Carolina Architecture & Design ‘Comfortably Eclectic’

Feature Article

Comfortably Eclectic

In the course of her lengthy career as shop owner and interior designer, Birdi Harlowe has created countless interiors in dozens of styles. But when she and her husband Bill created their present home in Windmill Harbour on Hilton Head Island, Birdi abandoned formal stylistic restrictions in favor of her own, highly personal concepts of aesthetics and livability.

”There’s nothing in this house just because it’s pretty,” said Birdi. “Everything is here because it’s something I want to live with. You’d call it eclectic. People who know me say it’s ‘pure Birdie.’”

More than two decades ago, when the Harlowes were planning to build their first home on Hilton Head, they cruised the island neighborhoods looking for ideas and inspiration. “When we saw a house we especially liked, we would knock on the door and ask the owners who their designer had been,” Birdi recalled. “Every time, the answer was, ‘Kermit Huggins.’ So we called him and made an appointment.”

That first meeting resulted, not only in a commission for Huggins to design a 4,000-square-foot contemporary home for the couple, completed in 1984, but in a professional collaboration between Birdie Harlowe and Huggins that continues today despite Birdi’s insistence she’s retired. “I am retired,” she maintained, “but I’ve got a couple of little jobs I’m doing.”

Beginning with her own house, Birdie has designed interiors for Huggins’ homes for more than 20 years—first working from the interior design shop she and Bill operated and, for the past ten years, from a studio in Huggins’ offices. “Kermit was bringing people to see my house, and they started asking me to do their work,” said Birdi. “Our working relationship went on from there.”

When they built that first house, Bill Harlowe acted as his own building contractor. He subbed out the framing to David Broome, a talented carpenter from Blufton, SC, who’d just secured a contractor’s license and was actively subcontracting to build capital for his company, DWB, Inc. “David helped me build my first house when we came down here from Virginia,” said Bill, “and we’ve been real close friends ever since.” Twenty years later, Broome built the couple’s Windmill Harbour home.

The Harlowes settled on Windmill Harbour, a 172-acre private residential community situated on the northwest corner of Hilton Head, after a two-year trial run as renters. “We decided we’d rent a house there to see if we really liked it well enough to build,” said Birdi. “We rented for two years and found it to be the friendliest place you could ask for.”

Windmill Harbour’s 15-acre inland harbor is the island’s largest, opening onto Calibogue Sound. Although the Harlowes no longer own a boat, they enjoy socializing at the South Carolina Yacht Club, located within the community on the harbor.

The building site the Harlowes selected is in a section of the community reserved for patio homes. In addition to guidelines on siting patio homes to one side of the lot, the community’s building covenants impose additional requirements to preserve residents’ privacy. “Homes built on patio lots may not have a view into the adjoining lot from any window or door,” notes Huggins, “so one side of the house is a solid wall, and they tell you which side that is.” 

The covenants applying to patio lots also placed limits on the home’s size. “The patio home sites are not big,” notes Huggins, “and we were limited to covering no more than 45 percent of the total area of the lot with the heated space on the first floor.”

With the community covenants a given, the Harlowes and Huggins set about programming the home. “All of our homes are one-of-a-kind, custom designs,” notes Huggins. “We take every project and start with a blank page.”

The first step toward filling the blank page for the Harlowes was to articulate the couple’s goals. “We established a written program of everything they wanted to accomplish with the house,” recalled Huggins. “We made a list of rooms, with specific requirements for each. We also talked about which rooms they wanted to have the best views. Those were the living room, kitchen and master bedroom.”

The couple also discussed specific pieces of furniture and art work to be accommodated in the new house. “Birdi had quite a few pieces she’d collected during her many years in the interior design business,” recalled Huggins.

Communication between the designer and clients was easy. “They knew exactly what they wanted, and they were able to communicate it,” said Huggins. “Of course, after 20 years of working with Birdi, I was very familiar with her taste.”

With their general requirements noted, the Harlowes left it to Huggins to design the floor plan for the house. “They gave me their guidelines, but they stopped short of saying, “We want the house laid out this way,’” said Huggins. “When it came to putting together the floor plan and making it work on the lot, they left all of that up to us.”

Among the few specific directions, Birdi said all first floor rooms were to have 12-foot ceilings. “Birdie was specific about ceiling heights,” said Huggins. “Typically, we do nine- or ten-foot ceilings, but the 12-foot ceilings really contribute to the overall feeling of spaciousness. It makes this house feel a lot bigger than it actually is.”

More generally, Huggins recognized a subtle transition in the couple’s taste from the contemporary design he’d created for them years earlier toward a more traditional style. “The first house I designed for them was contemporary,” he recalled, “but this one was definitely going to be more traditional.”

At 3,984 of heated square feet, the house was also to be somewhat smaller than the previous one. “They ended up downsizing a bit,” said Huggins, “but at the same time maintaining a very high level of quality. They are both very quality-oriented.”

