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Back to the Future: High style in Hammond

by Susan Owens
photography by Johnny Chauvin

Sleek, smart and sophisticated, the home of Scott and Ashley Sandage has an architectural history that spans more than three decades, but it is as new and modern today as the day it was completed in the early 1970s. Tucked away in a quiet neighborhood adjacent to Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, this one-of-a-kind house had been well lived in when Scott dreamed big and decided to rescue the house from the patina of use. In addition to everyday wear and tear, the house had undergone what Scott describes as “a radical renovation.”

Way back in 1972, the original owners, John and Frances Batson, commissioned the Alexandria, La. architectural firm Glanker and Associates to work with them to create a stylish home for their family. John, a Louisiana lumberman, selected the heart pine wood floors in the living room and upstairs balconies and hallways. In his opinion, the wood floors softened the contemporary angles, natural stone floors and glass walls. As construction began, a monolithic concrete wall, fortified to withstand one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds, erupted out of the ground in the quiet Greenlawn Avenue neighborhood—a bold architectural statement that aroused curiosity among the neighbors.

When the Sandages looked into buying the house, they found it was about as far away from its original contemporary aesthetic as you can get. A former owner had clad the house with horizontal wood siding, closed in the windows and made an effort to turn the house into a style that became an uneasy fit. Unable to breathe, the house resisted the renovation and began a slow rotting process. Scott decided to tear off the newly applied siding and take the house back to its original footprint.

Always up for a new construction challenge, Scott, a residential homebuilder and developer, attacked the project of his own house with his typical can-do attitude and a heavy dose of flair. Undaunted by the rotting siding, damp insulation, and unsafe wiring, he unearthed a strongly contemporary house with great bones and sound design and proceeded to incorporate the WOW! factor.

But first, the Sandages needed to add a few practical elements, such as an expanded laundry room, more storage and a protected garage for the family entry. By using simple materials, and minimalist geometry, nothing looks as though it was just tacked on.

Positioned on the site to invite the outdoors inside, the house is still a private enclave off a busy street in an active neighborhood. It has an open plan, but not all of the rooms are visible at once. Schematically, the house is a collection of zones made up of the more public living areas, protected porches, open-air patios, wood-paneled den, children’s playroom and private family quarters upstairs. The master suite and children’s wing are connected to the upstairs by two stairways, a circular staircase connecting the downstairs den to the upstairs rooms and the imposing front stairway.

Skillfully, Scott worked with a landscape architect to develop the grounds and upgrade the private swimming pool area and a waterfall that can be seen through glass cascading into one of the private courtyards surrounding the house. He incorporated a group of river birches to frame the front entry. Guests enter the patio and pool through a stand of bamboo.

The transition from outside to inside virtually disappears in the main living room and sunken dining room. Two striking aspects of these more public rooms are the varying ceiling heights and the use of simple and straightforward materials. The living room actually turns away from the street and centers around a fireplace, creating a tranquil seating area that is pretty enough for company and cozy enough for family.

To further interface with nature, Scott added screened porches and floated a balcony out of the second story master bedroom. Floor-to-ceiling windows continue uninterrupted from the first floor to the second story of the house.

With a little guidance from their interior designer, the Sandages expanded and reworked the kitchen so that it now opens onto the family room and breakfast area and provides a sweeping view of the swimming pool and patio. And—oh, yes!—the kitchen has some really cool appliances.

In completing the interior, “the challenge was to make the contemporary grand scale spaces warm and inviting,” the designer remarks. While the Sandage home is large in scale, it still has to function as a real home where a real family lives and plays and learns.

Scott says that he bought the house for his family. He liked that the dead-end street across from the university provided a safe place for Hunter and Mackie, his two young daughters, to play and grow up. “Most of all, I bought the house for my wife, Ashley.”
Ashley, a Hammond attorney, has sentimental ties to the house, having lived there as a young child after the original owners sold the house to her parents. She says, “I spent many happy childhood days in this house. I remember my mother reading stories to me upstairs on the balcony, and now I am getting to do the same thing with my girls.”

A bit of a risk taker, Scott raised the bar for residential renovation standards when he took on this most recent project. And the results speak for themselves. He can count his own residence among his many building achievements. Today, the Sandage family is enjoying all of the big and little details that go into a successful residential re-design, living in a house that transcends the norm. In the words of Joseph Eichler, one of the fathers of modern residential architecture, their home is one of those rare houses that “embraces the unexpected and demonstrates that beauty can be communicated through architecture and daring design.”