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"View Slideshow\n\nOn every street there is one house that invites the question, Who lives there? On this Georgetown street, this is definitely that house. Its four-story tower and mansard roof were intended for somebody important 134 years ago, and it's a house that fate wouldn't give to just anybody.\n\n\"Do you want the newspaper?\" the housekeeper asks\u2014not the usual greeting but understandable given who lives here. News seems to be breaking on every surface. A multiline telephone and a pad and pen are always nearby, ready to record any scrap of information. Somebody is always trying to reach Bob Woodward and Elsa Walsh, the first couple of Washington journalism.\n\n\"The phone in this house rings a lot,\" says Walsh. It has been ringing steadily since Woodward bought the house shortly after his famed Watergate investigation. Over time, Walsh joined the house-hold; a daughter was raised here, and a second daughter was born six years ago. Change does not come easily after so many years in a house, but sometimes it has to come.\n\nAny house built in 1868 would have a hard time keeping up with life today. There was the usual lack of light and circulation. The old kitchen was a service kitchen, and there was no place to just be a family. The stairway was sagging, the plaster was cracking, and the basic systems were huffing and puffing. Unfortunately, the interviews, dinners, book parties and receptions for dignitaries, as well as the accompanying flow of typed words, could not stop indefinitely for construction noise and dust. Woodward and Walsh were willing to move out for six months, but not one day more.\n\nWho could accept such a challenge and deliver on it? Stephen Muse, who had worked with the couple twice before, is something of the family architect. He is an intense fellow, highly reserved. \"Once you tap him,\" says Walsh, \"you find he has a raging imagination. In a way he reminded Bob of himself as a young reporter. He was always one step ahead.\" Designer Pamela Gaylin Ryder proved a good match for his intensity. As sparkling as the architect is sphinxlike, Ryder knew just what the couple wanted: \"An undecorated' house with attention to detail and all the creature comforts.\"\n\nMuse envisioned an 850-square-foot addition at the rear of the house. We all know what the word addition usually means when a 19th-century house is involved: One minute you are in the gloomy past, the next you are baking in a new sunroom, and then you are sent back into the darkness. \"Too many additions,\" says Muse, \"don't take into account the chain reaction of going back into the house.\"\n\nHere the transition is gentle and elegant. Using similar architectural detailing, the parlors and library now lead to a big family kitchen, which flows into a new sunroom, which opens to a garden skillfully landscaped by Holt Jordan to feel like an outdoor room. Upstairs, the couple gained a luxurious master bed-room with light on three sides, a garden view and a nice hush.\n\nHemlines don't change as frequently as fashions in historic preservation. The School of Slavish Re-creation and the Addition from Outer Space have lately evolved into the sentiment that additions should be \"sympathetic\"\u2014just different enough to distinguish what's old from what's new. Muse's addition uses the brickwork and mansard roof of the old house, but the windows have simpler sills and surrounds. He also slightly scaled down some elements, such as the scrolling brackets that drip down the brick walls like candle wax.\n\nInside or outside, you're never overly aware of where the old ends and the new begins. \"We call it the big picture,'' Muse says. \"An addition is successful only if the entire house is better. A house is better only if the entire street is better.\"\n\nBeing the designer of a residence this imposing has its own problems. \"This house ate color,\" says Ryder, not mentioning its healthy appetite for furniture, fabric and even chandelier chain. (The handblown lantern in the stair hall swings from three stories' worth of links.) The scale played havoc with everything, from the lighting to the way the draperies could be hung to the proportions of the furniture, much of which was custom-made to the dimensions of the rooms.\n\nThe Georgetown look often approximates some London drawing room of Pamela Harriman's, but this house is different. Ryder says, \"It has more of a California feeling\"; it's driven by color.\n\nIn the new sunroom, she had a very light hand with chamois-colored glazed walls. The double parlor, combining living and dining areas, is a variation on the same color, strengthened by two Italianate mantels she painted dull black. Its three sofas and dining table nearly defied arranging and were tried every which way before finally coming to rest. Carl Bernstein helped push a sofa or two.\n\nThe new bedroom is memorable for its cool green walls and chinoiserie tissue-linen draperies hanging from silver-leafed rods. Ryder used the same chinoiserie pattern on the bed's headboard and large, inviting pillows. Underfoot is heathery cut-velvet carpeting, which is \"indestructible,\" the designer says proudly. Walsh was not above spilling coffee on carpet samples to test its durability, not forgetting for a minute that \"we had an old dog and a young child.\"\n\nThe third-floor offices are affectionately called the factory, though interviews can happen anywhere at any time. \"There's a lot of duplication in most houses today,\" Ryder says. \"In the past every room had a purpose. Today we do the same thing at different times in different rooms.\" Here much of the action revolves around the library, which is stri\u00E9d mossy green, filled with comfortable seating and brought to life by piles of the most recent books on history and politics.\n\nEven with the tight deadlines, newspaper types apparently make great clients. \"They're decisive,\" Muse says. \"It's probably the habit of knowing that the paper has to get out.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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