In designing the home’s exterior, Huggins, by necessity, followed community guidelines.

Windmill Harbour established its mandatory “Charlestonian” architectural theme several years after the first residences had been built. Since then, all new construction and renovation projects have been subject to stringent guidelines established by the community’s architectural review board, which Broome considers “one of the toughest ARBs there is.”

In defining the Charlestonian style, the Windmill Harbour ARB’s guidelines refer architects and designers to chapters in A Field Guide to American Houses titled, “Colonial Houses (1600-1820)” and “Romantic Houses (1820-1880).” In particular, the board recommends studying introductions of Georgian, Adam and Early Classical Revival styles.

Deemed unacceptable is “Typical Hilton Head Style, as seen in Sea Pines, Wexford, Hilton Head Plantation, etc.”

“Other than specifying a stucco finish for the walls, there was not a lot to talk about when it came to designing the exterior,” said Huggins. “In Windmill Harbour, the client doesn’t have a lot of choice. The development’s covenants mandate a Charleston look, and that’s how it has to be.”

The floor plan Huggins conceived for the home places the living room, dining room and kitchen on the first floor and the master bedroom, library and two guest rooms on the second. “It’s all livable space,” noted Broome. “Kermit did a really good job of incorporating the rooms Bill and Birdi wanted and configuring it to fit the lot.”

The home’s front entrance features 10-foot-high, custom-made glass doors behind an iron gate Birdi designed. “I drew it up myself,” she said.

Perhaps the most striking interior feature is the broad, curving staircase in the foyer. “The first thing you see when you come in is the stairs,” said Birdi. “It is dramatic.”

“The staircase makes a nice statement as you come in the front door,” added Huggins.

Tucked in the bend of the staircase is a French-style upholstered chair and an antique screen. Hanging beside the chair is a large oriental painting of a dog. “We’ve had the painting for years,” noted Birdi. “It’s very big and has a beautiful dog in it. Every time I find a picture of a dog I like, I buy it.”

Just beyond the stairway, four Corinthian columns separated by arches define the inner boundary of the living room. “I felt the columns would be very important to make a transition from the foyer into the living room,” said Birdi.

The living room contains treasured furnishings collected over many years, along with pieces acquired especially for the house. The wall sconce next to the fireplace is 35 years old. Birdi found the marble-topped table next to the stairs ten years ago in an antique shop. The chair next to it, finished in black and gold, came from Bill’s mother’s home. The desk behind the sofa is also an antique purchased years ago. “It’s French, but I never did get an exact age on it,” said Birdi of the Louis XV piece featuring ornate ormolu decoration. The desk lamp is of black and white marble.

Birdi said she selected armless chairs upholstered in silk for the living room because “you can get around them nicely and I thought I had enough arms in here.” She bought the Lacy Champion carved wool rug in the living room “about 12 years before we built this house. I saw it for the first time eight or ten years after I bought it, and it’s been rolled up the rest of the time. I think it works well.”

Birdi purchased the dramatic stone pedestal and planter especially for the house, as well as the French-influenced stone mantel, which she had made-to-order by a company in California. She found the round, black and gold table at the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point.

“I didn’t put any draperies in the living room because I didn’t think it needed it,” she adds. “It’s so open and wonderful.”

She included a few animal print accents simply because, “I always use a little animal skin. I just love it. It always does something for a room. It just pops out at you.”

In the dining room off the foyer, Birdi also mixed the old with the new. She kept her cherished mahogany dining table by Baker, but replaced the original chairs with new upholstered ones. “I wanted to get something uplifting and more contemporary looking,” she explained. “I also wanted a tailored look, in keeping with the stone floors, so I chose a broad striped fabric.”

The stone floors also inspired the color palette predominant on the first floor. “I’ve got a creamy vanilla color on the walls and a deeper caramel-colored trim,” said Birdi.

The wall covering she chose for the dining room is one she had used years ago in her shop. “I knew it would be perfect for giving the dining room a stately look,” she recalled, “ but when I went to order it I found they had discontinued it and had just so many rolls left.” A built-in corner cupboard solved the problem. “After we added the corner cupboard, it worked out great,” she said. “We had just enough.”

Since Bill does most of the cooking, he was most involved in designing the kitchen. He wanted it to be compact, he said, because “I hate a big kitchen where you have to do a lot of walking.”  Still, there’s plenty of counter space, with the countertops covered in white tile. “I do love white kitchens,” said Bill.

“Birdi didn’t have a whole lot to say about the kitchen,” recalled Huggins. “Bill, who’s a great cook, said he wanted a good, working kitchen with an island in the middle and plenty of natural light.”

Taking advantage of the first floor’s 12-foot ceilings, Bill had the kitchen cabinets built to full height. “You always have a lot of stuff you very seldom use,” he explained. “We ran the cabinets all the way up so we’d have the storage space for it.”

