OPEN FLOOR PLAN. Large living/dining/kitchen, perfect for entertaining. Home office with Wi-Fi.
The typical real estate ad for an “executive home” built in 1990s reflects the permeable nature of modern life.
But a century ago, the dividing line between public and private space was quite different.
“There were always doors between rooms,” said Michael Klupfell. “You would not be admitted past the parlor if I didn’t know you.”
Michael and Molly Klupfell are the current owners of the Stockand House, a seven-gabled Victorian they have restored to its original Queen Ann style.
One of three houses on this year’s Holiday Tour of Victorian Homes, it will be decorated from top to toe and receiving guests, who will be invited to see beyond the parlor of a Victorian “executive” home.
An ‘eye’ for special designs
“It has beautifully done features,” Molly said. “It was designed by somebody who had an eye for something different and special.”
Built in 1887, the Stockand House was cutting-edge when James Stockand erected it on Morgan Hill for his new bride.
James had been born on the family homestead in Center near Chimacum, according to records, but married into one of the “first families” of Whidbey Island.
That he then was a man of importance is apparent to all who enter.
“The front door was glass so that guests could see the newel post lamp as they walked up,” Michael said. “It said, ‘We have electricity.’”
The Klupfells, who bought the house in 2001, do have that executive-home staple — an island in the kitchen — but it’s an 1860 partners desk they use as a work surface.
The choice was deliberate: While previous owners retreated to the kitchen for meals and family time, the couple resolved to live in every room of the house.
They eat breakfast and dinner at the formal table in the dining room.
They take tea in the parlor.
Coming to call
That’s where you would have found the Stockand family if you had come to call.
But the pocket doors between the parlor and the dining room would have remained closed.
“If you were very good friends, you might be invited to dinner,” Michael said. “But you would never go into the kitchen; that was for servants only.”
For the homes tour, however, the doors will be open and guests offered refreshments in the dining room.
They can also enter the kitchen and see the vintage Majestic stove, which Michael cooked on with wood in his previous home but converted to propane after moving to Port Townsend.
Also on the main floor are a guest bedroom and a bathroom converted from a closet.
For the bathroom floor, Michael created and installed a mosaic tile pattern based on a photo in an 1887 catalog.
“It has 3,500 pieces of tile and took 2,000 cuts,” he said.
He found brass doorknobs for the doors in a box of junk in an antique store in California, he said, and discovered after stripping them of paint that they were all dated “1887,” the same year the Stockand House was built.
Brass towel racks
He purchased the brass towel racks, made in Germany, on eBay from a descendant of Henry Frick, a railroad magnate who used them in his private railroad dining car.
“I paid less than if I’d gone to Home Depot,” Michael said.
The upstairs of a Victorian home was not finished as elaborately as the downstairs, as it was never seen by outsiders except the doctor and the undertaker, Michael said.
But during the tour, guests can climb the staircase, lined with an embossed wallpaper popular in Victorian times called Lincrusta, which Michael painted to resemble Moroccan leather.
Upstairs, the main bedroom is on the front of the house, its bay window enclosing a sitting area.
An alcove, said to have been James Stockand’s gun room, holds an armoire.
The master suite does not include a bathroom; it’s at the end of the hall, as it was installed over the kitchen when plumbing came in.
But that’s in line with the Victorian idea of privacy, Michael said.
The only bathroom in the house when the Klupfells moved in, it was as large as the kitchen and became a repository for unused items by previous tenants.
The Klupfells kept the claw-foot bathtub but added a walk-in shower, an enclosed soaking tub and a gas fireplace for a retreat, the only room in which everything is not from the late 1800s or made in the style of the times.
Also open on the Holiday Tour of Victorian Homes is the Old Consulate Inn, whose history echoes the current mortgage crisis.
F.W. Hastings, the son of a town founder, started building the house in 1889, right before a nationwide depression and the siting of the railroad terminus in Seattle turned Port Townsend’s economy into a house of cards.
Half-finished interior
As a result, construction was halted when the interior was only half-finished, records show.
Sold at auction, the house was completed in 1904, with Hastings’ delusions of grandeur reflected in the curving lines of the staircase and the curved glass windows of the three-story tower.
Like the Stockand House, the third Victorian house on the tour was also built to announce the owner had arrived.
Located on the bluff overlooking Port Townsend Bay, it was built in 1889 by Max Gerson, who emigrated from Prussia in 1852.
Gerson owned a dry-goods store in the Hastings Building on the corner of Water and Taylor streets from 1881 to 1913, when he retired and sold the business.
He served on the City Council for 11 years and was mayor for two years.
City councilman
James Stockand also served on the Port Townsend City Council during some of its most turbulent years, something that hasn’t changed with the times.
What has changed: Because there were lines that the outside world did not cross, Stockand and Gerson could retire to their homes when the political debate became too contentious — and shut the door.
The Victorian Holiday Tour of Homes is Sunday, Dec. 4, from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Tickets are $18 if purchased by Friday, $20 Saturday and the day of the tour. It includes light refreshments and holiday music at each home.
Tickets can be ordered online at www.victoriansociety-northwest.org using PayPal. They can also be purchased by check or cash (no credit cards) at Vintage Hardware, 2000 Sims Way, Port Townsend, during business hours.
The tour is sponsored by the Victorian Society in American, Northwest Chapter. For more information, visit www.victoriansociety-northwest.org.
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Jennifer Jackson writes about Port Townsend and Jefferson County every Wednesday. To contact her with items for this column, phone 360-379-5688 or email jjackson@olypen.com.
