Young family breathes new life into historic Morgan Manor
By Kathleen Acuff, Town Crier Staff Writer
 Stonebrook Court, formerly Morgan Manor, has undergone a multimillion-dollar face-lift to restore it to its former glory. The entrance area features a beautiful Oriental rug and a bronze sculpture of Mercury. |
Morgan Manor is now Stonebrook Court. Once the grand home of Percy and Daisy Morgan, the half-timber, Tudor-style mansion in Los Altos Hills built in 1916 became a popular brothel in the 1930s, then did a complete about-face to enjoy a term as an elite day school in the 1950s before becoming a residence again. After nearly 90 years of use and neglect, the structure was in frat-house condition in 1999 when Kelly and Christina Porter were swept off their feet by the beauty beneath the bruises.
The ensuing six-year, multimillion-dollar renovation with a cast of thousands peeled back the years to the studs, but, like archeologists, the new owners found and preserved the oldest layers of the house’s colorful, textured history.
And that is the visitor’s first impression of Stonebrook Court: layers, texture and color, beginning with the approach that winds uphill past the daffodil field and through the arched wrought iron gate from a Georgia plantation. After parking in the entry court, the guest crosses a series of three shallow terraces to reach the front door, on the left at the end of the covered entryway.
The view through the entryway from the entry court is straight to the high, green artificial mound at the rear of the back yard. Much larger mounds were used as natural refrigerators in Tudor times, the Porters said. Theirs is the focal point of the site, and in time trees will blossom around it. Above the entry court, copies of Oxford University gargoyles, carved at the bases of the spires on the roof, look across the bay or down on arrivals. The funny-face motif is repeated in the paintings in the guest living room and on the gargoyled columns in the wine cellar.
The Porters haven’t seen the ghost that locals say haunts their house, but two restless spirits roam the place: Daisy the Lab and Percy the golden retriever - named for the Morgans - wander in and greet family and visitors alike.
The Porters had been looking for a house with a history when they saw Morgan Manor. They wanted to “take a building with a piece of history in the community and restore it to the grandeur it once had,” Kelly explained. The Porters’ goals were to complete a world-class restoration, to make any additions look as though they had always been part of the house, to share the restored property with the community and to have a warm and welcoming home.
Their home is filled with comfortable, eclectic furnishings in a harmonious marriage of warm and cool colors that suit the house and its comfortable, eclectic owners, also a harmonious marriage of warm and cool. Christina designs jewelry; Kelly has a business degree from Stanford University and “benefited from the Internet boom.” Their strengths complement each other, they say. He ran the restoration as if it were a startup company, and she directed the interior design project, which included a worldwide search for the right furnishings.
Gary Worth and Greg Koos managed the renovation and hired a team of 2,000 carpenters, laborers, artists, craftsmen, bricklayers, plasterers, painters, stonemasons and others, including a master carver from the Czech Republic and his apprentice nephew, to restore, retouch and preserve the edifice and its paintings and statuary - and to replace what could not be salvaged.
Richard Beard of BAR Architects drew up the master plan. Stephen Suzman of Suzman Design Associates designed the landscaping. Last week, Suzman’s collaboration with Christina was evident in the ever-present fragrance of hyacinths.
The Morgans built their replica of Speke Hall, located in Liverpool, England, and dating from 1589, with the 1906 earthquake fresh in their minds. They hired a shipbuilder who understood how wood moves, and the result was an old house very close to current Bay Area building standards.
Beginning in March 1999, workers eventually replaced or repaired and polished every inch of the mansion’s 25,000 square feet - 11,500 square feet of that is living space, and 2,500 square feet is ballroom. A year and a half was spent removing and repairing the old half timbers and mending the plaster exterior walls. Up-to-date wiring and the latest security, audio, phone, Internet and television systems replaced electrical wiring nearly a century old.
