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From 'party house' to award winner

Jane Burns  —  5/02/2008 7:48 am

Owners of old homes like to toss out numbers, such as the year a house was built, how high the ceilings are or the voltage on the electricity.

But for Jenni and Christian Collins, one number stunned them when they were looking to buy their Vilas-area home that is an easy walk to Camp Randall Stadium: twenty-one.

"We were told, 'We can fit 21 cars on the yard,' " Jenni Collins said of her home's former parking configuration for Badger home football games. "That was a big selling point for the house. I think the guys who lived here made $3,000 one year."

Last fall, the family decided to forgo the parking lot for flowers, shrubs, a new patio and a spruced-up paint job. It was all part of an effort to turn the former rental property into a single-family home.

The Collins couple are among six preservation award winners who will be honored tonight by the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation at its annual celebration at the Orpheum Theatre. The Collins' award is for Residential Restoration, specifically, the exterior work. The couple is still working on the interior.

"(The exterior) is shared with the public," Erica Fox Gehrig of the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation said of the exterior's award. "It's something for the passersby."

It was also something for the neighbors.

"It used to be 'the big white house on the corner.' Now it's a showcase home," Fox Gehrig said. "It looks cared for and gives the neighborhood something to be proud of."

The Collinses moved into the home in February 2007, coming from Brooklyn, N.Y., when Jenni took a job as development director at the Madison Children's Museum. They had shopped around for an old home, with the desire to fix one up.

"I'd see lots of houses and they were too done for me," she said. "We wanted a real fixer-upper."

They found one at the corner of Garfield and Madison streets, termed "astylistic" because it combines elements of early 20th-century Arts and Crafts with late 19th-century Victorian.

The 1901 house had been a rental, but hadn't been chopped up into apartments. The woodwork was still beautiful inside, and the wainscoting on the staircase was pristine.

There was just one big thing that had to be fixed right away.

"It was plain white and it seemed all wrong to me," Jenni Collins said. "It should have had more character."

The house had a different kind of character before that, Collins said.

"We heard it was quite the party house," she said.

The unfinished basement had a dirt floor, but that didn't keep the previous residents from having a DJ booth. There was graffiti on the basement wall that the Collinses whitewashed over, but it still seeps through sometimes.

"Every once in a while, my 6-year-old will ask, 'What does this mean?' "

True to its reputation as a party house, Jenni Collins said she heard there was also a refrigerator with a keg of beer inside, tapped so it was always ready to pour.

The Collinses painted the house pale yellow with green and burgundy trim. The accents highlight other parts of the exterior that had been barely noticeable in the house's plainer form.

There were tax credits available to the Collinses because they live in a historic district. Porch renovations created some debate, as the spindles the Collinses wanted to put on would likely not have been on the original house, city planners told them. So they restored the porch's panels instead.

The big wraparound porch provides a perfect place to play for the Collins' two daughters, Leila, 6, and Josie, 3. It was probably a perfect touch for the former party house, too, but those days are long gone.

"It's the successful story of saving a rental from itself," Fox Gehrig said. "That's what you hope for in all these neighborhoods."

Jane Burns  —  5/02/2008 7:48 am