It's Curtains for 2007 NSO Decorators' Show House

The city's premier showcase for interior design has been canceled for 2007, the casualty of a nervous real estate market, rising costs and cranky neighbors.

For 34 years, the National Symphony Orchestra Decorators' Show House has chronicled the rise and fall of the poshest Washington curtains and chandeliers, and given local designers a chance to show what they can do in the month-long event, usually set in October.

"It makes me very sad," said Barry Dixon, one of Washington's top designers, whose library at the 1990 NSO house in McLean helped launch his career. "The biggest loss is not just for the people who want to go out and see what is new in design and get ideas for their home. It's a loss for young designers trying to show how different they are from the pack. This is a rite of passage for a young Washington designer, and it put Washington in all the national design magazines."

Members of the NSO Women's Committee, which organizes and staffs the house with hundreds of volunteers, and officials at the NSO and the Kennedy Center, where the NSO performs, left up in the air whether the show house will return next year.

"For the last few years, our choices have been very limited as to how we can get this put together and have it ready to open the first week in October," said Bonnie Brose, president of the Women's Committee. A letter was sent to the committee's 700 members a few weeks ago. "I told them it is not gone forever," she said.

"We decided to take a break this year and assess the whole operation," said Marie Mattson, the Kennedy Center's vice president for development. Last year the 11-bedroom show house attracted more than 12,000 visitors; in the early 1990s it was almost twice that many. "Just like everything, expenses have increased and the operation of the house has gotten more rigorous, with more permits and community restrictions," Mattson said.

In 2004, a contract the NSO had signed on a 32-room mansion on exclusive Chain Bridge Road NW to be a show house had to be withdrawn after neighbors protested. Organizers found another house, but many communities haven't made it easy in recent years, complaining about congestion on their streets because of the show house crowds.

Show houses are a mainstay in many major U.S. cities, raising money for charities and providing local designers a stage for showcasing their talent and reaching potential customers. Usually, several dozen designers are chosen to transform assigned rooms in a grand house, using the latest color, fabric and style trends.

The Washington show house has been the major fundraiser of the Women's Committee, bringing in $252,000 for symphony educational programs last year. But that was down from $275,000 the year before. In comparison, the Kips Bay Decorator Show House in New York, known as the country's most prestigious design event, raised more than $1 million in 2006 and had 18,500 visitors.

The houses have a loyal following of design devotees eager to traipse through the homes of the rich and occasionally famous. In Washington, local designers participating in show houses have made over embassies fallen on hard times, estates once owned by Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, and one former nunnery.

Word of the cancellation has been spreading through the Washington design community, and some speculate that another group might pick up the idea to continue the show house tradition.

"It's a big-time loss because it creates a big public awareness of the different styles of designers," said Thomas Pheasant, a Georgetown decorator who is part of Architectural Digest's AD 100 list of best designers in the country and has participated in many NSO houses. Pheasant said finding a good house had been a problem.

"It's a unique thing to find the right real estate, the right scale of house with enough rooms," Pheasant said. "And it has to be sexy enough to bring in really talented people."