Love at First Sight
Searching for a vacation home, this Philadelphia couple found what they wanted in Lewes
By Lynn R. Parks | Photographs by Carolyn Watson
From the May 2024 issue
Going what they call “a little stir-crazy” in the midst of the pandemic, Philadelphia residents Jack O’Brien and Jen Lutz started thinking about buying a vacation home along the Jersey Shore. They discussed their plans with friends, though at the same time admitting that “we never really loved the Jersey Shore,” Jen says.
Then their friends, originally from Wilmington, asked if they’d considered a Delaware beach town. In particular, the friends suggested checking out Lewes. That evening, Jen found a real estate listing for a home on Savannah Road. She and Jack drove down the following weekend, met with the Realtor and bought it. Settlement was in August 2020.
“I loved it right away,” Jen says. “I just got a good feeling as soon as we walked in, and I knew that it was going to be either this house or no house.”
The 3,200-square-foot home, built in 1919, is made of what is locally known as Beebe block — the same style of split-face concrete block that was used to build the original Beebe Hospital. With a large, two-story front porch, it’s also the place where neighbors gather to watch the annual Lewes Christmas parade, something the new owners were informed of when they bought it.
“We were told that whether or not we wanted to host a party, people were going to show up here to watch the parade,” Jen says. “But I love hosting parties! We’ve held the Christmas party three years in a row.”
Other than renovating the porch, which was starting to show signs of rot, the couple have made few changes to the house. They redid an attic bedroom so that it’s also a TV room, with a 27-piece sofa and chaise lounge combination. “We decided that we wanted to fill the room with a couch, and we did,” Jen explains.
They also painted the paneling and put new flooring in a basement bedroom, and repainted the dining room, changing it from light yellow to pale gray. The existing color didn’t go well with their dining room chairs, which are bright yellow, Jen says. The combo “created a harsh feeling.”
The dining room, like the primary bedroom above it, has a large southwest-facing bay window. “I love the natural light in here,” Jen says. Hanging on the opposite wall is a photo titled “Poolside Glamour,” by Slim Aarons, mid-20th century photographer of the rich and famous.
The living room, which stretches the width of the house, is also gray, though darker than the dining room. A large stone fireplace with a flagstone hearth and a bookshelf on either side takes up much of an end wall. Two small blue swivel chairs sit in front of the fireplace; opposite it is a gray sofa and chaise lounge.
Tucked in behind the living room and next to the dining room is a small foyer, off of which is the guest bathroom. The walls in the foyer are covered in painted pressed tin, the same material that covers the dining room ceiling.
Cabinets in the kitchen are painted black, and granite counters are dark gray. Over the six-burner Wolf stove is a tile mosaic featuring a Blue Hen in the center. Another Slim Aarons photo, “Saint-tropez Beach,” featuring a woman whose bathing suit bottom is a bit small, hangs over a table in the breakfast nook.
The couple’s third Aarons photo, “Sea Drive,” showing a red Amphicar being driven across Nassau’s harbor in The Bahamas, hangs in the basement bedroom. Because its windows look out on the swimming pool, and its ceiling is low, Jack and Jen call this the “below-deck room.” (“It really seems like you’re looking out of a boat,” Jen says.)
Both owners feel that there was something serendipitous, and perhaps inevitable, in their purchase of the Lewes house. “There were a lot of weird coincidences that led to us buying here,” Jack notes. “We said something to our friends, who then mentioned Lewes, when we’d never even heard of Lewes. Then it worked out the next weekend for us to come down and see it.” And to top it off, “we walked in the back door, and saw that the kitchen had the same tile that we had just picked out for our bathroom.”
“As soon as we walked in, I really felt that this was where we needed to be,” Jen adds. “And here we are.”