2318 Coventry Road (1991)

Built in 1930, at the very end of the expanding economy that had seen so many great houses going up in Cleveland Heights, this brick colonial reflects not only the comfortable standards of the time but the many and varied interests of its present owners. Folk art includes owls from Nova Scotia, a river scene from Haiti, embroidery from Uzbekistan, and a painting from Moscow. The wall-hanging in the front vestibule came from a peasant's house in China. An antique sideboard from Mississippi, two 100-year-old split-hickory rocking chairs from Appalachia ("a wedding present for an ancestor"), the whatnot in the front hallway (found in an old barn in Missouri) -- these all represent mementos of the owners' families.

In the sixty-one years of its existence, the house has experienced little structural change. The exception is a wonderfully effective breakfast room, created from "a warren of little rooms, three in all." The back stairs were exposed and became an integral part of the room. On one side the breakfast room opens into the kitchen, while the other side leads directly onto a patio, where ceramic geese from the Amalfi Peninsula in Italy adorn the brick wall.