7 Open Open The Grand Tour Hearth Life

Magic Architecture converts a historic home into a beer hall for the Stay Put Brewery.

Lovers Unite shapes an approachable interior to support the cuisine of a fire-powered restaurant.

Stay Put Brewery

73 Rainey Street

Austin stayputbrewery.com

Austin’s Rainey Street Historic District was created in 1985 to safeguard a crop of rundown bungalows along Lady Bird Lake. The protection’s ability to stave off development was kneecapped when the area was rezoned as part of the city’s Central Business District in 2004, opening it to a wider array of uses. The cocktail bars pounced, and—writing from lived experience—by the early 2010s, it was a hotbed of conviviality.

For most of the decade, one shack was the first brick-and-mortar home of G’Raj Mahal, but the restaurant closed in 2021, leaving behind a site shorn of protected trees and with several questionable patios. A city staffer told architect Scott Magic of Magic Architecture, who renovated the building to become the Stay Put Brewery, that “this property [was] site plan exemptioned out,” resulting in an 18-month review process for just 900 square feet of new construction.

The handsome result will, true to its name, hopefully stick around for a while. The project has three parts: a beer hall in the historic 1923 house, a linear brewery box along one side of the backyard, and a restroom building that takes the place of a carriage house.

The exterior of the existing structure was restored, with the original window openings, trim profiles, columns, and roofline reconstructed from historic imagery. A teardrop siding profile milled from western red cedar was specified; left unfinished, it will silver in time.

The house’s interior was cleaned out and reset with a long wood bar divided into framed panels and edged in an expressive scroll profile. Plaster walls cozy up the room, which is capped by a dark ceiling. Seating options include grabbing a picnic table or bellying up to the bar. A new steel window system opens to the patio, where similar furniture is scattered across the back deck and mulched front and side yards. In the Cor-ten–clad brewery, seven beers are fermented for on-site consumption. Two operable windows let guests watch the brewers do their thing.

Magic Architecture’s design takes cues from the great watering holes of the Hill Country: There is a rusty rocking lounger on the porch and, inside, pools of warm pendant lights under which one can drown in cold beer. But it’s also a remnant of time gone by. 70 Rainey, a 34-story condo designed by Page, is across the street, and luxury apartments and hotels are rising nearby. More are to come: The Stay Put is surrounded by four construction cranes. It’s evidence of a booming Austin recently (and unevenly) chronicled by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker . If the city’s Elon-pilled transformation proves overwhelming, the Stay Put seems a comfortable-enough respite. One can only hope it as George Jones on the jukebox. JM

Dunsmoor

3501 Eagle Rock Boulevard

Los Angeles 323-686-6027 dunsmoor.la

Eagle Rock Boulevard climbs up from the Los Angeles River between two rippling hills and bends next to the Glendale Freeway before terminating in its eponymous neighborhood. In Glassell Park, one encounters the typical diverse stock of roadside America: car lots, strip malls, thrift stores, lines of condos, self-storage facilities, and churches of every denomination, here under the watchful eye of palm-tree sentinels.

Along the way, one passes an eclectic vision, a restored 1929 Spanish Revival building that used to house a branch bank and, later, studios for artists. Its rounded corner is accented by an ornate entryway guarded by four spiralized, Solomonic columns; above the scrollwork, each is topped by a pineapple finial. Beyond, the mottled plaster exterior is capped by a roof surfaced in terra-cotta tiles.

The scene is an ideal place for chef Brian Dunsmoor to make his mark on Los Angeles’s culinary landscape with his eponymous restaurant. Dunsmoor (the person) is schooled in the cooking of early America and built his expertise from collections of historic cookbooks, family recipes, and extensive personal writing about techniques like hand-milling grains, cooking over open flames, and pickling, among others. Previously he was the founding chef for Hatchet Hall in Culver City, an establishment that focuses on wood-fire cookery.

Dunsmoor (the restaurant) was designed by

Lovers Unite, an L.A.-based practice led by Karen Spector and Alan Koch. Its design prominently features the life of the kitchen, with an open hearth on view to guests who might feel as if they’re at a big family gathering or Sunday supper. Lovers Unite told AN the overall feeling is “gracious and hardworking.”

True to claim, the interior is warm, approachable, and textured. A background wall of new plaster and existing exposed brick is fronted by custom millwork and tables designed by Lovers Unite (and fabricated by Dusk, a local woodworking outfit). These pieces mingle with antique pieces like salvaged church chairs. Other touches establish a familiar, lived-in feeling, from custom light fixtures to paintings from the 1930s and ’40s.

A separate wine bar, finished with a walnut counter, redwood shelves, and rust-colored walls, offers a secluded second space.

The designers wanted to give the chef a “space that reflected his values of authenticity and community and also his passion.”

Like Dunsmoor’s approach to cooking, Lovers Unite engaged with “the character of the historic building in an interpretative way.” Spector and Koch likened this effort to their wider approach: They work “collaboratively with the client to unearth the personality of the project and marry materials to space and light,” which, in the end, “creates something at once familiar and new.” JM