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Classic Conservatories and Sunrooms featured in Wall Street Journal

Date: 04/20/05

By Rebecca Lowell


It was Mrs. Howley with the candlestick in the conservatory. 


Iwona Howley isn’t a character from the whodunit board game Clue.  But she’s one of the growing number of American homeowners who are adding ornate, Victorian-style conservatories to their houses, often in place of more-traditional sunrooms.


When her deck needed to be replaced, Mrs. Howley of Holmdel, NJ, initially was going to simply add a room, just off the kitchen, with skylights.  But she says the proposals she had for the additional room looked too plain for the back of her colonial house.  Instead, she opted for a 15-foot-by-20-foot, glassed in conservatory with decorative spires.


"We have a lot of nice landscaping, and you feel like you are outside – it brings it much closer by having all the windows around," says Mrs. Howley, a mother of three, who uses the conservatory as a reading room while her family watches television in another part of the house. 


Conservatories, long popular in Europe, were originally used to protect plants from harsh winter weather.  But the ones now popping up stateside are far more accommodating to humans than to plant life – and pricier too, starting at about $30,000 for a 200-square-foot room.  The new designs are tailored to individual homes, and they feature marble floors, ceiling fans, stained glass and indoor pools.


Builders of conservatories say they’ve seen a sharp increase in demand in recent years.  Mike Alexander of four-year-old Hartford Conservatories of Woburn, Mass., says sales at his company rose about 65% this year.


Chris Edwards, whose company, Classic Conservatories, in Union, NJ, began building Victorian-style conservatories about five years ago, says the glass houses appeal to many people because, unlike boxy sunrooms or screened-in decks, they don’t clash with classic home styles. "If you have a classic colonial home and you put something that belongs on a burger bar, it’s not going to be very appealing, " Mr. Edwards says.


Mario Becchi, retired telecommunications executive, and his wife added a conservatory after moving to their home in Mendham, NJ two years ago.  "We needed a room with a lot of light; we have a lot of orchids and in the winter they need to be covered," he says.  They had wanted to add a conservatory to their previous home, but when they couldn’t decide on a design, they settled on a sunroom.  "It was a bit like being in a submarine," he says of looking not at his garden in his previous home’s sunroom.  "You see the fish through windows but you have all that structure.  You feel like you have a frame between you and the plants outside."


The new conservatory, on the other hand, is "a little like scuba diving.  You are totally emerged in the outside nature of the house without any of the constraints like walls," he says.  "You feel free like you are swimming with the fish."

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