Dumpster door inspires Powelton makeover

JOHN JUNIUS TAYLOR, a second-generation cabinetmaker and woodworker in Powelton Village, was walking down Hamilton Street near 35th two years ago, when he saw a beat-up Victorian door in a dumpster.

"It needed some love," Taylor said dryly. And he suddenly needed a walnut-panel Victorian door.

Last week, as a result of what he did with that door, Taylor won a 2014 Storefront Challenge Award from the Community Design Collaborative and the city's Commerce Department for "outstanding storefront facade improvements."

Back in 2007, Taylor purchased the shuttered Mount Ephraim Christian Church on Lancaster Avenue near 38th Street and turned it into a workshop, where he and fellow-woodworker Don Sullivan make custom cabinetry and fine-art display furniture.

The building's boarded-up facade needed more love than the door did.

"It was kind of an off-red beadboard," Taylor, 36, said. "It made the building look abandoned, like somebody sold drugs there."

That wasn't the look Taylor wanted for his workshop and his home above it in the neighborhood he'd always loved.

"I grew up three blocks away on Baring Street," he said. "My folks still live down the block. My sister lives down the corner. I know all the neighbors. So it's kind of cool, living and working here."

Artists were moving into Powelton Village and revitalizing Lancaster Avenue. Taylor wanted to be part of that.

"The original Victorian door drove the aesthetic design of the whole front," said Taylor, who refurbished it with Sullivan, added glass panels, then made three large walnut-framed windows to turn the formerly boarded-up eyesore into a beautiful facade.

Taylor's wife, artist Kristen Neville Taylor, helped with the design and, Taylor said, used her "electrical savvy" to illuminate the front with recessed lighting.

Gus Jardel, a friend and an arborist, cut down an old walnut tree that Taylor used to play under in his family's yard, and milled it into boards that Taylor used to make a second door, this one leading to the living quarters upstairs.

Taylor built a bench out of old signage and put it out front between two urns planted with arborvitae.

"We were thrilled when the arborvitae survived the harsh winter," Taylor said. "But come spring, the urns grew legs and walked."

Even treeless, the storefront sparkles. "It's cool to help change the landscape on Lancaster Avenue a little," Taylor said.

Then, he returned to making a Shaker-style walnut credenza, and looking forward to working with his dad at the University of Pennsylvania's Arthur Ross gallery, where his father has crafted installations for 40 years.