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77? “'I-

VINTAGE HOMES Second in a Series

Restoration of “The Brass Bed

—A Victorian Adventure

9?

By Libby Demp Forrest This is a story that asks the question, ‘Can a hus-

dimc novel, it is the reallife story of Donna and John Duhwoody, who

Open Daily »-5 • Sun I pm-4 • Closed Fridays

band and wife, with kid backup, operate a Victorian guest house whjle checking in guests, doing maintenance and oversee ing their children s homework? While all this may sound like an adventure plot for a Victorian / *

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operate "The Brass Bed", a bed and breakfastinn at 719 Columbia Avenue. Cape

May.

The Dunwoodys'. with son Michael. 17. a senior at Wildwood Catholic High School, and daughter Mary Kay, 12, a seventh grader at Our Lady Star of the Sea School, moved to Cape May three years ago from Voorhees, N.J. to escape from the "urban sprawl" that was engulfing the rapidly developing community they had called home for 15 years. They fell in love with^the ancient inn (circa 1872)' during one of numerous Retreats to the seashore md decided to purchase th" old Woodbine Toilrist Home, one of the oldest continually opeuating guest houses in * Cape May, as a family venture. The Gothic Revival cottage originally had been two buildings, a m^in building (almost exactly as it appears today) and an outbuilding which housed the summer kitchen with servants quarters above. It had been built by Peter MC- < Collum, a local developer for Philadelphia businessman Lewis Dannenbaum. At some time prior to 1930 the two buildings were joined. The house remained in the Dannenbaum family until 1930 when it was purchased by a Philadelphia doctor of Homeopathic Medicine, Alexander Arthur and opened to the public as the Woodbine Tourist Home. The Dunwoodys moved lo Cape May on a blustery morning in January 1980. They shivered through their first Cape May winter in what had beed.a summer only house, a|g} with frozen hands begunMne painstaking process o|lturning the old house into the gracious hostelry it is today. During the restoratioq. the Dunwoodys discovered a treasure lode of bedroom - furniture original with the builder's and first owner’s names on shipping tags still attached to the backs. The dishes the Dunwoodys set out at breakfast during two scalings they prepare each morning for the guests are original with the house, also found in cartons when the restoration got underway. The first winter John commuted on the old 6:04 a m. train, arising at 5 a m. to reach Philadelphia and his job as a graphic designer Donna learned “basic plumbing", cleaned brass, scraped, wallpapered, cooked meals for her family. attended school

meetings and found a growing pleasure in getting to know her children better

than before.

"We have become closer as a family because of this." John Dunwftody said as he sat in the dinning room, decorated with classic plaster crown moldings. "The business has enhanced our relationship with the children — this feeds the family, in a sense, and they understand we all have to work

together.”

But the family closeness also pervades what the guests feel when they stay at The.Brass Bed, according to John. "We’ve recreated a family settihg

here," John said. "Our guests keep saying to us ‘this is just like the home my grandmother had’. They become very nostalgic and we find our guests become family to us. It’s a very gratifying feeling to get invitations from our guests to visit them in their homes." The Dunwoodys have personalized the inn by using family heirlooms, restored photos of their grand and great grand parents, a turn of the century Columbia Grafonola "wind-up" phonbgraph and 1895 upright piano. Guests frequently gather around the piano to harmonize, thumbing through the

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