Though this home started life more than 160 years ago as a simple worker’s row house, the imagination of an architect and the care of subsequent owners have made this residence the subject of two magazine articles –– 80 years apart.

According to the current owner, Bill Allen of Albany, NY, the home is located in an area of older homes called the Washington Square Neighborhood Association. From about 1840 until the mid 1920s, it was a simple townhouse until owner Edgar Thorn Wheeler, and architect, began redesigning it, using stunning architectural details salvaged from homes being torn down for the New York State office building.

That inspired renaissance landed Wheeler’s home in the pages of House Beautiful in 1928. It remained Wheeler’s home until his death in 1983, passing into the hands of a neighbor who just happened to know its architectural significance just as Albany’s neighborhoods began their revival. It was kismet that found this gem passing into Allen’s hands. “I had always admired the home...a unique neighborhood...two-and-a-half story brick townhouse...sunken entry surrounded by ornamental ironwork,” he said.

Though Allen didn’t know it at the time, the building he so admired was owned by a colleague with whom he served on the city’s historic resources commission. When Allen finally was shown the house on Valentine’s Day two years ago, he fell in love with it.

As the new owner, Allen left most of Wheeler’s inspirations intact –– the opening up of two rooms and a hall into a grander living room and the preservation of details like pilasters, mantels and windows –– plus the sub-level floor decorated concrete flooring. (A coming trend, it was a concept far ahead of its time.)

He drew from Wheeler’s influence, installing a new kitchen, bath and roof and generally updating the décor, best described as an eclectic mix of period and contemporary. Allen calls it a judicious use of “stuff” his family had collected.

In a nod to most designers’ advice, Allen drew from an existing hand-painted orange window shade and the color of a family keepsake Oriental rug. Using that as the foundation palette, the rest of the color scheme would quickly evolve.

The flooring is vintage. Not only period-correct for the late Roaring Twenties, it is also a perfect backdrop for the eclectic décor. Most flooring is a dark-stained, 2.5-inch wide oak plank. The exceptions are a perfectly preserved black and white linoleum in the dining room and hallway and the decorated concrete on the semi-subterranean entry level.

One challenge was the stairway. Allen eventually went with a Ralph Lauren Gallery “Bengal” fashion as a runner and as a small area rug on the landing.

According to Larissa Boychuk, manager of Floormaster Carpet One in Saratoga Springs, the challenge of the runner was to get the exotic skin design to “center” as the stairs climb and make the turn on the pie-shaped steps, which make the turn at the top. The slightest mismatch becomes an optical illusion. The custom process involved one day of initial fitting, one day of off-site custom cutting each step to match and binding the treads and rug, and one day for final installation. Boychuk said the runner and rug were bound with black, 1.5-inch, 100 percent cotton twill in a herringbone design.