When you think of bed-and-breakfast inns, visions of Victorian gingerbread houses decorated like ornate Christmas packages probably come to mind. While that image has been true of many B&B’s, there’s a growing trend to offer something-almost anything-different in the way of decor and style to travelers.
Two B&B’s in Michigan’s nearby Harbor Country (1 1/2 hours from downtown Chicago) break the mold with simple, rebellious design styles half a century apart.
One is the year-old Bauhaus on Barton, a two-story, stucco bungalow in New Buffalo, Mich., decorated in 1950s modern. The ’50s marked a radical change in the decorative arts, as post-World War II industrial design rejected everything “old-fashioned” and re-created everything in clean-lined forms.
The other atypical B&B is The Pebble House, in Lakeside, Mich. Built in 1912, it is an example of the American Arts and Crafts style, which was a revolt against the clutter of fussy, Victorian design and machine-made aesthetics. Celebrating the simple, handmade and unadorned, Arts and Crafts elevated the craftsman to the level of artist and had its heyday from 1905 to 1915.
Why the radical shift in what’s in at inns today?
According to Gail Greco, author of five B&B books, including “The Romance of Country Inns: A Decorating Book for Your Home” (Rutledge Hill Press, $29.95), travelers are demanding that decorating styles of small inns vary. “They want change. The Pebble House is a prime example,” she says.
Greco, who has visited hundreds of inns in the U.S. and Europe, says the Victorian/gingerbread house with the old-fashioned shingle is experiencing serious competition from innkeepers who are converting schoolhouses, churches and even jails into B&B’s.
“Travelers want something different. They want to bring something different (interior design ideas) home with them,” she says about these new-fangled inns. Southwestern, farmhouse, country European, loft-style and early American are just some of the new decorating schemes changing the cookie-cutter reputation of B&B’s.
An Elvis getaway?
At Bauhaus on Barton, it’s the clean-lined ’50s modernism that breaks the traditional B&B mold. It also transports you to another time. A time when coffee tables and your mother were still blond, tables and desks were kidney-shaped and dishware and tabletops were durable enough to survive a thermonuclear attack.
Only the plastic slipcovers are missing from inside the flat-roofed Bauhaus-style bungalow, where Roger and Beverly Harvey (formerly owner of a Chicago commercial art studio and a secretary, respectively) have captured the essence of an era with deftness and humor.
Chicago artist David Csicsko says his stay at Bauhaus on Barton was like being submerged in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller “North by Northwest.” “It has that same color palette of weird lemon-yellow greens and soft grayish blues (on the walls),” says Csicsko. “You’d expect Eva Marie Saint to serve you a cocktail from the appropriate decanter.”
Built in 1948, the inn is a relative of houses designed by followers of Germany’s Bauhaus design movement (1919 to 1933), where homes were viewed as uniform, mass-produced objects, with vestiges of the past and with personal expression excised.
Or as Roger Harvey puts it: “They (architects) got rid of all the superfluous stuff, no Victorian gewgaws and chatchkas and all that stuff.”
The exterior of this sugar-cube-of-a-house “dictated the period (of decor) to us,” says Roger. “We would have liked to have followed authentic Bauhaus tradition (i.e., chairs by furniture designer Charles Eames and the furniture manufacturer Herman Miller), but it would have been cost-prohibitive. One chair would cost us $1,500.”
From clocks to magazines
While pondering their dilemma, they stumbled upon Jim Toler, whose Lakeside-based shop, Springdale, Furnishings for the Modern Family, specializes in things from the ’50s.
“If we hadn’t happened upon Jim, we wouldn’t have been able to do the place in the detail we have-such as the magazine racks, the fireplace utensils,” says Beverly.
Adding to the nostalgia are ’50s alarm clocks and lighting fixtures on all the bedroom night stands. Each room has a rack filled with vintage Redbook, Modern Screen, Life, American Home and Look magazines, all from Roger’s personal collection of 1,500 magazines from the ’30s through the ’50s.
“While we found some stuff in flea markets and (antique) malls and antique shops, anywhere we saw anything we liked, we’d grab it,” Beverly says.
Toler provided the Harveys with their larger furniture pieces, like the pricey, blond bedroom sets by Heywood-Wakefield Co., a premier Massachusetts manufacturer of well-designed ’50s furniture. And he’s responsible for other period goodies, like chenille bedspreads, drapes, artwork, mirrors, Shawnee pottery and sputnik-style lamps.
One bedroom, jokingly called The Jetsons’ Room, gets its name from the space-age, trapezoid-shaped, blond bedroom set produced by American by Martinville, another major ’50s manufacturer.
A large, round wool rug in navy blue, with rays of purple, green and fuchsia radiating from its center, covers the floor.
Not campy, sophisticated
The Ozzie and Harriet oasis features twin beds by Heywood-Wakefield. “The ’50s television couple,” says Beverly, “always slept in twin beds.”
