205 Duke Street
A Home Furnished by Travel
Most everything you see in this home is from Deirdre Pontbriand’s numerous travels — her souvenir belongings enable her to reconnect with her adventures.
Ms. Pontbriand, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a former instructor of the history of design and decorative arts at Parsons School of Design, brings an artist’s eye to her home’s eclectic décor.
The bedroom is Scandinavian design meets “Bunny” Mellon baskets. Inspired by the late gardener and art collector Rachel “Bunny” Mellon’s basket house on her Upperville, Virginia, estate, the country charm of the room is enhanced by a rack of baskets hung above the bed. The baskets complement the fresh blue-and-white-checked Swedish Hastens bed that the resident sleeper swears by — as do Hastens bed owners Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Tom Cruise. These beds are still handcrafted with the same natural materials as the first beds created 171 years ago.
The fireplace mantle displays folk art: nestled between New England-crafted candle holders are colorful English Staffordshire porcelain figures, folk art made to delight Britons but collected world-wide.
The provenance of the art on the first floor, however, is closer to home: Ms. Pontbriand’s father was the artist Roger Pontbriand, an oil painter of evocative, slightly abstract Cape Cod landscapes, some of which hang in the Museum of Fine Arts in Dennis, Massachusetts, and in his daughter’s living room. Head of the Rhode Island School of Design’s illustration department, Roger taught at the college for over 30 years.
Did you know that 205 Duke Street is a scofflaw? The Alexandria town government, in 1749, mandated that lot owners build a structure within two years of purchase, or the lot reverted to town ownership; this limited land speculation. To secure the lot, this home was originally a flounder house, an easy-to-construct building with a lone window on the shortest wall and no window on the highest wall; the two walls were connected by a sloped shed roof, which reminded some of the one-eyed fish.
Some flounder houses were erected a distance from the front property line, no doubt in anticipation of establishing a larger brick main building, as personal finances allowed. Complicating any future plan to enlarge when financially able was a 1751 regulation requiring that houses be built all the way to the street. This presents a unified look instead of letting owners build anywhere on the lot. Nevertheless, the main buildings for some Old Town locations never materialized, such as 205 and 207 Duke Street. These addresses remain enlarged and remodeled flounder houses — with rare front yards — despite the city’s setback prohibition.