Home Economics: A Main Line Home Tour

Take one hedge-fund-managing mom, two busy kids, a CNN anchor and a stately but disjointed Main Line house. Add one indomitable interior designer. What do you get? The casual castle for a modern family

Ali Velshi, chief business correspondent and Newsroom anchor at CNN, calls the Bryn Mawr home he shares with his two school-age stepchildren and wife, Lori Wachs, president of Center City-based Cross Ledge Investments, “my château.” He’s kidding, of course. Although the house is gorgeous, traditional, roomy and even sophisticated, it’s anything but showy or stuffy. Quite the contrary: Interior designer Barbara Bottinelli (610-331-2455, bbottinelli-153@gmail.com) gave the home’s common spaces a natural flow and refined casualness that make it accommodating for a party for 175 (as in Wachs and Velshi’s wedding) or a slumber party of four (as in a recent sleep-over for daughter Erica’s birthday). “We wanted to be able to eat take-out food and nachos in any room,” says Wachs. A royal privilege indeed.

 

Photography by Jeffrey Totaro // Styling by Barbara Botting