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Tampa

Couple win banner for restored bungalow

Tampa Preservation Inc. gives its coveted award to renovated homes where architectural history has been preserved.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published April 29, 2005

David and Mary Jane Schenck bought their 1915 airplane-style bungalow in the early 1980s because they loved the tree-canopied street of old houses and friendly neighbors one block from the water.

Plus, rumor had it that the Bayshore Beautiful home on Harbor View Avenue was originally built as a beach house for President James K. Polk's grandson.

The Schencks, both professors, lived in the dove-gray and white house for years without doing a major expansion.

Then, in 2000, rather than building a new house they decided to add on to the home and turn it into the bungalow of their dreams. The result earned them one of the coveted Tampa Preservation Inc. award banners for a job well done.

"We're thrilled," says Mary Jane Schenck, 60, an English professor at the University of Tampa, who applied for the award while on sabbatical this spring.

The award - one of 11 given out this year by TPI for residential restoration - recognizes the Schencks for preserving the exterior as well as successfully adding on without sacrificing the historic look of the house.

"The point is education," says Nootchie Smith, a TPI board member and co-chairwoman of the 2005 awards. "A house that wins a banner says to the public that the exterior was restored according to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior standards."

TPI, a private, not-for-profit organization devoted to education and the preservation of historic buildings and neighborhoods, will present its annual awards to 19 recipients tonight at University of Tampa's Plant Hall.

Winners include nine Ybor City bungalows along 15th Avenue and Columbus Avenue, and a building along LaSalle Street moved by the Florida Department of Transportation, Smith says.

Other awards went to a house at 2218 E Third Ave., which was adapted for commercial reuse, and the Renaissance Center for the Arts at 2201 N Florida Ave., a refurbished church that houses an arts program for local youth.

Distinguished service awards were given to:

Elvira and Willy Garcia for their stewardship of Centro Asturiano.

Stephanie Woodford, principal of Wilson Middle School for installing wood floors recycled from George Washington School.

Artist Carla Rieger for designing a poster depicting the architectural elements of Tampa's historic schools.

The Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association for its leadership.

The Schencks hired architect Martha Sherman for a job that might have spelled aesthetic doom for a small historic home on a smallish lot. They altered the back end of the house, adding a pool and building a 400-square-foot, two-story guest cottage.

The three-bedroom, two-bath bungalow, preserved meticulously in front, looks so seamless in back, that it's difficult to believe anything was built or added on since 1915.

The architect's expansion of the dining room, for example, included a set of nine-pane windows identical to the rest in the house and matching heart pine floors from Habitat for Humanity's salvage center. The bricks around the small pool were salvaged from old factory buildings around Chicago.

"We wanted to absolutely preserve the integrity of the house historically," says David Schenck, a professor of English and biomedical ethics at the University of South Florida.

Sherman knew how to design with a preservationists' empathy while listening to what they had in mind, David Schenck says. The guest cottage looks like it was part of an original compound, though it maximizes every inch of space inside, including a first-floor sitting room that serves as a gallery for the couple's African art collection.

Upstairs, David's office doubles as a guest bedroom. The room is so conducive to study and thought that even though they built the cottage for out-of town company, "now we never want our guests to stay too long."

The 22nd annual Tampa Preservation Inc. awards ceremony and cocktail buffet starts at 7 p.m. today in the music room at the University of Tampa's Plant Hall. Tickets are $25 for nonmembers, which includes a TPI membership.

[Last modified April 28, 2005, 08:33:09]