Tour a Victorian in Portsmouth

THE OLD VICTORIAN with its quaintly low porch railing and fish scale shingles in the gable waited patiently for new owners in Portsmouth’s Park View.

It had changed hands again and again in its first 105 years, so a little longer was no more painful than an extra flake of paint, another crack in the plaster, a stray dandelion in the lawn.

Randolph Boothe-Pharr and his wife, Vivian Pharr , had searched weeks for the right house. Her husband craved an older home. Pharr leaned toward something contemporary.

Then they found this.

The neighborhood’s longevity, charm and potential drew them in.

And the house? The two-story had transom windows, a brass mail slot in the door, original hardwood floors. Everything, a delight. Well, maybe not some paint colors, but they could be changed.

“We had not agreed on houses until we saw this one,” Pharr said. “This was our compromise house.”

It was a good fit for many reasons, primarily the couple’s shared love of history.

Boothe-Pharr teaches history at Paul D. Camp Community College and at Tidewater Community College’s Norfolk campus. His specialty is slave history. His wife is assistant principal at Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth and had also majored in history.

The Victorian house had roots in the community and an architectural pedigree that would showcase their family heirlooms and their art collection.

So after claiming the house keys in 2005 , the couple set to work. Ever since, they’ve entertained themselves by making changes and adjustments that honor its beginnings in 1900.

Their labors will be on view on Saturday during Historic Garden Week on Virginia’s Portsmouth tour, this year called Park View and Promenade House and Garden Tour .

Step onto the porch with its sky blue ceiling and charming swing, into the foyer, and meet the family. A painting of Annie P. Jones , Vivian Pharr’s mother, hangs in a highly visible spot on the left. It was done by David Weiss, the son of friends who own The Patriot Inn Bed & Breakfast in Olde Towne. Mrs. Jones, who recently turned 94, lives with the couple.

Near her portrait are family photographs and other paintings by Weiss that speak to the couple’s love of birds. All hang against floral Victorian-style wallpaper in an entrance hall appointed with lace curtains and a carved newel post.

The staircase’s petite scale, its low steps and a narrow handrail are a reminder of the Catholic nuns who once called the house “home.”

Upstairs, on the second-floor landing, hang art and artifacts that the well-traveled couple brings back from trips.

Boothe-Pharr has gone eight times to Africa. He collected several paintings and other art on visits to African countries while preparing to bring teachers to The Gambia on an exchange program. Interested in runaway slave societies, he was attracted to the region, where author Alex Haley traced his own roots.

In Boothe-Pharr’s cozy library are masks from west, east and South Africa and a print – “Studies of the Head of a Black Man” by Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens . As a counterpart, Booth-Pharr hung a lithographic print, a Sengalese woman in profile.

Nearby is a small Haitian painting on wood of a young boy studying. Wood commonly replaces canvas in Third World countries, Boothe-Pharr said, since canvas is prohibitively expensive there.

The room next door, the upstairs sitting room or second library, is comfortably furnished with a leather sofa and chair. On the walls are two works by Pharr’s mother, who began painting in her 70s . One scene shows a little girl in the woods. The second is of a cotton field in South Carolina, a recollection of Jones’ childhood there.

Custom bookcases are topped with two glass vitrines filled with Pharr’s English teapot and doll collection.

“I try to buy a doll every time we go out of the country,” the school administrator said. “Some of those are from Ireland, Brazil, Sweden; some are African dolls.”

One bookcase contains leather-bound first editions of books of history, some from England and France collected by Boothe-Pharr, who studied for his master’s degree at the Sorbonne in Paris and who not long ago established an exchange program for students and faculty between Paul D. Camp Community College and Manchester College of Arts and Technology in Manchester, England.

Another bookshelf contains Pharr’s set of literary classics from her mother’s house as well as her collection of Christian books and counseling texts.

Above the sofa hangs a batik of giraffes from Kenya. Opposite, five Gambian paintings show village scenes. On another wall, a wood carving from Haiti captures the bustle of market day.

The neighboring master bedroom’s serene color scheme is the foil for another painting by Jones of sandpipers and for more Gambian art.

Booth-Pharr delights in revealing that the adjoining room, the entire room, was converted into a closet by his wife. He still raises his eyebrows and chuckles at the audacity of devoting an entire room to wardrobe storage.

Old houses like this don’t have many closets, Pharr countered, defending her decision as absolutely necessary.

A hallway off the second floor landing serves as an art gallery for works from Haiti, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Kenya, and the Cape Coast of Ghana .

On the first floor, as during the Victorian age, are the couple’s public and guest spaces. Their living room contains family antiques, Chippendale-style sofas and a high drum table in front of the fireplace. Dark green walls set off the couple’s art collection.

One framed, illuminated portrait gets the attention of nearly everyone who enters the room. The print of Olaudah Equiano shows the son of a West African chief, captured and forced into slavery.

A sea captain taught the child to read and count, Booth-Pharr said. Later, the African was sold to a Quaker in Pennsylvania where he bought his freedom with 60 pounds sterling, sailed to England and joined the anti-slavery movement.

Boothe-Pharr found the print at a slavery museum in Liverpool, England. To the right of the fireplace, a drawing of Boothe-Pharr’s beloved cocker spaniel “Biscuit” was done by Portsmouth artist Anne Fuller. Through an archway, the dining room’s jewel tones are illuminated by an heirloom crystal chandelier. The room’s built-in corner china cabinet houses Pharr’s collection of Royal Albert bone china.

The couple recently renovated their kitchen to preserve its original cabinets yet update the space in a way compatible with its Victorian style. They chose a dark-stained island topped with granite and decided against installing upper cabinets, feeling they would close in the light-filled, airy room.

Instead, for storage in a neighboring passageway, they added Amish cabinets built from old barn wood. They store wine in a specially designed room adjoining the kitchen.

The rear garden is shaded by a 109-year-old magnolia . Underneath is a patio, a knee-bruising do-it-yourself project, designed and installed by Boothe-Pharr who insists his brick-laying days are now forever behind him.

The surrounding garden, defined by a Baton Rouge-style iron fence with a fleur-de-lis topping each finial, is lined with narrow beds of blooming shrubs, perennials, roses, annuals and bird ornaments.

In the front garden, under a Japanese maple, is a granite marker memorializing “Biscuit Boothe-Pharr.” The couple decorates it with fresh cut flowers.

“That was always his spot,” Boothe-Pharr said, noting that his dog sat there to flirt with the “girl dog” that lived next door. A years after Biscuit’s death, Boothe-Pharr is finally considering getting another pet. But, for now, puppy-training will have to wait for a pause between trips to exotic places.

Meanwhile, the couple still enjoys making small changes to the house – new shelving for wine storage, stained-glass for above the front door, the pleasure of waiting for recently planted snapdragons to bloom – and is pleased with their handiwork.

“We’ve tweaked it,” Pharr said, “but it’s almost unnoticeable because it should have been that way all along.”

Krys Stefansky, (757) 446-2732,

krys.stefansky@pilotonline.com