STRUCTURES : Blending the Old and New : Public tours of the Santa Paula home, built 65 years ago by architect Roy C. Wilson, will benefit the Ventura County Symphony.

Certain pieces of architecture manage to represent the past while also telling stories, by association, about their neighborhood. In Santa Paula, one such structure is the Roy C. Wilson House, this year’s Design House location, and open to public view through May. Proceeds benefit the Ventura County Symphony.

This handsome 1929 house originally stood amid 40 acres of land on the outskirts of town. While this remote neighborhood, on the road between Santa Paula and Ojai, still stands apart from Santa Paula, both in terms of topography and style, it has developed in the last decade.

No longer a private outpost, the Wilson house is now nestled among many homes, of many different architectural types. With its stone walls and composite, northern European elements, the Wilson house has a distinctive dark, rural presence. It evokes the English countryside, in sharp contrast to the Mediterranean architecture so common in our neck of the woods.

Steeply pitched cedar shake roofs give the house a warm, cloistered, protected look. To the rear, a bank of windows, dormer windows upstairs and a huge picture window, face out to the rear, and sycamore trees and open spaces.

Wilson, the first licensed architect in Ventura County, also became one of the county’s leading practitioners. For 50 years before his death in 1974, he built structures in a variety of styles and scale. By the time he built this house--out in the “country”--he was comfortably entrenched in a successful career.

A sense of local pride hovers over this house, which comes partly from the dressed, snugly fitted stones quarried from the Santa Paula Creek and Santa Clara riverbed. It is also the logical quality in a house made by and for a resident architect of note. The house also stirs up that old reflexive, and somewhat odd, reverence we Southern Californians hold for custom houses over, say, 50 years old.

Taking place every spring, the annual Design House project is virtuous in many ways. A fund-raiser for the Ventura County Symphony, the project offers area designers a public showcase, and allows voyeurs and curiosity-seekers to investigate a home--for a good cause.

In terms of architectural appreciation, the effect of a decor sampler proves less than ideal, especially when the structure is one of architectural significance such as this.

Once you get past the interiors, the underlying subtext of this year’s Design House is a celebration of one of Ventura County’s prized architects--one who chose to stay here, and has left his imprint sprinkled throughout the area, especially in Santa Paula. That part of the story can tend to get lost in the thicket of diverse design approaches scattered throughout: The interior isn’t in accord with the exterior.

But quibbles be damned, for the moment. What it may lack in continuity, the Design House gains in goodwill and public access.

Designer Jane Brooks has made of the living room a willfully eclectic blend of things classic and contemporary. It’s a collage approach echoed in the assemblage work of Santa Barbara artist Susan Tibbles, who brings together found objects, sly wit and a solid craft instinct toward a goal of unexpected refinement.

The dining room, by Bobbi Dufau and Laura Crary, spins its elaborate rural-elite scheme off of the room’s two pre-existing showpieces--a spacious picture window, and a ceiling painted in rustic hues with floral accents by the late Jessie Arms Bottke. Bottke, like Wilson, is a cultural legend of Santa Paula, who gained wider recognition but chose to hunker down in the area.

One of the subtler niches in the house is a bedroom hallway, designed by Cathleen Smith. Rather than being a declarative showpiece in itself, the hallway serves the function of a understated transition between more opulent rooms. Smith explained, “I saw that there were statements being made all around me, so I felt that this hall should be kept simple.”

But it’s not quite as simple as it initially seems. Walls are glazed with faux finish patinas and discreet streaking. An illusionistic “rug” painted on the wood floor invites double takes. Antiqued lighting fixtures and bronze railings refer to the home’s vintage appeal.

Upstairs, a narrow, window-lined space once housed Wilson’s studio, before he built a separate, free-standing studio on the property. Mary Schlunegger and Laurie Piconke Smith have created a light-filled, fantasy-themed children’s playroom, replete with a pot-bellied stove.

Tucked over in a far corner of the house is a guest bath decorated by Maryvonne Laparliere, resplendent in garden motifs and trompe l’oeil paintings of garden scenery. In those private moments, the French countryside beckons.

Though perhaps less striking at first glance than some of the other rooms in the house, the most elaborate make-over job in the project was the kitchen, extensively redone by the team of Judy Ellis, Paul Morse and Kenmere Davidson.

A wall was knocked out and an outside porch annexed to create a breakfast nook, expanding the kitchen space. An archway between the kitchen and the eating area echoes exterior arch. The plan also involved creating a new wedge-shaped pantry and a large island.

Davidson commented that “the challenge we faced was to make this look like it had been here all along. We didn’t want it to scream out ‘renovation.’ ”

Instead, it speaks softly but assertively, like the house in general.

Details

* WHAT: Design House.

* WHERE: 901 Cliff Drive, Santa Paula.

* WHEN: Open Wednesday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Friday from 5:30 to 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., through May 29.

* HOW MUCH: $15.

* FYI: 988-4100.