Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/48190
IN GLOUCESTER, A HOUSE ONCE OWNED BY A HOLLYWOOD HEAVYWEIGHT NOW STANDS AS A STORYTELLER WITH UNENDING CHARM AND CHARACTER. PLACE LIKE HOME NO By Regina Cole PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATT KALINOWSKI 150 " Even before I stepped inside, I felt welcomed and embraced by the house," Kathy Hamilos says. "As soon as I saw it, I said, 'That's it!'" Hamilos was house hunting in the Cape Ann area for some time before a realtor took her to the stucco-and-stone house built by Hollywood royalty in 1910. Rising out of an enormous out- cropping of granite ledge at the 13th hole of the Bass Rocks Golf Club, the house commands one of Gloucester's best views. But a superb East Gloucester location and windows gazing out at the Twin Lights on Thatcher Island, Good Harbor Beach, and Bass Rocks were not this house hunter's pri- mary considerations. "I knew I did not want a new house, but rath- er something with bones and history," she says. "I wanted a garden and a butler's pantry." She found it all, and she created a beauti- ful garden to boot. Another creation lifts her home from wonderful to spectacular: The din- ing room walls boast a mural painted by Cape Ann artist Ken Knowles that depicts famed local landmarks while it follows the course of a late afternoon into night. The mural has be- come the grace note to a house that already had everything else going for it. It is also deep- ly meaningful: In 2006, when the homeowner and her husband remarried after their divorce, their friend, Knowles, painted it as a wedding gift. (See sidebar.) The history of Hamilos's dream house be- gins with its first owner, H.B. Warner. Said to be the brother of Jack, the most famous of the four siblings who founded Warner Brothers Studios, H.B. was a renowned silent film actor who successfully made the transition to "talk- ies." Rarely a leading man, but always busy with acting work, Warner was hailed as the REFLECTING POOL A house designed in 1910 reflects in the water of a recently installed pool. Though built a century apart, house and pool suit each other and their environment. Like the house itself, the pool was designed to look like an organic element in the surrounding granite.