Featured Homes
Downtown Girls
A city known for its antique shopping and federal penitentiary is being redefined by hip, young professionals. One shows off her artistic flair in a historical building.
BY
Andrea Darr
PHOTOGRAPHY
Alistair Tutton

There’s new excitement in downtown Leavenworth as a young generation of leaders infiltrates the city council, chamber board and other organizations bent on improvements, including new sidewalks and benches downtown and a park by the river. Meredith Timmons is one who is making a difference. “I’m passionate about making this city a better place, but not only that, I want everyone to know how great it already is,” she says.

So she started with a place where she could make the most immediate impact: her own home, which was featured on a recent homes tour promoting downtown living in Leavenworth. She bought a 1920s-era building on Delaware Street and laid roots on the second floor while maintaining a two-car garage and art studio on part of the first floor, renting out the majority to her friend Misty Bull, a portrait photographer. The rest of the storefronts along the street offer antiques, dance lessons, live theater, pottery, music, coffee and ice cream, and almost all of the owners know who she is. “I really like knowing people when I go places. And everyone knows my daughter. She isn’t going to be able to cause any trouble when she’s a teenager,” Meredith says.

As a single mother to Olivia, 3, and a creative personality type, Meredith has swathed her 2,500 square feet of living space with vibrant colors, murals and patterns to reflect the fun living environment she has chosen for her family of two. The bottom half of the hallway is red with a black chair rail, the TV room is orange and the balcony is brown. Meredith’s bedroom is dark blue and her daughter’s is bright green.

“I’m addicted to color and I like to rearrange things. Come back in a month and it will look totally different,” she says. “I like to look at something for awhile then decide what to do with it. Once I know, I jump right in and do it.”

Her capricious attitude is evident from the stairwell, where a mural of a tree transitions from spring to fall to winter, to the fire engine red cabinets in the ‘party kitchen.’ (She has a second kitchen for cooking left over from joining what were previously two apartments.) It doesn’t appear that Meredith has a favorite color, rather that color itself is favored. The living room is a mix of sunny yellow, apple green and turquoise. ‘Accent wall’ has no meaning to her because she says it’s more interesting to have multiple accents in one room. She also enjoys stripes and geometric shapes, so she layers them onto the walls.

Texture adds to the mix. Corrugated metal acts as room partitions in some areas of the loft, juxtaposed with exposed brick. Meredith takes inspiration from the simplest things like Boulevard Beer boxes and old advertising signs that have humor or make good conversation pieces. Her furnishings are an eclectic bunch, from antiques to makeshift items, such as a desk comprising two file cabinets for legs, a painted wood top and two whiskey boxes propping up a second level.

Emphasizing that the design of her home is a continual process, she talks about her current plans, which include renovating the back stairs and garage and making a rooftop deck, perhaps reinforced for a hot tub and a sandbox. She already gets plenty of use out of the front balcony, where she and Olivia have prime seating for parades and people-watching.

“I want my home to be unexpected. It speaks to who I am and what I can do,” she says. “I would never want anything that looked too much like a catalog.”

To learn more about Leavenworth’s renewal plans, visit www.leavenworthmainstreet.com, www.leavenworth-lansingareachamberofcommerce.com, and www.lvks.org.