And, in the four-room apartment, which is attached to the house, Dr Pepper and Coca-Cola signs and a yellow and gray ’50s Formica breakfast table ensemble in the kitchen set a more casual tone.
In the apartment’s sitting room, guests get to relive the “rec rooms era” when they relax on the massive ranch daybed with its wagon-wheel arms. Paint-by-numbers pictures of horses complement the Western theme.
“It’s not campy. It’s sophisticated,” Csicsko says of the Bauhaus’ overall effect.
“All so ’50s,” notes Roger, who recalls one guest “who swore the bedspread (in her bedroom) was the exact one she had as a kid. Others have said, `It’s like staying in a ’50s museum, finished to the last little detail.’ “
“An oasis for the mind”
While nostalgia freaks are also attracted to The Pebble House, its clientele tends to be a bit more high-minded.
“An oasis for the mind” is how guest Pat Hansen of Dolton describes the inn’s intellectual and visual ambience.
When the B&B opened in 1984, many of its guests were unfamiliar with the social significance of dark, oaken furniture and stained-glass lamps, says co-owner Jean Lawrence.
But today’s visitors, many of them architects, designers, artists and collectors, come specifically for the era’s re-created atmosphere.
Jean’s husband, Edward, credits her with being the inspiration behind the inn. “She created the concept and made it what it is as a B&B,” says Edward, who adds that the inn has also provided them with the opportunity to meet a wide range of people who are interested in reviving the Arts and Crafts movement.
According to guests Dolores and John Cortez, “an eagle’s eye decorated our room and the rest of the house. The beauty and love shows everywhere,” the Ft. Wayne, Ind., couple wrote in the inn’s guest book.
“At least I know I did the right thing,” says Jean, a former art therapist, who admits she knew little about the style other than her vague memories of furnishings at her childhood Girl Scout camp.
A good buy
The Lawrences came upon the boarded-up Pebble House in 1983. Then, they were living with contemporary furniture in a Victorian house in Chicago.
Realizing a B&B was a good way to utilize their people and artistic skills, the Lawrences decided to restore the inn’s main house, three guest buildings, a screened summer house and a tennis court.
Jean says she decided to decorate with Arts and Crafts furnishings “because we needed to fill this house, and we found it was rather inexpensive at auctions at the time.”
Their first purchased piece was a heavy oaken rocker, which sits before the big, pebble-studded fireplace in the enclosed sun porch that wraps around the house. “As soon as I got it into the house, I knew it was perfect for it,” Jean says.
When they could, the couple trekked to New York, North Carolina, Iowa, Minnesota and Canada to search for Arts and Crafts pieces distinguished by simple lines and solid workmanship. At local auctions, flea markets and antique shops, they bought headboards, chairs, tables and lamp bases with their typically heavy, square frames and wide, flat slats.
Edward got into it so much, he gave up a career as a real estate investment analyst to compile guidebooks, such as “The 1994 Complete Antique Shop Directory for Indiana,” and to open East Road Antiques, a shop specializing in Arts and Crafts antiques in Lakeside.
In time, the Lawrences acquired about 150 major pieces for their inn.
Showcasing the best
In the rooms are pieces by some of the most prominent craftsmen of the period, such as Gustav Stickley, prime spokesman for American Arts and Crafts principles, and from furniture manufacturers like Stickley Brothers, formed by Gustav’s brothers, who operated their own factory and created furniture similar to his.
Among their treasures are a Stickley Brothers buffet, desk and chairs; Charles Limbert (another great artist-craftsman of the era) dining room chairs and buffet; and a massive, but exquisite, English buffet in Art Nouveau style.
The Arts and Crafts era also embraced the philosophy that people could make their own furniture, says Jean, as she points to an Arts and Crafts-style lamp made by her uncle in his junior high school shop class in 1913.
Accent pieces and accessories, such as lamps with shades of slag glass (a stained glass, with individual panels a single color), Weller, Roseville and Rookwood pottery, brass candlesticks and Oriental and kilim rugs complete the picture.
While the main house contains the most antique treasures, outlying buildings, which include the Coach House, with its two suites and a bedroom, the Blueberry House (a small two-bedroom home) and the screened-in Summer House, with its rustic, Indiana hickory furniture, all continue the Arts and Crafts theme.
“This is the art that is life,” Jean says proudly. “I painted the house, plastered the walls, decorated the interiors. I cook the breakfasts. I’m a hands-on artist. It’s exhausting, but fulfilling.”
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Bauhaus on Barton, 33 N. Barton St., New Buffalo, Mich.; 616-469-6419. Room rates, which include breakfast, range from $75 to $90 per night. The apartment with a private entrance is $120. A two-night minimum stay is required on weekends.
The Pebble House, 15093 Lakeshore Rd., Lakeside, Mich.; 616-469-1416. Room rates, which include a complimentary Scandinavian-style breakfast buffet, range from $90 to $200. A two-night minimum stay is required on weekends.
