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The historic home at 2616 Belmont Boulevard has long been the grande dame of the Belmont neighborhood. Since 1915, she has kept up appearances, extending her mystique to passersby despite her age-related decline.
Built around 1915, the residence hails from the Prairie School of architecture, which was in its final throes at the turn of the 20th century. Born of the Arts and Crafts movement, the genre's standards were set by Frank Lloyd Wright; hallmarks include low-slung massing, shallow roofs, extensive terraces, bands of windows, and open floor plans, all meant to evoke the expansiveness of the Midwestern prairie.
Rare in the South, Prairie homes were largely built in the Midwest. That fact makes the Belmont propertywhich was likely created from mail-order plansunique among the neighboring Craftsman bungalows and Tudor Revival cottages. Nashville architect Michael Ward says it is one of the most architecturally significant homes in the area.
'She's like Thoroughly Modern Millie, a very modern gal,” Ward says. 'She was the flapper of the neighborhoodthe most interesting, worldly gal. This house stood out like a sore thumb in 1915.”
Ward, the co-principal of Allard Ward Architects, was hired to restore and expand this architectural icon, collaborating with Tyler LeMarinel, a fellow architect at his firm, and contractor Joe Kovalick, who owns the local renovation company Dreaminc. Gavin Duke, a partner at Page Duke Landscape Architects, breathed the requisite elegance into the landscape.
The result is a 6,673-square-foot structure (doubling its original 3,290 square feet) featuring five bedrooms, an elevator, a three-car garage, a heated saltwater pool, a spa, a gym, a movie theater, and a whimsical screened-in porch with a hanging bed.
'I consider this renovation to be a once-in-a-lifetime design opportunity,” Ward says.
Thanks to substantial reconstruction and stabilization efforts by Dreaminc, the historic exterior was restored, including the sagging eaves and crumbling limestone foundation. Among the preserved interior features are the fireplaces in the living room and one bedroom, folding glass doors in the dining room, architectural columns in the living room, and one staircase. Dreaminc's interior designer, Sunday Camp, was responsible for most of the light fixtures, which exist in dramatic geometric shapes.
'Lighting is critical to the feel of the rooms,” she says.
Meanwhile, the original portion of the ground-level footprint hasn't changed much since 1915; it is an open floor plan built around a central chimney. The living room, adjacent to the entry, imbues the home with Prairie-style spaciousness.
As the renovations progressed, the perfect homeowner arrived in Eric Klindt, a father of three who embraced the Belmont beauty.
'I love being here,” he says. 'I love the feel of the house, I love the feel of the neighborhood.”
Klindt now cooks in the dreamy kitchen, amid a mélange of pale hues: cool white marble countertops and gray cabinets with an element of warmth, walnut cabinets. Camp also brought in a tenet of Prairie design with art glass created in the Arts and Crafts vein, which she designed for the front door and master bath.
For the furnishings, Klindt wished for the style of the Viceroy hotel in Santa Monica, which owes its Hollywood Regency–inspired interior to renowned designer Kelly Wearstler. So he sought out California native Sherri Coates, whose background is in hotel interior design. She filtered the retro-glam of the Viceroy through a midcentury modern lens, bringing in some Palm Springs spirit with white leather upholstery, geometric chair frames, and slender sofas. One stroke of genius was topping off the living room with Jonathan Adler's Meurice chandelier in antiqued brassa true statement piece.
'If you walk into the hip hotels today, you're going to get a lot of oomph,” Coates says. 'It's going to be either really fun and funky or dramatic and chic. And like a lot of things you would see in a hotel lobby, these pieces are big in scale. I intentionally wanted more big pieces instead of a higher number of pieces.”
Due to the living room's size, Coates felt oversize art was also a must, so it is graced by two large-scale paintings by Nashville artist Ed Nash and a Peter Lik photo. A Sputnik-style chandelier lights up the dining room, where a stunning table is the star. Handcrafted by Nashville's Legacy Building, the table comes from a live-edge slab of an Ashland City tree. 'Live edge is really cool,” Coates says. 'It just makes it more raw looking.”
In the end, the stellar team of creatives has instilled this venerated home with newfound zest. And it has an owner who possesses an innate respect for its past.
'Given the rich history of the house, I think of myself less as an owner and more as a caretaker for future generations,” Klindt explains. 'My goal is to leave it in better shape than I found it.”