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RICHMOND — John and Karen Townsend are six years into an experiment that an increasing number of people are pursuing these days. They’re living in a multi-generational house that includes their two daughters, as well as Karen’s parents. 

But it wasn’t simply a matter of repurposing a guest bedroom.

The Townsends and Karen’s parents, Gary and Martha Smith, actually bought the house at 3002 Rugby Road in Richmond’s Carillon neighborhood as a joint investment. And they built a 1,655-square-foot addition with a separate side-street entryway for the Smiths.

“We knew we were going to build a wing from the beginning,” Karen said.

The 4,400-square-foot, Colonial Revival-style house, which had only had three previous owners since it was built in 1931, was well-suited for a major expansion.  It sits on a double lot, with ample room for a large addition on the northeast side of the property.

After buying the house in 2016, the Townsends and Smiths hired Roger S. Guernsey, a Williamsburg-based architect, to design a two-story wing with two bedrooms and separate offices for the Smiths, along with 1½ baths.

Guernsey’s plans also repurposed a 1960s addition to be the living room and kitchenette in the parents’ wing.

Guernsey studied the neighborhood’s cottages before choosing an Arts and Crafts design for the new wing, Karen said. The style distinguishes the new addition from the main house while blending into the neighborhood’s  traditional aesthetic.

“Its distinctive shift in material and style gives the initial impression of a separate, more intimate-scaled cottage,” said Beth O’Leary, former associate curator of American art for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and a Carillon resident who has done extensive research on the neighborhood.

She added:  “The cozy effect works beautifully in the Carillon neighborhood, replete with houses built in a variety of styles and sizes over the past century and a half.”

The main house at 3002 Rugby Road, which features sophisticated brickwork and classical details, was designed by Richmond-based H. Carl Messerschmidt (1891-1994) for local contractor Edward J. Keegan and his wife, Jane.

Messerschmidt was a prolific architect who was active from 1915 to 1958, O’Leary said. But he’s principally known today for the Art Deco-style façade of Perly’s Restaurant (1930) at 111 East Grace Street and the Art Deco- and International-style Cary Street Park and Shop Center (1938) in Richmond’s Carytown.  (It’s now known as Cary Court.)

“It was one of the South’s first shopping centers with adjoining parking space,” O’Leary said.

Messerschmidt’s commercial work – stores, factories and warehouses – was extensive. His residential designs are rare. The house at 3002 Rugby Road is among the standouts.

“The house has beautiful detailing on all sides, including a three-level cornice trim and a fanlight at the rear,” O’Leary said.

The front elevation’s neoclassical doorway is especially noteworthy, with an elegant fanlight, Doric columns and full Greek entablature, O’Leary said.

The Townsends and the Smiths are avid gardeners, and they’ve used plantings and garden beds to tie the new wing seamlessly into Messerschmidt’s original design.

Other, more recent renovation projects include the main house’s kitchen, which the Townsends returned to its original layout. “We went for a year without having a kitchen to cook in,” Karen said.

In the process of replacing the kitchen floor, they discovered the original heart-pine floorboards were still intact under two more recent layers of flooring. “It’s some of the last old-growth pine from Louisiana,” Karen said.  “We prize it.”

Other standouts in the kitchen remodel include a double-drain board, cast-iron sink, which the Townsends found in New England. It’s roughly the same age as the house.

Readers interested in touring the house and the garden are in luck because the property’s going to be a part of this year’s Historic Garden Week in Virginia, along with four other houses on Rugby Road.  The event will take place on April 27.

The Council of Historic Richmond, which partners with the Garden Club of Virginia for the event, organized the walking tour for Rugby Road.

This will be the second time the house at 3002 Rugby Road has been on the tour. The first was in 2005 – the last time the tour featured the Carillon historic district.

“3002 is a wonderful example of how historic houses can be transformed to fit the current needs of its owners and extended family, a thoughtful and respectful marriage of historic architecture and new construction,” said Susan Fisher, an associate broker with Virginia Properties, Long & Foster and a Carillon resident. She’s also a board member and council member for Historic Richmond.

She added: “The Townsends and Smiths have done a fabulous job of hardscaping and landscaping to make everything fit together beautifully.”

Editor’s note:  This is an installment in the “Great Homes of Richmond” series.

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