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Homes

Grand colonial at heart of tour

Rosemary Henderson loves to share her stately Bayshore home with others. Many will have that chance at this weekend's Historic Hyde Park House Tour.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published March 18, 2005

HISTORIC HYDE PARK - The view from Rosemary Henderson's house unfolds best from the front porch swing.

Graze toe to ground, push back and feel the earth move.

Glide, glide.

Across Bayshore Boulevard, Tampa Bay ripples. Runners sail past the balustrade, the curve of Davis Islands hangs in the distance, a late winter afternoon pushes toward twilight.

For this world-class view, Henderson remains humbled.

"I enjoy sharing it with others," says Henderson, a painter and community activist who has lived in the house since 1971. "I love to use my home."

Her 1916 colonial revival house, with its grand front porch and spread of well-groomed lawn punctuated by sturdy oak trees, stands among the finest old homes along the city's most famed boulevard.

It is obvious why the house graces the poster promoting this weekend's Historic Hyde Park House Tour: coveted location and curb appeal.

"It's a very sophisticated, classic Bayshore home; it's what you would think a Bayshore home would look like," says Julie Pellecchia, who founded the house tour three years ago. "We always try to have a beautiful Bayshore home. It's something that we look for because it pulls people from all over the state onto the tour."

In recent years, the event, sponsored by the Historic Hyde Park Neighborhood Association, has attracted old-house enthusiasts from Sarasota, Lakeland and West Palm Beach. In 2004, the tour drew a little more than 1,000 people and raised about $15,000. The association used the money to buy historic street signs for the neighborhood, a project it will wrap up this year.

If anything, the tour enjoys increasing popularity because of its insider's peek into a neighborhood that has long since priced out the average homebuyer. Proximity to downtown and the water and an eclectic assortment of restored vintage homes make it one of the best-looking stretches of real estate in Tampa, as well as a great place to snag ideas.

Tour sponsors include local, independent businesses that make Hyde Park unique, explains Pellecchia. Stores like Magnolia, the Garden Party and Source for the Home will all donate decorative touches like table settings and book shelf arrangement to lend added sparkle.

This year's tour, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, includes nine homes and costs $20. Two of the homes have undergone extensive renovations, and another, not considered historic at all, dates from the 1940s.

"They're all so different; we have a unique mix of people, styles, homes and decorating," Pellecchia says. As an example, she points out, Henderson's house is "tasteful and traditional," not a modern home in any way.

In fact, the two-story house built for $8,800 in 1916 according to old property records, incorporates elements of both bungalow and shingle styles (the upstairs shingles were covered years ago with siding). Henderson and her former husband, the third owners, purchased the four-bedroom house in the early 1970s.

"We were living in a one-bedroom apartment on Davis Islands and used to go looking at property every weekend," she recalls. "When this house came along, we were only the second people to go through it. We knew right away it was a good deal."

Clues to the home's past intrigued her, particularly a small drawstring pouch of diamonds Henderson discovered in an antique ironing board in the attic. (She managed to track down the rightful owner and return the treasure.)

The antique marble fireplace from New Orleans is also the folly of a previous owner, as is the cage elevator, now a display case in Henderson's study. Transom windows over bedroom doors and vestiges of a massive old attic fan offer insight into how the home was cooled in the decades before air-conditioning.

The living room, a large open space with dramatic views of the bay, pays homage to color.

Henderson's impressionistic paintings seem to float along the lemony yellow walls. Oriental rugs in deep reds, yellows and blues cover the wood floors. Chintz floral curtains and a matching loveseat accented by faux leopard-skin covered chairs add a dash of fun, while old blue and white china and groupings of silver picture frames keep the feeling focused and traditional.

"I love, love color," says Henderson, who converted a small sun porch into her art studio. The porch is so small, it barely accommodates easel and paints. But the view is soothing, the light perfect.

Outside, mossy concrete flowerpots burst with snapdragons, impatiens and delphinium, inspiration no doubt for her colorful paintings.

Over the years, Henderson never succumbed to the temptation to super size the house and remodel away its historic character. The rooms feel proportionate, even cozy, including the small sitting area off the kitchen with its matching denim sofas, old quilts and wall filled with dozens of family photos.

The house seems to match her spirit. Pretty, athletic and casual, she seems the most comfortable in jeans and silver hoop earrings, a Diet Coke in hand.

A past president of the Junior League of Tampa, she also sits on the board of America's Second Harvest food bank, and has worked with the Tampa biracial coalition to promote racial harmony. She once took in a single mother and her children who temporarily needed a place to stay, and through her church, Holy Trinity Presbyterian in South Tampa, she goes on mission trips to help build churches in places that need them.

She loves to play golf and bowl and has been known to roll back the carpet and dance the night away at neighborhood parties.

"I wish I had more time to paint, but I don't want to miss anything in life," she says.

Henderson, 61, who grew up on a cattle ranch in Winona, Miss., and started taking painting lessons in the third grade from an elderly woman in the town, never gave up her kick-back-and-be-comfortable country sensibility.

"My style, I guess, combines bright pretty chintz, Oriental rugs and antiques, though a lot of my furniture is just basement stuff; it looks antique, but it's not," she says. "A house should be comfortable and feel lived in. The kind of place you can enjoy and not worry about too much about spilling things."

The Historic Hyde Park Neighborhood Association House Tour runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. The last ticket will be sold at 2 p.m. Cost is $20 per person. Tickets will be sold the day of the tour at Luna/Bern's Park across from Bella's Italian Cafe. Cash or checks only.

[Last modified March 17, 2005, 08:40:12]