people who've restored old homes, put in the long hours, lived in a construction zone and done a lot of the work themselves. The result is fabulous, but the truth is that it doesn't turn out quickly."

Magnolia Hall, which for years stood at 2004 N Florida Ave., once was owned by Metropolitan Ministries, among others.

"It's been a chiropractor's office, even a home for girls who were wards of the state. That's when it got its name," said Peterson, who spent hours combing old city directories and researching his home's history at the public library.

The house was built in 1895 by William Barrett Sr., a Tampa City Council member and a dairy farmer. In the mid 1990s it was condemned and slated for demolition, according to Tampa Heights tour literature. It was moved in 1998 by Tampa Preservation Inc. to its current location on Park Avenue.

That's when Peterson saw it.

It hadn't yet been hoisted from girders to pilings, he remembers. Pigeons, possums and squirrels roosted inside the rooms. Boards covered blown-out windows. A melee of add-ons and enclosed porches made it look more like a fun house than a fine example of 1890s Tampa residential architecture.

Trash littered the interior. And some of the walls had clearly been ravaged by fire over the years.

"It was a disaster," he said of the house that he says captured him at first sight. "But when I really looked at the house, I knew it had potential, that it was salvageable."

Peterson, 38, an insurance salesman who loves to cook, and Martin, 44, a longtime radio disc jockey with a velvety voice, had been living in Town 'N Country and wanted to move in town. The thought of a traffic-clogged commute eliminated a lot of other options.

When Peterson decided to buy his dilapidated dream house in Tampa Heights, the structure already was condemned. Months of repairs were necessary before the city would allow anyone to move in.

"I had never done anything like this before. My family and friends thought I was crazy," he said.

The one thing everyone knows about Peterson, whose maternal grandfather was a carpenter in Rhode Island, is that he's incredibly handy.

"You have to be," he said. "You have to be able to go into a project like this speaking the language to carpenters, craftsmen and electricians, knowing where all the nuts and bolts are and how the building is kept standing."

Peterson oversaw all the major work necessary to the safety and structural integrity of the building, and did much of the remaining work himself, including restoring the tiger oak wood floors. The house essentially was gutted and put back together, a process Peterson says would cost an average homeowner about $250,000 or more.

Three refurbished porches and a state of the art kitchen with generous storage and a six-burner gas cook-top lend the house a good feel for entertaining. The decor, which includes a large fainting couch in the front parlor and an intricately inlaid wood card table festooned with hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds (made by Peterson's carpenter grandfather) is both sentimental and eclectic.

A psychic from England who visited the house a few years ago told Peterson she felt the presence of "a female ghost," he says, though he has no proof of spirit-world occupants, other than the occasional spooky feeling.

Martin documented the restoration process, posting interactive before, after and in-process pictures on an attractive Web site devoted to the preservation of Magnolia Hall: home.tampabay.rr.com/house.

"I thought the whole project was nuts until some of the outside walls came off and I could see the front porch," Martin said. "Then I could really see the hidden beauty of this grand old lady."

The 10th annual Tampa Heights Tour of Homes takes place noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets at $10 can be purchased the day of the tour at Robles Park, just north of Floribraska Avenue on Central Avenue next to Interstate 275. Admission includes a brochure with information about each home.

[Last modified March 10, 2005, 09:33:10]