This was a renovation 25 years in the making.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, who goes by Zeke, first saw this house on a picturesque street in Washington D.C.’s Cleveland Park neighborhood in 1999. He lived in the area, and he passed it every day on his way to the metro. At the time, Zeke had already renovated several homes, and this was his next target. “I love broken-down houses,” he says.

There was just one problem: It wasn’t for sale. He left a letter at the property in 2000 asking to buy the house, and again a few years later, but no one contacted him.

Before: Exterior

Fast forward nearly two decades and Zeke, a well-known oncologist, bioethicist, and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and his partner, Teasel, were looking for their next project.

She called him one day in the summer of 2019 to tell him about a house on Highland Place that was part of an estate sale. He stopped her as soon as she said the street. “I know the house—we’re going to bid,” he recalls saying.

After: Exterior

The home’s state of disrepair had only deepened over the last 20 years. “It was worse than I thought,” says Zeke. The yard was full of junk. Three gaping holes in the attic let in water every time it rained. There was no stove, and no working bathroom with a shower.

But you know what they say: location, location, location. “It’s on the finest street in Washington,” says Zeke. “It’s a two-block street. You feel like you’re in the country, but you’re less than a 10-minute walk to the metro.”

By this point, Zeke had renovated seven other houses and two offices. But after viewing the property, he knew this would be a bigger undertaking than any of his previous projects.

Zeke and Teasel spent several months visiting the property, contemplating what they wanted. Teasel had always dreamed of a library like the one in My Fair Lady, with a rolling ladder to reach the highest shelves—they own thousands of books between them—and Zeke always wanted the kind of indoor/outdoor living common in California homes, but not in the mid-Atlantic.

Before: Living Room

After: Living Room

Zeke was ready to hire a contractor he’d previously worked with, but Teasel, a meticulous researcher (she's a historian and curator) with very specific tastes, spent hours scrolling every D.C.-area architect’s website to find a firm that best matched their aesthetic. The final choice: Fowlkes Studio, helmed by principals VW Fowlkes and his wife, Catherine.

Little did they know that Fowlkes had his own history with the property. “I grew up in Washington and spent a lot of time in that neighborhood. I always thought of it as ‘the haunted house,’” says Fowlkes, who was so familiar to the street that neighbors would stop by the site during construction to share their recollections of Fowlkes as a kid.

They went through several iterations of the design before landing on the final plan. “We drove VW and Martin [Locraft, a member of the architecture team] crazy,” says Zeke. “We have very strong opinions.”

From the street, the house looks largely the same, but as soon as you enter, you see that the 1912 structure has been completely blown apart and rebuilt. The original living room, to the right of the front door, now acts as a mezzanine of sorts, offering a knock-your-socks-off view into the common spaces below. “It’s cinematic,” says Locraft. “It’s very unexpected.”

Before: Basement

Before: Kitchen

Before: Bathroom

After: Kitchen/Living/Dining Area

The team sliced off the back of the house, creating a double-height open living and dining space that combines the original basement and first floors. A 14-foot bookcase swoops around the wall, lining a hallway at one end and following the shape of the original bay window at the other until it meets a built-in bench that deposits you beside a fireplace capped with a geometric chimney.

Fowlkes describes the couple’s book collection as “the proverbial hearth,” the comforting feature that the entire space was designed around. Organized by genre, the books reveal a secret to the observant: the mystery section contains a hidden door that leads to a bedroom Zeke plans to use when he’s infirm.

It’s one element of the 4,075-square-foot house that speaks to an influential force behind the overall design: “I’m going to die in this house,” says Zeke, who famously wrote an essay about how he will refuse medical care after the age of 75. “We didn’t compromise. We went the extra mile knowing that we wanted it to be pretty close to perfect.”

The bookcase in the living room holds about 3,500 books. Several hundred more can be found in the living room, and on the floor-to-ceiling shelves in Zeke and Teasel’s offices. Mystery novels line the shelves that conceal the hidden door, hinting that there’s more than meets the eye." layout="" credit="Jennifer Hughes" photoUserId=""/>

To that end, the couple selected materials with which they have a personal connection. Jerusalem limestone nods to Zeke’s Israeli heritage, while the plain-sawn floor boards came from Vermont, near Teasel’s hometown. They also spent extra time on the details, like the copper plate covers and hexagonal cabinet pulls that reflect the shape of the chimney breast.

While the new, double-height addition is an airy, light-filled space made for entertaining—“The house is most alive when we’re having dinner parties,” says Zeke—the plan becomes more private as you rise.

Before: Upper Floors

After: Primary Bedroom

The second floor holds his-and-hers offices, along with the primary suite. Walnut panels and deep gray-blue walls give the bedroom a jewel-box feel, and large marble slabs make for a spa-like bathroom. “It’s a very materially rich moment that’s quite luxurious,” says Fowlkes, “but it’s also really comfortable and cozy.”

On the third floor, they raised the ceilings for a new guest suite with a lounge and kitchenette. The newly rebuilt stair remains open from top to bottom—a continuation of the airiness that defines the living room.

The couple have lived in the house for nearly 18 months now, and while Zeke says there are “maybe five things” that annoy him, whenever they return home, they have the same thought: This is the best house.

“Every night,” says Zeke, “we sit on our beautiful couch in front of the fireplace, surrounded by our books—that’s heaven.”

After: Backyard

More Before & After stories:

A Family of Four Gives a Derelict Catskills Farmhouse a Whimsical Revamp

Once a Dingy Garage, This Charming Casita Is a Love Letter to Texas

A Detroit Architect Brings New Life to an Abandoned Brick Bungalow

Project Credits:

Architect: Fowlkes Studio / @fowlkesstudio

Contractor: Falcon Construction

Structural engineer: Linton Engineering LLC

Civil engineer: CAS Engineering

Landscape design: Moody Graham / @instamoodygraham

Kitchen cabinetry: Christiana Cabinetry / @christianacabinetry

Appears In

Before & After: They Gave Their Dilapidated Washington D.C. Home the Renovation of a Lifetime