By Bill Dowling

Apr. 8, 2015: NBC New York's Open House will feature the Bronxville home at 34 Prescott Avenue on its Sunday, April 19, show on Channel 4 at 8:30 am. The crew was here on March 18 filming the show, which is hosted by Bronxville resident Sara Gore.

The featured house is owned by Elena Agostinis Patterson, prominent local painter and sculptor, owner of local boutique Chaos, and wife of racing driver Mark Patterson.

"Bronxville has played an important part in the lives of our family, and Mark and I will miss it," Patterson said. Their historic (1898) Hilltop house, which contains many of her paintings and art installations as well as her husband's collection of sculptures, was put on the market recently by Bill Dowling of Julia B. Fee/Sotheby's International Realty.

"Walking through their house is like going through an art gallery," said Dowling. Their home includes Elena's paintings, sculptures, and art installations, as well as their collection of important bronze sculptures and paintings. Elena and her husband, Mark, are from South Africa, and their collection reflects that heritage as well as their travels to India, Mexico, Ethiopia, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Morocco.

Their house was designed by William Bates, who designed many Lawrence Park Hilltop houses for artists in the 1890s. The Pattersons were inspired by the scale and playfulness of Bates's designs. After buying the house in 1993, they embarked on a creative interpretation of Bates's work, first in the existing parts of the house and later adding a new two-story tower, a kitchen extension, and a lower driveway with a two-car garage and a patio on top.

"We think we have Bronxville's most colorful home," Elena said recently.

Elena is well known for her project to repaint the commercial buildings in Tannersville, NY, in her bold colors. The result was an economic rebirth of what was a remote, sleepy village in the Catskill Mountains. The story and success of this project has been widely publicized and has twice been featured on the Today Show. It has also been reported in the New York Times and other news media.

In addition to Elena's boutique in Bronxville, she opened Chaos in Manhattan and recently opened a contemporary art gallery, "Say What?" in Tannersville. Elena holds a BA in graphic design from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and all of her projects reflect that training and discipline. 

Pictured here: Elena and Mark Patterson's home in the snow on Prescott Road.

Photo courtesy Bill Dowling