Erik Kramvik Design
interior and building design
The 1873 Martin Luther Marsh House in Nevada City, California, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of architectural merit. The building design was based on a Victorian pattern book idea from Sloan's The Model Architect published in 1852. The house itself is a formal rendition of an Italianate Villa surmounted by a hip-roofed cupola with arched windows. Very few of this type of Victorian style building survive in California. Not long after its 100th birthday the house briefly became the American Victorian Museum. It then passed again into private ownership and was turned into a bed and breakfast. During this period, maintenance of the building exterior suffered greatly.
When the current owners acquired the building in the year 2000, many aspects of the exterior were in considerable disrepair. The cupola had weathered badly with all paint flaking off and rot setting in. The roof was very old and the entire building was in dire need of a restorative paint job. After a period of assessment, restoration of the exterior began with a new roof and rain gutters. Many decorative elements such as the quoins were rotting and were replaced with new redwood duplicates of the originals. The entire building then received its first quality paint job in decades. Historical colors were used to give the building a quiet elegance in its spectacular park-like setting.