Shock of the New

Think of this house as a hot rod,” says Norman Petersen of his 1905 Noe Valley Victorian. “The exterior is original, so it looks exactly as it did when my grandparents lived here, but inside there’s a modern, 21st-century drivetrain.”

For Petersen, this fusion of old and new was the only way to adapt the century-old house to the needs of his active and artistic family. “I have always intensely disliked Victorian houses,” says the architectural and furniture designer, who prefers a more streamlined style.

Petersen’s grandparents bought the house in 1905 and moved in a year later, shortly after the 1906 earthquake. When Petersen inherited the home in the ’70s, his grandparents’ period furnishings proved to be a challenge for the die-hard modernist, who has worked as an exhibit designer for NASA and has a renowned art-furniture business. To bring a cleaner sensibility to the ornate 3,500-square-foot house, Petersen started with contemporary art and furnishings.

In 2000, Petersen began construction on a 900-square-foot addition that would accommodate his own family while still honoring his grandparents’ legacy. With a new airy kitchen, a dramatically curved stairwell, an indoor swimming pool and a mirrored family room complete with a ping-pong table, the addition is a clear reflection of the active lifestyle of today’s Petersen clan: Norman and his wife, Floriana, and their teenage daughter, Adriana.

LEFT: The entry hall announces the home’s many layers of periods and styles. Embossed Victorian wallpaper is mixed with hand-finished plaster walls. Treasured family photos, in steel frames created by Norman, line the stairs. CENTER: The kitchen attests to the Petersens’ affinity for contemporary craft and found objects. Norman built a curved pantry to display the sign he found along the historic El Camino Real, and repeated the curve on the cedar-topped central island. RIGHT: From the copper-lined skylight to the chunky steel railings to the island that anchors the kitchen, a gentle curve is a common theme in the house. The simple arcs are a clear contrast to the home’s original Victorian architecture.

Petersen built the two-story addition onto the garage and parlor levels at the back of the house in order to maintain the home’s integrity. From the front, the house looks unchanged but inside, the original staircase banisters and Victorian moldings give way to industrial I-beams, steel and glass. In one of the most striking examples of contrast, the framing of an original bay window now overlooks a trapezoidal swimming pool below. A curving steel stairwell connects the two floors; its arc is echoed in a copper-framed skylight above and, more abstractly, in the curve of a long cedar kitchen counter.

The kitchen is a seamless hybrid of vintage and contemporary styles. “I have never liked the look of overhead kitchen cabinets and all that clutter everywhere,” says Petersen. As an alternative, he tucked a pantry behind a curved wall specially designed to accommodate an enormous steel sign that he found at a fruit orchard. For under-counter storage, he converted old Italian pine Ducati motorcycle crates—their labels still visible—into a system of drawers. The kitchen walls are decorated not only with modern works by artist friends—including Mark Adams, Fletcher Benton and Mel Ramos—but also a framed, handwritten bill of sale for his grandparents’ entire kitchen, dated 1906 (total cost: $50.25).

The hunt for old, well-designed elements became a growing passion for Petersen as he planned the addition. He found his stove, a 1934 Magic Chef in perfect working condition, thanks to a tip from his mother, who for years ran a gourmet cookware store in Menlo Park. The industrial steel windows—also from the 1930s—were salvaged from a local print shop just moments before they were to be destroyed.

From the kitchen, a steel staircase winds to the bottom level, where slate-blue concrete extends from the pool area to the adjacent family room. The pool was not part of Petersen’s original plan, but in retrospect the family has no regrets. “This space was intended to be just a playroom,” he says. “But we had to dig a hole here when we discovered the foundation was faulty. So then we thought, why not make it a pool?”

It is a serene space, simple and decidedly un-Victorian, with a single decorative element: a black-and-white life preserver inscribed “Santana Key Largo,” an artifact from the 1948 Humphrey Bogart film classic Key Largo. Though both Petersen and his wife are artists and collectors, they deliberately decided not to put any art around the pool. “I love Japanese architecture, where light and shadow are so important,” explains Petersen. “The light and shadows cast by the pool on the surrounding walls change all day, like moving art.”

The bottom level opens to the back garden, with fruit trees, vegetable and herb beds and a gardening shed that, in an earlier incarnation, was Petersen’s grandparents’ chicken coop. The shed, which Petersen is converting into a private retreat for his daughter, will be a place where she can practice guitar or hang out with friends. Petersen’s own hangout is the fully outfitted garage where he keeps a 1962 Alfa Romeo and a 1959 Porsche Cabriolet.

LEFT: Upstairs in the original portion of the house, a maze of tiny bedrooms was transformed into a few larger spaces. Adriana’s bedroom was expanded to include a small rooftop deck accessible through the window. RIGHT: The master bedroom now also serves as a studio for Floriana, who creates hand-crafted leather goods for her own company, On Your Marque. A sleeping loft, tucked under the rafters, overlooks the studio, which is furnished with many of Norman’s designs.

On the top floor of the original portion of the house, Petersen expanded the bedrooms as much as possible. The master bedroom now doubles as Floriana’s workspace, with a wooden spiral staircase leading up to a sleeping loft. Adriana’s bedroom window leads out to a small deck built on top of the addition. The upstairs bathroom was left untouched, with the existing sink and tub offering a reference to the past.

Pieces of Petersen’s museum-quality furniture can be found throughout the house. The front hall features his twists on African tribal chairs, while the dining room has hand-painted leather chairs from his Triton series (one of which is in the permanent collection of SFMOMA) and a glass dining table that has a center channel filled with Czech glass marbles. In the family room are two “Boomerondack Rockers”—inspired by both the classic Adirondack chair and Richard Neutra’s midcentury boomerang chair—another example of how the designer melds disparate styles into a new concept.

This is the essential concept of the “hot rod” house, where an original body and a high-performance interior come together as one. Eventually the Petersens will take the same idea out for an altogether new spin: Their second home, in the countryside of Floriana’s native Slovenia, is a charming old cottage, not modern in the slightest. But Norman’s dream is to ship over one of their sports cars—the red Alfa Romeo—so they can get around the Old World in modern style.

Taken from the February 2008 issue of our sister publication, California Home + Design. For more than a decade, CH+D has informed, celebrated and inspired the nation's most influential home and design market. Subscribe now.