A Design Team Revives A 1930s Hillsborough Residence
A 1931 Hillsborough home was revived with new interiors by designer David Todd Oldroyd. Outside, the front garden, originally designed by John Hays McLaren, was updated by landscape architect Brian Koch to include new low stone walls, cobble detailing and lavender. Many of the home’s balconies were rebuilt by Ironstone Metal Works.
This is the house that every other house in the neighborhood was modeled after,” says designer David Todd Oldroyd of a pedigreed Hillsborough, California, residence originally designed by architect Willis Polk. “I was ecstatic about restoring it and bringing it into the next century.”
This required shoring up the foundation, repairing a leaky roof, opening up a belvedere enclosed in the 1990s and reconciling the split personality of a house where staff originally occupied one wing and homeowners another. Oldroyd addressed the latter by converting the servants’ quarters to a large family room, connected to the kitchen.
Appointing rooms with “a mix of pieces spoke to the dance we used throughout the house,” says Oldroyd. Furniture silhouettes are curvaceous in a 1930s way but contemporized by minimizing ornament and pattern, and riffing off a single color in rooms instead of employing complex palettes.
The owners–who share the home with their four young boys–hadn’t been seeking a historic property, but are now thrilled to be its stewards. “We really wanted to do the right thing, to bring it back to its original glory,” says the husband.