A Historic Atlanta Home Gets A Playful Renovation Fit For A Young Family (2024)

Talyea Fowler and her husband, Robin,packed up a few last things from their serene, generously windowed condominium — the walls and ceilings lacquered light blue — in Atlanta’s leafy Buckhead district. They pressed the down button one last time and descended 26 floors into a wildly new existence.

Waiting for them just four miles away was their restored 1934 Regency-style house, newly filled with snap, crackle, and pop by way of tiger-print velvet, pale-pink walls, and deep-lavender accents galore. The journey to the exuberant abode took a lot longer than an elevator trip, though.

Two years earlier, the Fowlers had embarked on a thrill ride of a renovation when they purchased the house and set out to update it while preserving its remarkably intact original features: doors, moldings, fireplaces, wood floors, and even single-pane windows that still open via pulleys and weighted ropes.

The home’s original architect surely would have approved: Georgia native Philip Trammell Shutze studied architecture at Columbia University in New York and the American Academy in Rome, then returned to author many fine classical-style homes and buildings around Atlanta in the 1920s and ’30s.

The Fowlers knew who to call to help restore their prize — the Atlanta-based interior designer Melanie Turner, who had not only designed two previous residences for them, including the sky-blue, sky-high condominium, but also lives in a Shutze house herself, a 16th-century Italian Baroque–style fantasy nicknamed the Pink Castle.

Turner thrilled at the chance to revive and decorate rooms that she thinks are architecturally perfect. “Shutze’s proportions are so good,” she says. “They’re human-scale.”

For the Fowler house, she worked with Atlanta architect Yong Pak on the long list of upgrades, including a new kitchen, a pool pavilion, and terraces. A section of the home added in 2010 was refined with thicker doorjambs and plaster walls so that it feels connected to the original house. “It was just this big, vanilla box,” Turner says, “so we layered in a lot of details.”

But here, the plot twists. Instead of going for a period piece of an interior, Turner tapped into the personalities of the young and energetic homeowners and zinged the rooms with their growing collection of contemporary art and unexpected pieces. The tiger-striped sofa in the formal living room, something Taylea had longed for after seeing one owned by Lee Radziwill, became the jumping-off point for the decidedly glamorous decor.

A powder room was given a woodland mural in black and gold. A ladies’ den was lacquered in a glowing peachy pink. Taylea got into the spirit, too, secretly switching out — with the help of her contractor — the wood top of the island in her dressing room for one of punchy pink onyx. She says Turner signed off: “She loved it right away.”

Today, the house is alive with color — a vibrant setting for an amiable family that includes the couple’s one-year-old twin girls (who showed up just two weeks after the Fowlers moved in), along with Robin’s seven-year-old daughter and a pair of prancing co*ckapoos. Nothing is precious here — and Taylea wouldn’t have it any other way. “Everything can be touched and felt and sat on and slept in,” she says. “And that’s what we really love.” 

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2017 issue of VERANDA.