Photo by: Jennifer Hughes
When architect Nicholas Potts met the couple who bought this Washington, D.C. townhouse, he knew he’d be the designer equivalent of Indiana Jones. The pair had an enduring wishlist and they chose a space with a layered past. “This property is more than a century old, and had been chopped up over the years,” Potts says. “In this case, there wasn’t much to bring back.”
When Potts first toured the house with his clients, he had to break the news: the details they assumed were historic, like the crown moldings on the ground floor, were, in fact, not. As he did his homework digging up old blueprints and records, he hoped the results would better inform the project’s balance of old and new. If he and the owners couldn’t have original remnants, then they at least wanted the recreations to fit in. “Part of my excitement with a project like this is reintroducing era-appropriate components and bringing the owners along for that conversation,” he says.
