Three doors down from the house I grew up in lived a family named the Schusters. It was widely accepted among the neighborhood kids that the Schusters were filthy rich and had inexplicably deigned to settle among us ruddy-faced carnies, coal miners and underaged factory workers. They had two children: Marky, who was my age, and his much older sister, Monique, who was ice-cold and glamorous—like a heroine in an Alfred Hitchcock movie. She lived with her captain-of-industry husband in a part of town populated by bajillionaires and old movie stars.  

Because Marky and I were schoolmates, I was invited to a birthday party at his house. My heart raced as I walked up the solid-gold driveway and rang the doorbell with a trembling finger. To my young mind, I was walking into Versailles, only dark and crammed with heavy carved furniture. On the way downstairs to where the other kids sipped grape Kool-Aid from gem-encrusted goblets, I passed an indoor fountain and spied the jewel in the Schuster crown: a cylindrical pendant lamp with a statue of a goddess standing in a bed of plastic ferns, surrounded by clear filaments cascading real mineral-oil raindrops. This was the kind of indulgence you could afford if you had generational wealth and a second home in Switzerland. 

For years that lamp lived in my head as a symbol of understated opulence. One day, I dared to dream, I would have a house with a lamp like this. 

On the pages ahead we are excited to share homes that are, thankfully, much more beautiful than what 9-year-old me envisioned as dreamy.

In an epilogue to the mighty Schuster dynasty saga, Marky and I drifted apart, and I was never invited back. When we were in high school, he bought a motorcycle and started smoking. His parents passed away and he inherited the house, which became a pitstop for a steady stream of go-go girls, floozies and men of questionable character. The lamp was probably tossed without a second thought. How the mighty have fallen.  

Speaking of beautiful houses, we hope to see you at the annual Phoenix Home & Garden Home Tour, Saturday, Nov. 7. For more information, visit phgmag.com/hometour.