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Sweet & Stylish: The Cotton Candy House in Bernville Gets a Holiday Makeover

There’s nothing quite so sweet during the holiday season in Berks as the Cotton Candy House in Bernville.

Owners Wesley and Shawn RaupKonsavage have, for nearly a decade, created a winter wonderland filled with more than 50 decorated trees, vintage ornaments and décor and loads of lights shining from the inside and on the exterior as well.

But, most importantly, they’ve restored a century-plus-year-old cherished borough residence to both bring back memories for adults and create new memories for the wide-eyed children who visit.

Many may think the annual holiday open houses — and elaborate Halloween displays — go back many, many years. In fact, the couple has only owned the Colonial revival house since 2015.

Both men hail from beyond Berks: Wes from Tamaqua, Schuylkill County, and Shawn from tiny Paxinos, Columbia County. Together for 27 years and married for the past 11, they were living in Pine Grove when they decided it was time for a move. The northern part of Berks was their target area with a goal of a less-than90-minute work commute for each. Wes is assistant professor at the Department of Pharmacology at the Penn State Neuroscience Institute Center for Cannabis and Natural Product Pharmaceuticals in Hershey. Shawn is a partner in a McDonald’s franchise in Pottsville.

The couple’s goal was to find an old house they could restore and decorate, and one large enough to display their considerable collections of antiques and collectibles.

Calling It Home AND LIVING HISTORY

After viewing a dozen properties, the imposing five-bedroom, 3,000-plus-square-foot brick house on Main Street in the Borough of Bernville checked all the boxes.

“I think we were just bowled over when we walked in this house,” says Wes. “It had everything we were longing for, and there was so much character.”

The circa-1917 structure served as the parsonage of St. Thomas Church just a block up the street. The Rev. Dr. Frank William Ruth, Sr. was instrumental in its construction and made sure there was plenty of space for him and his wife and their six children. Indeed, while it was being built, congregants supplied everything from buckets of nails to wood to slate for the house after Ruth requested donations. That letter of solicitation is in the church archives.

For Shawn, the current mayor of Bernville, and Wes, a former councilman, the legacy of Ruth continues to inspire.

He served the church from 1918 to 1962. By 1931, after serving as a Penn-Bernville School District board member, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and six years later to the state Se

hawn says Ruth’s devotion to Bernville is evident in the fact that the borough still exists. Indeed, in the 1960s when early plans for Blue Marsh Lake included taking parts of the borough via eminent domain, Ruth spoke out in opposition and got key decision makers to share his position.

Visitors to the house still recall the Ruth era, regaling the Raup-Konsavages with memorable anecdotes.

“We’ve been told Rev. Ruth never locked the doors,” says Shawn, “and it was not uncommon for his family to come downstairs in the morning and see someone sleeping on the living room sofa.”

One Ruth grandson told the couple he was so grateful to see the home restored in his lifetime.

A local resident, Betsy Reifsnyder, retired from the Library of Congress, presented the couple with a sizable envelope filled with documents about the house. Among those was a remarkably clear early photograph showing clearly the original side porch and a hitching post. While the porch remains an architectural highlight of the home, the hitching post had disappeared into time. Solution: an antique hitching post was purchased and installed where the original once stood.

Updating THE PAST

To be clear, the couple is the most recent of several owners since the church sold the property. They bought the house from a flipper who had purchased it from an owner who was a hoarder. As a consequence, the home was both dilapidated and in total need of some major structural and cosmetic upgrades.

Wes and Shawn give kudos to the flipper who, by and large, respected the house’s history. Some rooms were restored to original dimensions with old partitions removed. The kitchen was modernized. The entire interior was painted a uniform white.

Among the many priorities of the couple were restoring the door and window trims to their natural wood finishes, replacing “boxy” modern light fixtures with antique ones matching the time and style of the house and reinstalling push-button switches. They also pulled up the carpeting throughout to restore the original pine floors.

Truth be told, the prevalence of stunning antiques, from chandeliers and sconces to wall hangings to furnishings, to statuary, to crystal and porcelain collections eclipses the white walls.

The couple is always on the hunt for antiques.

Home SWEET HOME

Indeed, the house got its nickname from a Bucks County antiques dealer as a result of one of their forays.

A 2019 local news article noted Wes’ and Shawn’s excursion to a Quakertown store in search of period-compatible lighting fixtures. When they noted their address, the shop owner was happily surprised.

“Oh, you live in the ‘Cotton Candy House,’” he responded. Relatives of the merchant, who had visited the couple’s home for its Halloween scene, had enjoyed the hosts’ treat of spun sugar and referred to the house as such.

The Raup-Konsavages loved the moniker, and it has become part of the Bernville vernacular.

Entering the front door, an antique telephone operator’s stand bids welcome. The hallway easily accommodates it, which is good as Shawn says it is too heavy to move anywhere else. When they posted a photo of it, a responder commented with his ancient phone number.

Immediately to the right is the open dining room/kitchen space. Dominating the room is an enormous oak china closet — nearly floor to ceiling in height and perhaps seven feet long — which houses the couple’s extensive collection of Jadeite. A human-size nutcracker stands guard while his smaller comrades take their places atop the case interspersed with greens, lights and other whimsy.