Bill, who worked many years for American Electric Power Company in Martinsville, Va., also specified the heating, ventilating and cooling systems for the house. “He put in state-of-the-art air conditioners with the best efficiency ratings available at the time,” recalled Broome.

A bricked patio off the living room offers a commanding view of a freshwater lagoon that defines the rear property line, making it the couple’s favorite spot for breakfast and lunch. The patio is also a favorite location for the couple’s west highland white terrier, Katy. “She loves to watch the birds and the squirrels from the patio,” said Birdi.

“Part of the patio home concept is to emphasize the outdoor living spaces,” noted Huggins. “In addition to the large patio, we have a planted entry courtyard with a second-floor balcony overlooking it.”

“It’s not a large lot, but it keeps us busy,” said Birdi. She and Bill work together maintaining the courtyard flower garden. Bill has his own rose garden in back of the house.

On the home’s second floor, accessible by an elevator as well as the stairs, Huggins created a large master bedroom and bath suite toward the rear of the house and a two-bedroom, two-bath guest suite toward the front. Between the two is a spacious library.

“We always recommend a full guest suite, including bathroom and a walk-in closet,” said Huggins. “In this case, we ended up with two guest bedrooms, each with its own bath.”

The larger guest room occupies space over the two-car garage and features a wrought-iron trimmed balcony.

The master bedroom overlooks the back lawn, with large windows to capture the natural light and afford a spectacular view. “On the back wall of the house, the master bedroom is, from ceiling to floor, almost all window,” said Birdi. “We have a perfect view of the lagoon.”

Continuing the neutral color palette from the first floor, Birdi decorated the master bedroom with plush cushions and silk-covered pillows with touches of copper and gold. The headboard is upholstered in ivory-colored tufted silk topped by an antique cornice. “I bought the cornice years ago,” said Birdi. “I refinished it in gold leaf and put it at the top of the headboard.”

A focal point in the room is a portrait of the couple’s grandchildren over the bed. Across the room is an antique French armoire. A large breakfront filled with books is also among the master bedroom’s more noteworthy furnishings.

Identified in Huggins’ floor plans as a den, the second-floor library adjacent to the master bedroom is a favorite retreat for Birdi. “This is my quiet room,” she said. “It’s a nice, wonderful place to relax.”

“The library occurs between the master bedroom and the guest suite,” said Huggins. “Guests can enjoy the room as an extension of their space.”

Over the library mantel, originally custom-crafted for her shop, Birdi displays several dog portraits she’s collected through the years. Framing the arrangement from above is a wooden cornice finished in black enamel and gold leaf. Across the room is an imported desk. “It acts like a card table, but I use it as a desk,” Birdi said.

Off the library, over the front entry, is a covered balcony overlooking the courtyard. Three columns support the roof, and the railings are supported by sturdy balusters. “I especially wanted those balusters on the upper porch, but the review board tried to shoot them down, saying they looked too much like Wexford,” recalled Birdi, who ultimately prevailed.

“I like this house better than any we’ve ever had,” said Bill. “It’s so convenient, and we use every bit of it.”

“With a contemporary house, you can put a bowl on a table and that’s it,” said Birdi. “I like to have more things around me—things I love and feel comfortable with. This house is more eclectic, with a European feel. It has lots of space to put things in, and everything in it is something I want to live with.”

Photo captions:

A. Back Exterior. The Harlowes share a manmade backyard lagoon running the full length of their street with neighbors in Windmill Harbour.

B. Front exterior. The home’s architectural style is “Charlestonian,” as mandated by Windmill Harbour covenants and carefully enforced by the community’s architectural review board.

C. Side entry. Flanked by an outer garage wall and a courtyard garden, a brick walkway leads to the main entrance.

D. Patio to fountain. When programming the house, the owners advised designer Kermit Huggins on which rooms were to have the best views of the backyard lagoon and its fountain.

E. Stairs in entry. The curved stairs in the foyer have a painted faux finish to match the polished stone floor tiles. The interior color palette is based on colors in the floor.

G. Other stair shot from living room. Arches between the living room’s four Corinthian columns are echoed by Palladian windows throughout the first floor.

H. View to kitchen. Bill Harlowe wanted an all-white kitchen with plenty of natural light.

I. Living room crossover. Birdi Harlowe describes the interior she created as eclectic, with European influences.

J. Living room fireplace. A focal point of the living room is the art work over the mantel, “Woman in Flight,” a mixed media on canvas creation by Buddhi, purchased by the owner for the house.

K. Stairs down to dining room. The first floor’s 12-foot ceilings and numerous windows give the house a light, airy feel.

L. Dining room. Birdi Harlowe says she replaced her mahogany dining room chairs with upholstered chairs “to get something uplifting and more contemporary looking.”

M. Library. Set between the master bedroom and guest suite, the upstairs library opens onto a balcony overlooking the courtyard.

N. Master bath to master bedroom. A portrait of the couple’s grandchildren is a focal point in the master bedroom.