When artist and designer Josh Young moved from Chicago to the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with his husband during the pandemic, their new home, an 1885 townhouse, oozed original charm from nearly every corner — except the fireplace mantels.
“At some point, whether it be in the late ‘90s or early 2000s, they were swapped out for faux Victorian mantels,” says Young, who runs Josh Young Design House and works as a full-time fine artist as well as a product designer and on the occasional public-facing interior design project.
One day Young went to check out a mirror from fellow Capitol Hill resident Molly Acorn. He didn’t buy the mirror — but when he got to her home, he complimented her antique mantel. Acorn, who had recently sourced, transported and installed the mantel, offered to help Young find options for his home.
For months the two worked together to source three mantels — one for his lower-level art studio and two for his parlor level. “It’s very open,” he says. “The living room kind of bleeds into the dining room, and it all can be seen from the entry vestibule. I knew when we went to go put two mantels in there they had to look like they belonged historically, but that [they also matched] in a way, which is really hard to do.
“Finally, we found a pair — one was from New Jersey, and the other was from like, Wisconsin. They’re a pretty close match,” Young says, down to the coloring of the marble, the veining, the thickness of the shelf, and the height. “We put those in and they really transformed the entire space,” says Young, who often displays his Neoclassical style on Instagram account @jyoungdesignhouse.
Soon, the mantels will make their way into his first Rizzoli book, due out in 2024. Shooting recently wrapped and the photographer and designer “thought they were original mantels to the space, which was kind of the goal,” Young says.
It makes sense: Young’s mantels are from the 1880s, the same period the home was built. And now, neighbors are catching on too. A few months ago, when Young went to look at his neighbor’s townhome — which is also mid-restoration — they mentioned Acorn, saying “there’s this amazing girl in the neighborhood who sells mantels,” Young recalls.
“She’s definitely getting around.”
Acorn’s services are niche and her customers receive fully bespoke mantel-project management.
She provides everything from sourcing to fabrication of missing pieces to design help (she is also a graphic designer), transport, contractor recommendations and more. After growing out of several storage units, she set up shop inside a local marble business called Marmara Corp., which gives her the option to custom create keystones or missing pieces, often from antique marble she’s collected over the years.
What is now a full-fledged company — Mantel House LLC — started from her own need, Acorn says. She, like Young, had moved into a Capitol Hill home with fireplaces that needed some work.
She’d seen beautiful marble mantels in Anthropologie and CB2 catalogs, or in videos of Jenna Lyons’ apartment, but “didn’t think it was attainable” for her own home, she says.
“Then, when I realized that it did match the style of home we had, which is a Queen Anne Victorian, I went into this rabbit hole of trying to find where I would find one,” Acorn, a fragrance-industry veteran, says.
She started with architectural salvage yards and Facebook Marketplace, but transporting the multiple, heavy pieces proved to be a challenge. The mantels weigh 200 to 600 pounds, and often, parts were missing.
Eventually, she found a winner from an antiques dealer via Facebook Marketplace. It came out of a New York brownstone and Acorn had it transported and installed in her living room parlor. In total, she’s installed three fireplaces for her family — two in the Queen Anne Victorian, and one in her Beaux Arts Kalorama condo.
She started helping local clients and gradually her business picked up, especially once Young’s project was posted online. “It was like everything he touched turned to gold or sold,” she says.
Now she’s had more than 150 clients, many of whom are restoring historic homes, while others are opting to add architectural interest through decorative mantels, Acorn says. Her antique mantels tend to cost between $5,000 and $10,000, and the full installation process (including mantel purchase) can range from $7,000 to $15,000, she says. New finds are featured on her Instagram account @dcmantelhouse.
Mantel House specializes in antique Victorian styles that were made in the U.S. between 1850 and 1890, often at Philadelphia Keystone Marble Works. Today’s customers are looking for shades of white, she says. “Colors don’t work.”
For new clients, she starts with the budget, size and goals (wood burning, gas, decorative), and then helps the buyer visualize the mantel in the space, often through renderings. Then she sets them up with a local installation crew.
“There’s a lot of moving parts,” Acorn says. “It’s something that’s very intimidating because marble is such a heavy but fragile material. And they’re so old — every time you move it, I say a prayer.”
Sometimes she sources mantels from people’s basements, and gently peels through the layers of grime until the original marble is revealed.
Acorn, who was adopted when she was five, says the process is often emotional and nostalgic. “You just have to see beyond the dirt and the brokenness,” she says. “I think it’s a calling. I’m taking these pieces and rehoming them, preparing them to be adopted.”
