By Jane Sumner
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Updated: 10:11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 18, 2010
Published: 9:57 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 18, 2010
Roger Rasbach was green when green was just a color in the spectrum. The architectural designer was committed to conserving energy. But a Rasbach-designed house was more than an energy saver. It was a durable, livable and timeless home.
“There is a graciousness and rightness to the homes Roger designed,” says Ted Mengers, president of Pyranak Design Group in Houston, who worked with the environmental visionary. “They are a container for families, who love them and don’t want to leave.”
Certainly the owners of 22 Sugar Shack Drive in West Lake Hills loved the home Rasbach designed for them in 1963. But after almost half a century, it was time for Dr. Robert F. Ellzey, one of the founders of Austin Radiological Association, and his wife, Jan, to join a retirement community.
“This is the house that love built,” their son Peter Ellzey says of the family home he shared growing up with sister Emily. “Moving out of a house of 46 years is a rite of passage.”
With the expertise of Jeff Pierce, a real estate broker with Prudential Texas Realty, and contractor Armando Perez, Peter Ellzey, a consultant and photographer in Santa Fe, N.M., readied the 3,544-square-foot house for sale.
Never before on the market, the four-bedroom, three bathroom home in the Eanes school district is listed for $1.435 million.
A wooded retreat
Only 10 minutes from downtown Austin, its 1.59 wooded acres seem a world apart with walking trails, towering native trees and leafy, sun-dappled retreats.
“It’s a magical place at basically any time of day,” Pierce says. “It is most especially enchanting in the evenings. The wildlife — birds, deer, fox — is amazing. This is a place for someone seeking solitude and peace surrounded by nature.”
The stone-and-wood exterior harmonizes with the site. Overhanging eaves from the standing-seam metal roof shield the spacious interior from summer sun while south-facing windows catch winter rays.
The detached two-car garage boasts a half-bathroom and workshop. A separate second garage, which served as a potting shed, greenhouse and Robert Ellzey’s silversmith and lapidary workshop, has been transformed into a guest cottage with kitchen, bathroom and sleeping loft.
“It has the potential to be whatever the new owner wants,” Peter Ellzey says. “A studio. An office. A man cave. A mother-in-law house. A place to hide teenagers.”
Step through the front doors of the main house with decorative iron from Weigl Iron Works, now the site of Iron Works BBQ, and you understand what Mengers means when he says, “There’s a feng shui about Rasbach homes. You feel it when you enter.”
Window walls, tile floors and high ceilings give the open-concept living area with its wood-burning fireplace an indoor-outdoor feel. The ceiling fans overhead here and in the large master suite once cooled the Burnet County Courthouse.
The homey kitchen, with its hand-painted tiles, butcher-block island and Rasbach’s signature custom cabinet hardware, overlooks the serene natural setting.
The peaceful outdoor living spaces include wisteria-covered arbors, shaded terraces and private brick-lined patios with newly installed landscape lighting.
Craftsmanship, with closet space
Before moving to Sugar Shack Drive, the Ellzeys lived three blocks away in a house designed by A.D. Stenger where the closets were overflowing. After five years, the radiologist complained to the developer, architect and builder about the lack of storage.
“A.D. explained that in the U.S., the average family moves every seven years,” Robert Ellzey says. “That didn’t help our closet situation. We decided we needed a new home.”
For years, Jan Ellzey had saved clippings of homes she admired in House Beautiful and Better Homes and Gardens. More than half were of houses designed by Rasbach, a native of Pasadena, Calif., who had moved to San Antonio.
“When my parents approached Rasbach, his reputation was for building much larger estates in Houston and Hawaii,” including that of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser in Honolulu, Peter Ellzey says. “Their budget was much smaller. So hat in hand, they contacted him to plead their case.”
Robert Ellzey explained that he was a young doctor starting out, didn’t have much money and probably shouldn’t even be bothering him.
But Rasbach, who recently had won a prize for the best $35,000 house design, said, “Come on down, doctor.” It was a match made in designer-client heaven.
