Garran Hill

Past the portico, the door opens to a two-story entry where a Colonial Revival staircase climbs and the oak handrail runs unbroken from volute to landing. The same craftsmen who built Pinehurst built this house, and they meant for you to see its whole depth before you have taken three steps.

Nearly forty feet, and it carries two full sitting areas without crowding either one. A Federal mantel over dark marble anchors it, the ceiling worked in panels and coffers, bookcases arched into the wall. French doors open the whole south side to the brick terrace. In the afternoon the light crosses the oak and stays, the way it has since 1916.

Heart pine underfoot, reclaimed, the one floor in the house that is not the original oak, and the warmth tells you why. White Shaker cabinetry, glass fronts, black granite, a professional range under its hood. A butler's pantry with a farm sink and a butcher block counter does the work the dinner party never sees. The breakfast room sits in chinoiserie toile and opens to the grounds, so the day starts with the door already open.

The library takes three walls floor to ceiling, the kind of room you stop calling a feature and start calling a reason. Down the hall the sitting room keeps a Delft tile fireplace and a spiral stair that climbs to the second floor office, two stories told quietly in one room.

It takes the full depth of the house. A fireplace, paneled wainscoting, oak floors that were here first. Two dressing rooms, because two people lived here and neither had to wait. The bath looks straight into the garden, and the French doors mean the morning can be private before it is anything else.

The pool and the courts exist because the land was nearly divided once. The family built reasons to stay instead. A saltwater pool, twenty by forty, inside a brick walled garden the wall built first. Two lighted tennis courts under the longleaf pines, ready for new surfaces. A boxwood herb garden. And the Wee Cottage, a playhouse with its own address in family memory.