At home with Pervis and Timi Ellison

Ebony, August, 1998 by Laura B. Randolph

THE first time she saw it, Timi Ellison says she almost fainted from shock. She had to be dreaming, she thought. Or else her then-boyfriend, NBA star Pervis Ellison, was playing a joke on her. A very bad joke.

It just didn't make any sense. There was no way, Timi reasoned, that Pervis could actually live here. Not in the --how can we put this kindly? unassuming, unfurnished, unbelievably modest house she found herself standing in after one of their dates.

"It looked like the Addams Family house," Timi says today of the split-level, wood-framed residence in Ft. Washington, Md., where her husband of four years, Boston Celtics forward Ellison, lived when he was a bachelor playing for the Washington Bullets (now Wizards).

To see the house now--a grand, gorgeous, you-have-to-stop-and-stare structure recently appraised at more than $2 million--it is hard to believe that this very house, with its soaring ceilings and take-your-breath-away view, is the same house that sent Timi running to the phone to call her mother the first time she saw it.

But, believe it or not, it is.

And even Pervis admits that, before the couple contracted the talents of a primarily African-American team of architects and builders that transformed his bohemian bachelor pad into the house of their dreams, Timi's "Addams Family house" comparison wasn't far off the mark.

"The home was terrible," admits Pervis, who says he bought the house in the suburbs of Washington, D. C., eight years ago because he was so in love with its view of the Potomac River. "I grew up on the water in Savannah, Ga., and, as a kid I used to go to the beach all the time. That's probably why I find the water so calming and relaxing. Whenever I would come home from games, it was like being on vacation right at your house. Plus, I was single at the time, so I figured I could live in the house even though the biggest room in the whole place was the size of a large closet."

Not that room size, or anything else about the house, bothered Pervis. On the contrary, though he was earning millions of dollars, he was quite content to call the house home. For one thing, he says, he didn't have to worry about messing anything up. For another, he could do whatever he wanted to there. And that included having his fishing buddies over and dragging the catfish they caught out back across the living room floor.

"I had a huge 72-inch television and a Nintendo sitting right in front of it," Pervis says, laughing at the way he lived in his bachelor days. "I didn't have any furniture, just these two lawn chairs for my playing partner and me, and I was as happy as could be. None of my friends could believe it. They all had these fabulous new homes, but I didn't care because I always had the best lot and the best view."

Timi, however, was far from pleased t about Pervis' living arrangements. And, lot or no lot, view or no view, she let him know his days of living there were numbered. "Once we got married," Timi says, "I said, `That's it. Let's go. Let's sell the house.' I just didn't see any potential in it."

Timi didn't, but builder John Owens and artist/architect Maurice Jenkins did. And together they helped Pervis and Timi see it, too. Hired to help the couple get the place in shape to sell, Owens and Jenkins ended up showing Pervis and Timi how they could turn Pervis' pre-wedding Addams Family house into the house of their dreams; how, with Pervis' and Timi's ideas and imagination and Owens' and Jenkins' eye and expertise, they both could win: Timi could have the modern, spacious, stunning home she wanted and Pervis could have his spectacular waterfront view. "This was an `if you can dream it, we can do it' project," says Jenkins.

What made this difficult was that the house was as wide as the surrounding land permitted, and building codes and regulations forced the architect and construction team to work within the existing structure.

Once Owens and Jenkins had the couple convinced of the enormous potential of the house, dream is exactly what Pervis and Timi did. Sometimes they would call Jenkins from the road and tell him about ideas they had cooked up together or seen in a magazine. It was Owens and Jenkins' job to make sure those ideas were executed in a way that would accommodate Pervis' 6-foot-11 frame. And that, admits Pervis, was no small task. "Everything in this house had to be custom-made," he says.

In addition to finding a way to accommodate Pervis' height and incorporate all of his and Timi's ideas, Jenkins says there was something else of critical importance to the architectural design and construction team.

"We wanted to create an architectural style and motif unique to the African-American experience," he says. "We wanted cool, modern architecture that flowed as naturally as a jazz musician plays his notes. We wanted to eliminate the traditional formal movement of rigid, hard linear forms that are prevalent in typical colonial architecture."

While the entire house reflects that vision, the best, most stunning, example of it is the grand room. Located on the first floor, it features 20-foot-high ceilings, a 9-foot-wide skylight and a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows that looks out on the water. In the center of the windows is the African symbol for peace and justice. Even now, say Pervis and Timi, the room still has the power to take their breath away.