Home Matters, Urban Style

Couple’s love of collecting transforms Mill Hill townhouse into charming setting

By: PAT SUMMERS

Staff photo by Mark Czajkowski

Georgia and Robert Leone spotted this sofa at a tag sale; they liked its hand-carved frame and later gave it new life with sumptuous brown velvet. It serves as a focal point in the living room.

   GIVEN surroundings that include a picturesque creek, a park, an urban square complete
with sculpture and a skyline, what more could one wish for? How about a historic house interestingly and beautifully
furnished, in the middle?
   That would be the South Montgomery Street home of Georgia and Robert Leone, in the Mill Hill
section of Trenton. From the outside, the three-story brick townhouse is easily distinguished by plant greenery
filling its tall first-floor windows. It takes much longer to count the ways the inside is distinguished.
   An overall impression would have to include myriad pieces of interesting and often large
furniture, either antique or reproduction; area rugs on wide floor boards; unusual and ornate lighting fixtures;
and custom cherry cabinetry in selected rooms including kitchen and bath. On reflection, it could be considered
"harmoniously eclectic."

Staff photo by Mark Czajkowski

Dining room details the Leone’s "love" include high ceilings with ceiling medallions and crown molding.

   "We’ve been shopping for this house for the past 28 years!" Mrs. Leone exclaims, referring
both to the length of their marriage and their joint collecting. Their approach, they agree, has always been
buy it now and worry about where it use it later. This home, which they’ve occupied for less than two years,
showcases both new pieces and furnishings they brought from previous residences — a house on five acres
in Hunterdon County, and before that, in Lambertville.
   Mrs. Leone, now with the Princeton office of Weichert Realtors, has a background in interior
design. She often opted for art in lieu of her commissions — a couple Dali prints are examples —
and Mr. Leone has been a hairstylist at E.Y. Statts, on Moore Street, Princeton, since the early 1960s. The
parents of two, a son, Mario, and a daughter, Angela, who plans to marry next July, the Leones decided about
five years ago they wanted to be in an urban area. At that point, Mr. Leone says he had had it with outside
maintenance and no longer wanted a house with exterior walls. Liking "the whole aesthetic of a neighborhood
like this," as well as "all the positive, good things happening in the city," they looked for more than two
years to find this place. Now, the Mill Hill Playhouse is just yards from their front door, and the recently
restored War Memorial, as well as numerous restaurants and galleries, are just a stroll away.
   Besides the notable setting and the happy welter of things happening all around them, Mr.
Leone says, "We got real lucky. This house has a lot of original details along with modern updates." It starts
with the high ceilings and tall windows they both "fell in love with," and includes plaster walls and ceiling
medallions, crown molding, and Mercer tiles lining the vestibule — sharing pride of entry-place with a
pair of griffins the couple had painted inside the front door.
   To the right of the entrance hall, the living room faces the street, the square, the creek.
The vintage Herman Miller rocker covered with zebra fabric is his; the elegant, gilt-framed settee is hers.
Across a square glass coffee table, company takes a seat on a cushy brown velvet sofa they "resurrected" after
first spotting its hand-carved frame. They bought it for about $50, and now, "$2,000 later."

Staff photo by Mark Czajkowski

From the outside, the Leone’s three-story brick townhouse is easily distinguished by plant greenery filling its tall first-floor windows.

   Which leads to one other ingredient of the Leones’ home: "the vision thing." They can look
at something and see it in another incarnation. Faced with the same strange-colored room or flea-market sofa,
most of us would never work the same magic. That the walls on this floor are appealingly neutral is testament
to Mrs. Leone’s point: "We wanted a simple backdrop. This (she gestures to the handsome archway nearby) doesn’t
need further embellishment, and we didn’t want to see a paint job!"
   Two newly acquired foo dogs spar on the mantel between a Chinese vase and a bronze sculpture
and beneath a framed Dali print, while a vibrant kimono-shaped wall hanging dominates another wall. One room
back, the dining room table is set with unmatched pastel Depression glass and ornate silver around a striking
white floral arrangement. In two corners, figurative bronze sculptures are displayed on handsome burl stands.
   Between here and the kitchen, which overlooks the two-tiered terrace and then the Mill Hill
Park, lies the family room. A cozy space, its feathery high sofa is flanked by French art deco floor lamps
in brass, with cut-work metal shades; a chic French marble-topped pastry table substitutes for a coffee table
on the way to a massive storage chest and entertainment center. Family photographs surround the gas fireplace,
and "Flora," the family’s imposing harlequin Great Dane, might turn up as a live, and large, accent. Handsome
cherry cabinets define the kitchen, whose window and door both access the two-level terrace ("We’re not big
into decks," Mrs. Leone says. "So we call it a ‘terrace,’ and that’s OK," jokes her husband.). Still a work
in progress, the ceiling light fixture that will replace a few track lights is gorgeously, grotesquely gilt-y
even before it works. "I looked at it and I said, ‘Perfect!’ " Mr. Leone recalls of his purchase from
a rummage sale at St. Paul’s Church in Princeton.

Staff photo by Mark Czajkowski

The second floor of the Leone house accommodates a master suite of bedroom and study, both with ceiling fans and tall windows.

   Whatever it’s called, the terrace is charming, even in early March, with bare, sculptural
wisteria vines climbing, encircling and softening its wooden frame. Imagine this in spring time, green and
flowering, with the nearby Assunpink flowing gently. From the upper level, the park makes a lush greensward,
and the buildings ringing it — the new Marriott, state office structures, even a parking garage —
lend perimeter interest.
   This terrace-garden will be among those featured in the 11th annual Mill Hill Garden tour
on Saturday, June 8. Between noon and 6 p.m., visitors can see — and doubtless savor — some 20 houses
and historic sites. This is considered the "sister tour" to the Mill Hill Christmas House tour, each year on
the first Saturday of December.
   Mill Hill, now a neighborhood of gas lit streets and 19th century row houses, began in 1679,
when a band of Quakers built the first grist mill on the banks of the Assunpink Creek. It is also the site
of the Second Battle of Trenton, and General Washington, whose figure stands in the square, met with his generals
in nearby Douglass House. Extensive and enlightened redevelopment efforts in the 60s began the turn-around
that led to today’s Mill Hill, a registered historic landmark area.
   The second floor of the Leone house accommodates a master suite of bedroom and study, both
with ceiling fans and tall windows, and a bathroom accented with more cherry cabinets and plants. A trompe
l’oeil treatment is planned for one wall here, along with repainting the other two rooms, now in a shade that
could kindly be called "terra cotta" or "coral," but that the Leones call, unenthusiastically, "orange." The
new-color chips readily at hand are proof that it’s going to go. Two bedrooms, with an additional bathroom
coming, occupy the third floor.
   All this — a marvelously furnished and wholly appealing home — in under two years.
Who can say what the Leones will have wrought by next September, their second anniversary in Mill Hill?