Classic Southern Looks Meet Today’s Upbeat Design

Color, imagination, texture and love—nurtured in a home based in the architecture of what a classic Southern mansion should be. Proper Virginia breeding aligned with today’s traditional look, mixed with whimsy and good taste. That is Ramsay.

Chiswell Dabney (Chillie) Langhorne lived at neighboring Mirador when he purchased Ramsay in 1914. The main house is in the Classical Revival style, with full-height, three-bay porches on both front and back. The northern elevation, which can be seen from Interstate 64, faces the Blue Ridge Mountains.
The south elevation faces Rockfish Gap Turnpike, with fenced pastures where Belted Galloway cows graze in the sun.
By 1936 Langhorne Gibson, Chillie’s grandson, was owner of the home. He was the son of Irene Langhorne Gibson, famous for being the model for the first “Gibson Girl” illustrations in the early 1900’s.

Langhorne Gibson hired Charlottesville architect Milton Grigg to expand and enhance the house, including adding the double story porches front and back and second story additions to the east and west wings, according to today’s owners, Susan and Harry Lankenau.

“The rooms were plain,” Susan says, “and Grigg came in and embellished the moldings, adding the over-mantle woodwork, the shell niche in the dinning room and replacing the spindles with the Chippendale railing on the staircase off the foyer. It really made a huge difference in the look of the house.”

Susan and Harry have worked hard to bring Grigg’s work and the rest of the house and gardens into the 21st century since they purchased the home in 1999. They upgraded all of the electrical and plumbing systems, meticulously and tastefully restored the main house over a two and a half year period. They have also refurbished the smaller “guest house” that was Irene Gibson’s retirement home. It is there that the Lankenau’s lived for two and a half years while renovating the main house and other buildings.

Susan’s eye for color and interior design has turned both houses into eye popping showcases. Her training and expertise as an interior designer in her own right definitely show.

What catches the eye upon first entering either house is Susan’s use of color-lots of color. From the eye-popping yellow front door, surrounded by red and green porch chairs and tables with a backdrop of the white house with Charleston Green shutters, one learns early on to expect something other than ordinary.

Inside, the red strie wallpaper in the dining room stands in sharp contrast to the enamel white wainscoting and deep moldings over the doorways and mantle. The shell niche, designed by Grigg, holds a collection of Delft and Chinese Export, as well as Staffordshire.

The yellow walls of the living room, which leads from the dining room, are another sharp color contrast in the home. The white moldings break up the vivid colors, dividing the wall space into interesting panels upon panels of the yellow.

Decorated, painted pieces and chests throughout the dining and living rooms draw the eye towards their detail, while collections of needlework, both framed and in pillows, add texture, whimsy and touches of colors that tie everything together visually.

The living room’s upholstered furniture includes red toile, as well as a floral print fabric that the designer/ homeowner had fallen in love with long before moving into the house. Once here, she knew it was time to use it.

Artwork throughout the living room is quite varied in both subject and style. Along with the needlework that flows throughout the home, a rustic painting of a man fishing in a stream over the fireplace is quite different from the colorful and almost child-like style used in two Theresa Pollack paintings.

Unusual objects include a painted, footed wooden container atop the spinet piano on the back wall while a needlepoint Humpty Dumpty sits in a child’s high chair on the opposite side of the room.

The long library, with its attractive bookcases and warm fireplace, has a small bay at one end. At one time referred to as “the bamboo room,” Susan replaced the cork flooring with floor boards taken from what is now the family room.

“That area just called for a window seat and columns were added to define the space,” she recalls.

“This is the room where we live and eat meals during the winter. We don’t use it much during the summer.”

The flooring in the foyer was linoleum when the Lankenau’s first began working on the house. Hoping to find hardwood beneath it, they were disappointed to find a composite material that had worn thin in front of the door. They replaced the flooring in the foyer, family room and kitchen with antique heart of pine. Today the floor in the foyer is painted a crisp black-green and cream diamond pattern, which gives the area a fresh, upbeat feel.

Susan has used whimsical dog portraits, again many in needlepoint, on the walls, along with two beautiful iron and mirror sconces flanking the mirror over an antique Italian chest. Across from it a black painted bench holds several of Susan’s needlepoint pillows.

The family room is painted a robin’s egg blue, again with white wood trim. A red checkered arm chair provide a comfortable place to relax and Susan’s collection of pillows, both needlepoint and in fabrics that echo the red and white of the chairs, are abundant. Antique bird illustrations are hung on either side of the large mirror over the sofa, which reflects the light coming in from the windows and French doors that line the room’s outside walls.

A corner cupboard in the room holds not dishes but part of the Lankenau’s collection of old toys and a few cherished Christmas decorations, too loved and admired to be placed out for viewing just one a year.