The Porters strove to preserve the Morgans’ treasures and maintain the house’s original style as they renovated. They also ensured a surprise at every turn. They went through the house after they bought it, pressing woodwork for hidden springs and pushing on walls in hopes of finding concealed doorways to secret rooms and passageways. All they found was a disguised cubbyhole. In the end, they made their own secret room, with a wet bar, off the library. In the baseboard they installed a miniature Gothic-style door. It leads to the Mouse House.
The interior of the Porters’ house is a celebration of texture: carved ceilings, paneling and balustrades; parquetry floors - inlaid with ebony wood in the ballroom - dressed in Oriental and figured carpets under ceilings crossed by beams painted in the German style and infilled with paintings or carved figures or scenes; walls sectioned and wainscoted and covered with figured paper or painted with nuanced color; paintings in antique frames; intricate chandeliers and other light fixtures; carved, furniture-like cabinets in the kitchen, with intentional cracks and crackling and stressed and faded paint; carved fireplaces, gilded or decorated with painted scenes; crystal, church brass, copper, marble in many hues, tile in the kitchen and butler’s pantry, cobbles in the wine cellar, a variety of woods, including the rare African bubinga of the breakfast table; and cloth of different weights and sheen everywhere - patterned or solid upholstery, drapery in a variety of fabrics, from sheer silks to heavy damasks, and tapestries that roll up to reveal inset, wide-screen, flat-panel TVs.
A ceiling from a Venetian palazzo that was home to the four Grimani doges whose portraits appear among the many paintings in it is the jewel of the ballroom. An enormous gilded fireplace from a palazzo near Florence is the focal point of one long wall. At one end of the ballroom, a loft holds the minstrels’ gallery, brought over from the same palazzo. The original Morgan family chapel was in the corner under the loft. The small area is still distinctive. A huge, ornate door from a Spanish castle is its ceiling, and biblical figures and scenes in 12th- and 13th-century German stained glass are embedded in its windows.
During a tour with the Town Crier last week, the Porters’ younger daughters, 8-year-old Juliet and 6-year-old Jacqueline, ran in and out with their friends from the neighborhood. Victoria, 11, watched television in her father’s upstairs study in the company of an African lioness, on the floor, and a kudu, an impala, a warthog, an American buffalo and a couple of other big-game trophies on the walls. Kelly explained that he is not a hunter except in the Silicon Valley sense: he captured the trophies on eBay. Adjoining his study, Kelly’s handsome closet with its perfectly matched walls, cabinets and doors of glowing red mahogany is reminiscent of upper-crust men’s clubs back East.
Below the new back terrace atop the garage - one of the Porters’ additions - the swimming pool’s long rectangle points to the mound. A few feet to the right, Neptune wrestles an octopus in the spa, made to look like a garden pool. Reminders of the sea recur throughout the house, too. A mermaid with a long, recurving tail brings light to Kelly’s bathroom; a ship captain’s desk is open on a dresser in the guest bedroom; here and there, touches of cobalt and sea blue highlight an interesting line or cool a room; and the occasional carved sea creature, like the entwined eels forming a handle in one bathroom, takes its place among the dragons and unicorns in the manor’s bestiary.
The heavens are invited in as well. The dining room’s cobalt ceiling is measured out with gold stars. The rosettes ringing the walls of the master bedroom are highlighted in ethereal blue. In Christina’s bathroom, where the deep, white tub carved in India was inspired by an ancient sarcophagus, cherubs play on the high-relief marble facing of the vanity. Elsewhere in the house, they appear in paintings, fly across the Venetian ceilings, and alight on chandeliers.
It’s hard to get much earthier than King Henry VIII, who makes his entrance fittingly in the master bedroom among the heavenly rosettes. The canopy bed is a replica of his, carved by Jan Beren, the same master carver who created the must-be-seen-to-be-believed ceiling in the family room. The family room and the children’s rooms above it were converted from servants’ quarters.
Now that the Porters have accomplished all their goals, they’re ready to celebrate. They plan to hold an open house to give the community its first look at the restored estate and to benefit Waldorf School of the Peninsula, which their daughters attend, April 22-23.
For more information about Stonebrook Court or the open house, log on to www.stonebrookcourt.com.
