A sense of history
Ask Dodi Doloresco about her favorite thing in her well-appointed master bedroom, and she gestures out a south-facing casement window. Its right here, she says. Its the view.
The view is of the pergola, reflecting pond and surrounding rose gardens in Fort Waynes Lakeside Park. I look at that every morning, she says.
But the view is not the only spectacular aspect of the stout, brick-and-stone Tudor-style home Dodi and her husband, Dr. Fred Doloresco, a cardiologist, have shared since 1984.
This is a house with a somewhat checkered past that has managed to survive with its dignity intact – and even enhanced by a couple with patience and a more than skin-deep artistic streak.
This was Mr. Zollners house, Dodi begins, referring to Fred Zollner, the legendary 20th-century industrialist who also owned the Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (now the Detroit Pistons) professional basketball team.
Zollners passion left its mark on the home – he used to entertain team members, so the story goes, in a sumptuous basement party room designed with 10-foot ceilings to accommodate their height. Its also said that Zollner facilitated forming the National Basketball Association by getting officials of two rival leagues to meet around his kitchen table in 1945.
But what Dodi recalls of the kitchen when the couple bought the house was Zollners eccentric taste.
The kitchen had green cabinets, black countertops and a black-and-red linoleum floor, she says. I remember being on my hands and knees trying to clean it. I thought it was maroon, but the black and red had bled together.
The kitchen was the first thing to be remodeled in 1986 into a cheery space that resulted from knocking down walls that had formed several smaller rooms, including a butlers pantry. Oak cabinets, a center island cooktop, a breakfast bar with a small TV and a large-windowed casual dining area fronting the garden now greet visitors.
In 1995, the house had its lowest moment, when a fire started from an electrical short in the master bedroom. In the time it took to get a workman out of the basement and call 911, smoke so black it was nearly impossible to see had filled the upstairs, Dodi recalls. A slate roof, combined with solid brick walls, made for an exceptionally hot fire that could find no way to exit.
Fred Doloresco recalls tons of water were poured onto the blaze; the couple and their three children spent six months away from home while the place was restored.
All the flooring on the first and second stories was replaced with equivalent hardwood. Fortunately, Dodi says, the extensive carved molding and woodwork, including Craftsman-style built-in cabinets in the formal dining room, were saved. So was the quarter-sawn oak paneling in the basement.
Dodi says her husband especially felt that as much of the house should remain as intact as possible. He didnt want to change things after the fire. He considers it a one-of-a kind house, she says.
A major structural change made by the couple was converting a small second-story porch in the former caretakers quarters into a bedroom extension that features a leaded-glass window.
The result is a traditionally styled house with an updated, contemporary feel. Dodi says shes chosen to decorate the home, built in 1919, in a style compatible with the 1920s.
The fire wiped the slate clean, and I added color, she says. Her favorite is light blue, and there are touches throughout the home.
I know nowadays thats not the in thing. People like neutrals – tan and beige and brown and gray. But thats not me, says the mother of three grown children and an avid quilter. The blues are complemented with yellows, greens and cream and Oriental-style patterned rugs in rich colors.
But perhaps the most striking use of color comes in the American impressionist paintings Fred Doloresco has collected – and contributed – over the years.
About 18 years ago, he took up oil painting as a hobby. One of his works, a large canvas containing an impressionistic garden scene in bright golds, greens and blues and dotted with red suggestions of flowers, now hangs prominently in the living room.
I was collecting art, and you cant buy a painting every day. But I wanted art in my life every day, so I started painting every day. Well, four days a week, he says, adding that about three years ago he trimmed his cardiology practice to three days a week so he could spend more time painting in a studio over the garage.
He says he has more than 40 canvases in his collection and counts among his favorites a small one by Harry Leith Ross of a painter sitting on a beach in Maine painting. Dolorescos own specialty is plein-aire (or outdoor) painting.
To have a painting of a painter painting – thats special to me, he says.
Two of his other favorites are by Wisconsin impressionist Dan Gerhartz – one in the family room of two women in a garden, and the other is a large canvas of the artists daughter and a neighbor carrying the familys pet goose that is featured over the staircase to the second floor.
It definitely enriches my life, he says of his collection. Saturdays, I like to get up and get a cup of tea and just walk around the house and look at a few paintings.
Whenever I come home, I see a little bit of beauty, he continues. Even this house alone is a work of art.
rsalter@jg.net