Design

If there is a single residential design style that we North Carolinians might like to claim as our own, it would probably look a lot like the Raleigh home of Charlie and Flo Winston, former co-owners with the Eure family of The Angus Barn, one of the state's most popular and enduring restaurants.

Envision a wide, welcoming great room with a fireplace set in handmade brick that soars to a cathedral ceiling with skylights and heavy wooden trusses. Imagine a variety of salvaged antique woods used creatively in everything, from gleaming heart pine floors to reconstructed barn doors that conceal a convenient wet bar, to whimsical ladders leading to an imaginary loft above the second floor stair landing. Think about mellow architectural woodwork salvaged from the old First Citizens Bank building in Downtown Raleigh, elegant walnut paneling that is now wainscot and an over-mantel in a formal living room where the portrait of Charlie Winston's distinguished grandfather Robert Watson Winston resides. (Winston's remarkable grandfather enrolled in the UNC School of Journalism at the age of 63, after a successful tenure as a Superior Court judge.)

Then think about color-warm tones of red ranging in hue from the scarlet of the bold modernist art over the great-room fireplace to the softer russets of a comfortable chenille-covered sofa in a cozy room-colors that blend with the patinated wood of a French country table purchased with chairs and a pair of polished brass candelabra at a favorite New Orleans antique emporium. Get the picture?

The Winston home seems to epitomize what so many of us treasure about life in North Carolina, a deep sense of the heritage of our state and a taste for things reflective of both our agrarian roots and our sophisticated present. And it revolves to a large extent around family and friends.

When asked how this comfortable and tasteful home came to be, hospitality entrepreneur Charlie Winston looks back to what he and partner Thad Eure wanted to achieve in 1958, when, with no experience in the restaurant business, they started building The Angus Barn. "We wanted our restaurant to convey what we were-an agricultural state-and we took the style of the building from an old barn on a farm my father, a retired lawyer, owned in Clayton," says Winston. "With that theme in mind, we naturally followed up by selecting old wood and salvaged materials of all sorts, along with rustic furnishings for the restaurant. I guess it created an ambience that we liked as much as our restaurant customers did, so Flo and I wanted to make that same spirit part of our new home."

In 1964, as Charlie and Flo and children Marion (age 5), Charles (age 4) and Bob (age 3) were building their house in Drewry Hills with architect Arthur McKimmon, the Angus Barn burned. The bigger and better Barn was rebuilt in parallel with the Winston's work on their own home, and both structures were ready for business in 1965. "By the time we were building this home and rebuilding the Barn," says Winston, "we were well acquainted with all the salvagers and collectors of architectural artifacts in the region. They called us first when they had something special, like the salvage from a Wilmington wharf or from the old Durham Hosiery Mill."

Flo Winston, a Cranbury, NJ, native who was graduated from Sweet Briar College in Virginia, recalls that Charlie's quest for authentic old building materials went as far north as her hometown. "We were in Cranbury for a family visit when Charlie dropped into the local hardware store that had probably been in business since the mid-1800s. There he found a whole bin of handmade nails. Never were two people so delighted with a business transaction. The owner of the store finally got rid of those nails, and Charlie brought barrels of them home to use in the interior woodwork of our house." Architect Arthur McKimmon, Charlie Winston's cousin, who also drew the plans for the original Angus Barn, corroborates Flo's story about Charlie's knack for acquiring special materials for the house. "Charlie accumulates things," recalls McKimmon, as he describes the unusual handmade brick by North Carolina craftsman Silas Lucas, which is used in the dramatic fireplace wall of the great room. The distinctive pale rose color of the brick can't be duplicated today. The brick was also used in Winston's Grille, one of the Winston restaurants owned by son Charles.

The spacious home with its light-filled rooms and tasteful decor and furnishings makes it obvious that Charlie and Flo Winston have integrated family pieces with carefully chosen art, both primitive and modern. The combination is especially effective in the dining room where deep crimson walls show to advantage a lovely geometric patterned bowl made by ancient pueblo dwellers of the Southwest, and an antique English sideboard found at Christie's in London. The handsome jacaranda wood pedestal dining room table and elaborately carved shield-back chairs were fashioned in Brazil on commission by Flo Winston's grandfather, John Tippett, an adventuresome entrepreneur who made his career in meat packing and preserving for the company that would become Swift and Company. A portrait of Charlie Winston hangs in the dining room above the treasured table where so many family and friends have gathered over the years.

