Rob Morris Comes to Chain Bridge Road

Any of you who spend any time at all in McLean have no doubt driven up Chain Bridge Road to Rt. 123 — and for the past two years, you’ve seen this house being built:

It belongs to architect Rob Morris of Morris-Day, whose Arts and Crafts-syle houses can be found all over McLean and Arlington. Rob is known for going through houses — he’s built and lived in more than a dozen of them since co-founding Morris-Day in 1987. This house is his latest “test case,” as he says. “Each one gets a little closer to what I need.”

I love this little breezeway between the garage (with an apartment up top) to the main house -- the bright awning stripes are so cheerful.

Rob invited me over recently with photographer Thomas Arledge, who later brought his architectural photography students from CDIA to shoot the interiors.

The above snaps are mine, but below are the glorious photos shot by Thomas’ students: Erin Kelleher, Emily Ferry, Julie Patrick, Kefim Green, Helder Pereira, Dejan Stankovski, Nick Gingold, James Darby, Nicole Bedard, and teaching assistant Meaghan Gay.

The fortress-like stone exterior contrasts with the huge expanses of glass in back, which look out to the pool and the deep woods beyond. Rob notes that the stuffed animal heads are his versions of old family portraits -- they are antiques, he stresses: "I've never held a gun or pulled a trigger."

This is Rob’s soaring living room — the centerpiece of an 8,000-square-foot house with seven bedrooms — where Rob lives alone! “I come from a big family, so the notion of having large rooms and overnight guests is what a home does,” he told me. “How do you play games late at night and expect your guests to drive home?”

Rob has only lived here for a few months, and already, he’s hosted four large birthday parties for friends in addition to an open house reception that was so big that guests (including me and my husband) had to take shuttle buses from Langley High School a few miles away.

The top of the two-story living room is clad in stained glass reclaimed from a church in central Virginia. The jewel-like pendant lights seems to rain down from it. The effect is startling, especially against the traditional, lodge-like decor.

Now, here, I’m going to include my own snap taken from the second-floor balcony that overlooks the living room — it shows how the backyard pool becomes part of the living room through all that glass.

I just love these twinkly lights, which also hang in the kitchen and dining room.

Let’s turn around now toward the front of the house, where the scale comes way down.  The focus now is on the architectural elements rather than on space and light.

Interestingly, the square footage of this fireplace nook on the other side of the hall from the living room is the same as the glassed area where the piano rests -- but you'd never think that, because the context and perspectives are totally different: one encloses and protects, while the other opens and reveals. The art above the fireplace, moreover, is Rob's own work -- a study of architecture and light.

Keep walking through this hall to the left, and you see the glorious dining room.

Rob learned from one of his previous houses, which had this massive, 14-long rectangular dining table, that it was not great for conversation. So he incorporated a round table here, so every guest can interact with one another, instead of just the person beside you.

Rob, who grew up in an English-tudor style house in Columbus, Ga., has always incorporated William Morris papers into his houses, and it defines the dining space here. “William Morris had a timeless sense of gardens and romance that becomes a house,” Rob says. “It’s hard to pinpoint, but it’s definitely timeless, and it works with modern pieces.”

William Morris makes another appearance in Rob's first-floor master bedroom, which opens into a cozy study with a stately coffered ceiling and more Morris-inspired fabric in the drapes.

In keeping with Rob’s love of pre-industrial-revolution craftsmanship, he hung this 1890s Tiffany lamp over his kitchen table. It hung in the house where he grew up, and Rob has used it in every house he’s ever lived in.

This kitchen is an excellent example of how you can mix old and new. "I love old houses, but they didn't have stainless," Rob says. "I decided to celebrate that disparity." Old houses probably didn't have glass back splashes either, but insofar as they bring nature inside, they hold true to William Morris' philosophy.

Well, that ends the glorious slideshow of the professionally-shot images, but I did take a few more of my own of spaces that are really cool. Oddly enough, they all happen to be bathrooms! I guess that doesn’t surprise me that much, as bathrooms tend to be tiny workshops of design, where you can splurge on decorative elements and not overdo it.

Here is my favorite — the powder room that the guests use.

Why not elevate the scrawled notations in a public bathroom stall into an elegant design statement at a private home?

Rob says that if you don't know how to play the piano, you can't come to his house. I think he also must tell his guests that if they are not artistic and creative -- as they are here -- they can't come over, either.

Here is Rob’s master bath, an exact replica of the bath he had in his previous house in McLean’s Franklin Park — which was published in Washington Spaces.

"Showering in a greenhouse is a really nice way to shower," Rob says. There is a rain shower head in the ceiling, so this entire room -- which looks out to the woods in back -- is the shower.

One of the guest baths, which has a nautical theme complete with its own porthole -- the small round window you can see on the front of the house.

I love the black, white and gray in this other bath -- especially the dramatic all-black tub. You can just see a portion of the William Morris wallpaper in the upper right.

I didn’t get an opportunity to talk much about the landscaping, which is still not fully complete in the back, but Mark White of Garden Wise first alerted me to Rob’s house when he wrote to tell me about the special challenges of landscaping a house whose front is exposed to so much pollution from the steady stream of cars on Chain Bridge Road.

He chose plantings both appropriate for the conditions and near and dear to Rob’s southern heart: Southern Magnolia, Camellia and Azaleas. He also included Yoshino cherry trees, the same as the ones along the Tidal Basin. I’ll close with a quote from Mark, which perfectly describes the house and surrounding property:

“The concept of the property from beginning to end, or rather from front to back, is to take a coarse, dangerous and brutal space, and immediately make it fortress-like from first sight. Then, with each single step from the street, the property transforms itself into a more defenseless and exposed space, slowly becoming more transparent, vulnerable, intimate, and finally Eden-like once you’ve reached the final rear space.  Like peeling an onion, the property reveals itself slowly, using color, texture and some pretty incredible design elements.”