In the short, connecting hallway between the family room, dining room and kitchen hangs a painting that Susan had commissioned from an artist who takes few commissioned assignments. “I really like her style and I wanted her to do a portrait of my cat and dog.” Susan explains. “I couldn’t get her to do it until I wrote her a letter, from my cat and dog, asking her to paint them. She couldn’t refuse them. In the painting, she not only captured my dog and cat, she also shows my collections of porcelain, pillows and other things that are me. She even had the frame made, painted with scenes of things in my life.”

On the little shelves are tiny groupings of Blue Willow tea sets, two upholstered chairs of clay, complete with needlework pillows and other tokens from the Lankenau’s life. “If the house were to burn, this and my son’s pictures would be the two things I’d grab as I ran out the door,” Susan says.

The kitchen, too, is filled with color. “When the painters got here to do the kitchen, I know they thought I was crazy,” Susan admits. “They said, ‘So what color are you going to paint these cabinets?’ pointing to the ones with the sink. I told them green. They said okay and pointed to the ones by the door and asked it they were going to be green too. I said, ‘No, those will be yellow.’ They were scratching their heads when they pointed to the island and asked about its color. ‘Orange,’ I told them. I know they thought I was nuts but by the time they finished, they really liked it.”

Those colors, and more, can be found in the Quimper pottery that Susan also collects, a portion of which can be seen in an open shelf above the sink.

The train clock that hangs from the ceiling in the kitchen Susan found in a shop that had presented it as a table clock. “That just didn’t work,” she remembers. “When we sold our mountain home, the buyers really wanted the clock but I just couldn’t part with it. I didn’t know where I would use it in this house but I found a place. Everyone loves it.”

Gibson Girl’s Cottage

During all the remodeling of the main house, the Lankenaus, with their young son, lived in the three bedroom guest house that was once Irene Langhorne Gibson’s. With its warm yellow exterior, bright green door and white trim, the walk past the boxwoods is inviting.

Once inside, color and whimsy are the two descriptors that most sum up its decor. Bright yellow walls and draperies, remade from ones used at the former residence, set the stage for the reds, blues and greens that complete the room’s pallet.

The red and white checked sofa is crowned by a primitive painting of a blue cow facing the viewer. More fanciful needlepoint pillows, designed and executed by Susan, add to the humorous accessories throughout the room. The white woodwork, as in the main house, tones down the strong colors around it, keeping the colors from overwhelming the room.

The black and white Wilton weave rug, banded in red, was a lifesaver during the long process of renovations, Susan states. “Everything outside was just red clay mud. This rug, if it had been light, would never have survived. It hid a lot of the dirt that my son would bring in, that we all brought in during that time.”

A softer yellow was selected for the walls of the master bedroom in the guest cottage. A crisp white coverlet and matching shams on the bed again helps to offset the color, making it work all the better. The flowery dust ruffle on the bed allowed Susan to draw other colors as accents around the room.

Over the mantle is an original Wolf Kahn painting Susan thought of bringing with them when they moved into the main house. Surrounded by the views of mountains through the windows on either side of the fireplace, Susan liked the way the painting’s colors and subject matter seemed to continue that view across the inside of the room. She left it in its location.

A small bathroom off the master bedroom underwent a transformation with the addition of wall paper, bead board wainscoting and flooring. It was a complete transformation into an inviting personal retreat.

Across the hall is a small guest room, complete with two simple, black iron canopy beds dressed in red toile comforters and red and cream check dust ruffles. Framed needlework pieces hang on the side walls while floral botanicals hang above the heads of each bed.

Upstairs, amongst the eaves, was their son’s bedroom, now another guest room. Dog art is placed throughout the room while fabric from his old draperies at their former house was transformed into dust ruffles and curtains.

Downstairs the kitchen has been upgraded and the old cabinets, dark and dingy when the family first moved in, are now pristine in their new coat of paint. The new floor helps the look as well. The original stainless steel countertops are the only thing that looks like it did before Susan worked her magic on the room.

A wonderful screened porch off the kitchen is the perfect place to have coffee in the morning and to eat meals when the temperature cooperates. The family room on the opposite side of the kitchen, with its own beautiful views, takes over these duties when it is too cool for the screened porch.

An old potting shed on the property was so short that one had to walk bent over while inside so the Lankenaus added to the vertical walls to make it usable. A perennial garden, surrounded by crushed stone walkways highlighted by a dove shaped stone bird bath, connects the potting shed to an artist’s studio Susan designed using doors and windows from the property and in her father’s barn in North Carolina. The light is wonderful for when Susan gets a chance to paint and be creative.

Color, design, humor and comfort are what Ramsay is all about these days. With its classic “good bones,” its history of famous people, and today’s warm, family atmosphere and loving restoration, how could a house be happier?