The dark red/brown-hued living room at the front of the house leads into that dining/kitchen space. Just in these rooms alone, there are half a dozen or more decorated trees. There are also garlands on the doorways and atop the cabinets as well as wooden German Christmas arches and pyramids on a Hoosier cabinet countertop.

Rooms WITH VIEWS

The holiday open house usually boasts four decorated first-floor rooms, each with a theme. There have been guided tours for the second and third floors, which include four more themed rooms.

In all, Wes and Shawn decorate at least 62 trees, ranging in height from two to nine feet. The trees are shrink-wrapped to facilitate storage in what the men call “the Christmas attic,” one of two spacious third-floor rooms.

The winding open staircase, with its tricky steps and four landings, is also decked out for the season. Traversing them can be challenging.

“This house definitely requires sobriety,” says Shawn with a smile.

At one of the landings is a Hanukkah display replete with a Menorah that is lighted in appropriate tradition and many Star of David- and dreidelinspired ornaments. A blue gossamer ribbon intertwined with a greenery garland ties the elements, including children’s books and caricatures, together. Nearby, a blue-and-whitetrimmed tree reflects the colors of Israel. 

“Neither of us is Jewish, but we know this is meaningful to many visitors,” Wes says.

Each of the trees that comprise most of the holiday décor are specially themed. The ornaments are individually wrapped at the end of each season and stored in labeled boxes along with thousands of objects to facilitate the annual decorating process.

Shawn’s favorite tree is accessorized with ornaments in honor of the couple’s travels.

“Each year Wes gets about 10 glass ornaments that commemorate each year’s adventures,” says Shawn. One of those ornaments, a small fire truck, is a reminder of a Valentine night’s stay in a hotel that caught fire.

Wes’ favorite tree is the Victorian-themed one he decorates with Shawn’s mom, Peggy Angelo, who lives with the couple.

“We do this together every year and have so much fun, including porcelain doll and cherub pieces,” he says. 

One entire room is an homage to a vintage five-and-dime store. Century-old oak and glass display cases boast old toys, old candles (think the choir kids, Santa, snowmen and carolers of Baby Boomers’ childhoods), holiday dishes, Shiny Brite boxed ornaments and even some clothes. Price signs show how times and costs have changed!

“This room, especially, gets people to share their stories,” says Wes.

In another room, Santa appears to be sleeping after his long winter’s night, his fur-trimmed red suit slung to the side of the bed.

Sentimental TALES

Among those stories: a recently widowed dad and his daughter said they weren’t really going to decorate and celebrate the season after their loss but changed their minds after visiting. The same went for a young couple marking their first holiday season together who hadn’t seen the value in celebrating but left the open house intent on getting a tree and decorations.

Wes and Shawn have invited the community near and far to visit and enjoy both the Christmas and Halloween decorations. It is the day after Halloween that the holiday decorating begins in earnest. It is not until Valentine’s Day that everything finds its way back to carefully packed and labeled storage, an effort that starts January 6, or the day after Epiphany.

But, during Covid, the holiday open house came to a halt. For two years, they reinvented the celebration by asking children to send their Christmas wishes to a special mailbox outside the home, which still boasted exterior decorations and animated scenes in the windows, including the third-floor dormer windows.

The couple also reinvented themselves as Santa’s elves, donning special safety vests labeled “North Pole Delivery Service” and fulfilling the children’s wishes by visiting more than 120 houses after nightfall in Berks, Schuylkill, Lancaster and Chester counties.

In the 2020 and 2021 seasons, Shawn and Wes made sure each child penning a letter received a certificate from Santa, candy, a glass ornament and an orange.

“We’d deliver in the middle of a night decked out like elves and carrying a flashlight,” says Shawn. When they were in neighborhoods with several houses to visit, word got out, and they’d see children watching in awe from the windows.

“At some point, we needed to do this for us, for the Christmas spirit,” he says.

The contents of some of the letters still elicit strong reactions.

“One child’s wish was, ‘I just want Mommy and Daddy to stop fighting,’” says Shawn, eyes tearing up at the recollection.

Last year, in response to concerns from their insurance broker about so many folks traipsing through their property, Shawn and Wes established a nonprofit to insure the events they sponsor on and off site.

While the option of an open house this year remained uncertain for several reasons at BCL press time, the couple will still be extensively decorating both the exterior and interior of their home. A life-size vintage Frosty the Snowman will be waving to passersby from the side porch while scores of strands of lights on garlands and in shrubbery and trees along with the window scenes make the Raup-Konsavage home a Bernville destination.

The couple, devoted as residents and as public servants to their adopted home borough, have given back in many ways, from the Halloween and Christmas efforts to sponsoring movie nights in the park.

“We started this (holiday open house) two months after we moved in,” Shawn says.

“At first, it was just to share our home with family and friends and maybe a guest of theirs,” Wes says. “We’re so glad to have done this. It is the beauty of Christmas to share.”