Historic Market Street Mini-Mansion with Space to Play
By Isabel Zermani • Photographs by Rick Ricozzi
On the canopied section of Market Street in historic Carolina Heights sits a series of grand dames not technically in the Mansion District, but right next door. One of these beauties belongs to Shane Fernando and Brian York. Together, York, CEO and founder of United Country Real Estate Carolina Coast, and Fernando, executive director of the Wilson Humanities and Fine Arts Center, have restored a number of houses here and in Washington, D.C., with their combined market savvy and theatrical flair. “It’s an escape for us from the world,” says the smartly dressed Fernando. “Let’s escape to this place that doesn’t exist. So, we make it. That’s truly the basis for everything for us here. It is a theater set.”
As young as he is, Fernando’s theatrical accomplishments are too numerous to name. He is a past president of the board of Thalian Hall and a diorama replica of the hall he meticulously crafted at age 15 is installed upstairs. An avid set dresser and decorator, he also won a StarNews Theater Award for Best Director for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. He is involved in the theater at every level; his attention to detail and Midas touch carry over to his home.
Especially the ceilings. The foyer ceiling is papered in a swirling gold. “I took a hint from Frank Lloyd Wright,” explains Fernando. “You bring the ceiling down to make the next room seem more expansive and inviting. Then this room beckons.” The dining room ceiling is a periwinkle blue with metallic stars. The parlor ceiling is papered in blue lattice to coordinate with painted walls and makes the room sing. “I took the Tiffany box into the paint store,” Fernando says. He read once, “A ceiling without decoration is like going outside and there’s no sky. “ And he agrees. “The sky,” he says, “matches the surroundings. You go to a cornfield, a forest, the Arctic. The sky will always be different.”
A proscenium with columns fit for a theater frames the entry from foyer to parlor. “It’s an homage to Thalian Hall!” Fernando says. He and York fell in instant-love with this house, in part, because of this feature and because the rest of the house, decorated in the ’80s, had been lovingly maintained. “Every surface: ceilings, walls, everything has been recovered or repainted. All the draperies and light fixtures replaced,” says Fernando, but the woodwork, like the proscenium, is original to the house.
There’s liveliness in this home that other historic properties filled with antiques don’t achieve. Where another home or house museum gives the message don’t touch, Fernando and York’s home says: play. It may be the use of bright colors, something Fernando relates to Monticello and Mount Vernon’s borderline garish original hues — “It was exciting!” Or it could be the variety of experiences one has in this house. “Different time periods, different places,” he says from the swank ’50s lounge, gazing across a formal dining table — set for 14 — flanked with 6-foot blackamoor lamps, to a French Empire parlor with a breathtaking breakfront. “When you walk through a home with different places, you’re telling a story,” he says. Fernando and York’s home inspires one to act out such a story, not just tell it.
“The house just turned 100 this year,” says Fernando who is still researching the home for the historic plaque it is now eligible for. He combed through old phone directories that listed professions and found “Conrad Meister. . . draftsman for Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. Draftsman?” He wondered, “How the heck did he do this?”
At its inception in 1908, Carolina Heights was the most affluent streetcar suburb in Wilmington. Mary Bridgers, the daughter (and heiress) of the president of what would become Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, spearheaded the development. She built two of the four mansions in the Mansion district. She engaged architects to design the suburb, including keeping the Market Street lots the largest. “[Conrad Meister] paid six thousand dollars for the lot,” says Fernando, “much more than his salary.” It was a mystery how he could afford a house blocks from his boss’ daughter, but the answer appeared.
“The year before he bought the lot, he was awarded his first patent,” Fernando explains the windfall. It was for a piece of railroad safety technology that solved a pesky problem of engineers’ arms getting accidentally lobbed off. Meister’s second patent came a few years later and so, the house. He eventually became the mechanical engineer. To honor Meister’s legacy, Fernando found copies of the technical drawings of his inventions and framed them. They line the sweeping staircase in the foyer; the backdrop for Fernando and York’s wedding on New Year’s Eve two years ago, which was also, not-so-coincidentally, the day of the Meister’s wedding anniversary.
“On New Year’s Eve at the Meister home, celebrating their anniversary,” Fernando imitates the old-timey voice of a radio announcer while paraphrasing a Wilmington Star society story, “. . . there was drinking, card playing and wild dancing to the wee hours of the morning.” He erupts into laughter thinking about what type of wild dancing there was in 1917.
Probably the kind of wild he would like. Wild like his electric epergne, a Victorian combination lamp-and-flower vase that separates water and wires by a thin wall and balances on tiny sphinxes. Wild like that. Or like the framed box of cigarettes Liza Minnelli smoked when she opened the Wilson Center that hangs in the hall bath. Like any of the taxidermy animals or prop harpoons upstairs in his explorer-style study. Wild like the 1820s child’s tea set from Orton Plantation — “A child played with that and it’s still here!” Fernando exclaims.
It must’ve been a child like Fernando or York. One that decorates Ukrainian eggs on Easter, a sport of both dexterity and patience. These eggs are in the dining room or, if you prefer, mural room. It’s paper, but Fernando added some things in paint. “It just wasn’t enough!” he laughs.
Nearby is a hallway, one of the secretive spaces of this house. An enormous antique cabinet from Fernando’s uncle from Sri Lanka fills one end. The metal decorative buttons on the dark wooden surface are Dutch currency. “Here,” he points out, “you can just make out the year, 17-0-something.” Inside might be Narnia.
Around another secret corner is a narrow staircase that leads to a statue of Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. “My favorite saint,” says Fernando. Ascending the staircase becomes a walking worship.
The coup de grâce of the house is not the master bedroom, which is surprisingly modern and simple, or the dressing room with Gatsby-esque rows of colored shirts, ties and hatboxes prompting the photographer to ask “Who lives like this?” — it’s the attic. Always the archivist, Fernando kept the children’s chalk drawings on the walls, even taking the name for his theater in the attic from one, the “Private Club.”
Fernando retrofitted an 18-seat theater under the roof’s pitch, complete with a mini chandelier at the apex. Created from demolished theaters, the red draperies and curtain come from an Art Deco theater torn down in Texas; the wooden seats from a space in D.C. While living in D.C. (working for Senator Jesse Helms), Fernando got a tip from a friend about the space 30 minutes before the demolition crew. “I came down with a crow bar and Brian came down with the truck,” he remembers. “I was just ripping them out of the floor.” They are preservationists to the core.
“I’ve held theater rehearsals for shows I’m doing. We’ve had concerts up here. Sometimes we’ll just play after dinner: karaoke, puppets, charades,” lists Fernando of the many uses of his private club, entertainment circa 1890.
“It’s all a theater set,” reiterates Fernando about the entire house, each room evoking a different mood, a different kind of play, yet all so civilized.