Hospitality at home
To a family noted for its hospitality establishments, which now include Winston Hotels (headed by son Bob), food is important, and the Winstons' kitchen has been as carefully planned and executed as the rest of the home. The cabinets are wood taken from the old Olivia Raney Library, a treasure trove discovered by the Winstons on their way home from church one Sunday. "We saw the workers taking the old building down," says Charlie. "When we asked them what plans there were for saving the old materials and were told there were none, we became the recipients of some good wide-board pine. We resawed it and used a lot of it in different places."

The kitchen is equipped with a massive center island with a multi-burner range top, copious workspace and plenty of storage for kitchen tools and appliances. There was, originally, even a deep fryer which Flo proudly displayed during an interview with Southern Living magazine. "When they asked me what I cooked in there," says Flo, "I told them I used it for homemade doughnuts. Since my children had never seen a homemade doughnut, they asked me why I said that. I told them it sounded too mundane to say I used it for French fries." The deep fat fryer was replaced with a second dishwasher. Now the Winstons are most likely to prepare meals in their Visher steamer, which the manufacturer converted for the Winstons for residential use.

When asked to name their favorite room in the house, the couple agreed it is probably the family dining room for all the memories of good times shared around the old table. The table is set before a charming small fireplace decked with copper pots and cooking utensils and even the copper nozzle from an old fire hose. Above the fireplace is a painting by Sarah Blakeslee. A large and unusual antique cupboard holds more shining copper objects. This pleasant room was opened up to include an informal adjoining sitting area when the Winstons added a sunroom. The glass-walled addition, which also created a full-length deck on the home's rear elevation, brings glorious light to a part of the house where some of the family's favorite antiques and art are displayed. A glass-topped game table is overhung with a dining car lamp from a French passenger train. A Henry Pearson antique clock, given to Flo Winston's parents by her grandparents, occupies part of the wall where a favorite portrait of grandchildren by Hongin Zou hangs above a well-loved chest.

The home's spacious lot accommodates a recently constructed garage with guest suite and exercise room. "We had just returned from a family vacation at a southwestern resort where the exercise room had breathtaking 360-degree views," says Flo. "The kids suggested that we convert the top of our garage into an exercise room instead of a ho-hum guest room. We did and still had room for a small bedroom and bath." The Winstons' exercise room, where they work out with a trainer three times a week, is also decorated with works by favorite artists. A John Beerman landscape faces the couple's recumbent bikes and colorful Navaho rugs hang over a stair rail. Pots and jars by Chatham County potter Mark Hewitt are set on the corner fireplace.

Moving back to the family living area from the exercise room, guests are treated to an array of grills. Flo laughingly recalls that a workman counted them up and said, "You've got six grills here, so what do you do on the seventh day?" Her reply, "We go out to eat." The grills are clearly Charlie Winston's domain and his succinct description of the purpose of each cooker reveals his deep love of his craft and chosen occupation. From a military officer charged with feeding hungry servicemen, Winston developed into a purveyor of fine food, especially meats, at a time when North Carolina was not noted for refined dining establishments.

The great room displays some of the pieces of art the Winstons have collected over decades. One of their favorite artists is sculptress Glenna Goodacre, whose work was first spotted in a garden in Santa Fe. Goodacre's commissioned works include the Women's Memorial in Washington, DC, and the moving Potato Famine created for the City of Philadelphia. The Winstons own several of her bronze sculptures, including the lively Olympic WantToBes, a piece showing five athletes with arms linked. Early collectors of revered North Carolina artists such as Claude Howell and Maud Gatewood, the Winstons also appreciate traditional Inuit art and own an impressive sea lion whose tawny soapstone hide seems to radiate animal warmth. The back stair hall, enclosed by a pulpit railing carved for them by a craftsman who was also a lay preacher, is the setting for the work of another favorite sculptor, Dan Ostermiller. His pair of giraffes stand together on a table and peer inquisitively into the great room.

What emerges from a tour of Charlie and Flo Winston's Raleigh home is a sense not only of their enjoyment of comfort and style in daily living, but also of the great adventure of their life together. Whether working to establish the Angus Barn or traveling with family and friends or collecting art and artifacts for houses and restaurants, the Winstons have fun. How nice for us that we can share some of their appreciation for quality and joi de vivre which lend such spirit to their North Carolina home.