Raised in an eastern Pennsylvania coal town, Christine Donohue came to Pittsburgh in the late 1970s to study law at Duquesne University. She settled into an apartment on Howe Street and soon became aware of the picturesque Tudor-style house nearby, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Beechwood Boulevard.

"Within three months I knew I wanted to buy this house," she said. "It seemed to be utterly preposterous at the moment -- a first-year law student working as a clerk."

But the law student became a trial lawyer who socked away her paychecks, and on Oct. 20, 2003, she walked away with the keys to 6568 Fifth Ave.

"The very first time I saw it, I thought it was part of Mellon Park, that the Mellons lived here," she said. "It just resonated the feeling of Pittsburgh -- elegant and sturdy."

Ms. Donohue, who was elected a Superior Court judge last year, learned from a deed search that she is the home's ninth owner, not a Mellon among them. It's the flagship house on tomorrow's Shadyside House Tour.

Designed by Maximilian Nirdlinger, the rusticated stone and half-timbered house was built in 1920 by William F. Hoffman for lumber and coal dealer Jacob Louis Kendall, whose initials flank a powder horn painted on a leaded-glass window in the conservatory.

Mr. Kendall, with access to the finest hardwoods, and Mr. Nirdlinger, adept in a number of historical styles, clearly intended to sweep visitors off their feet the moment they stepped inside. From the outside, the two-story entrance hall, a castellated tower, gives the house an aura of antiquity, as if it had been added on to over many years. Inside, the hall is a stunner in heavily carved quarter-sawn oak, with a black-and-white marble floor and expansive leaded-glass windows with stained-glass panels depicting Western Pennsylvania's Colonial history. One seems to have been inspired by the life of Indian captive Mary Jemison.

Described in his Uniontown newspaper obituary in 1928 as a self-made man, Mr. Kendall grew up on a Somerset County farm and maintained his rural roots; the family's summer home, Kendallwood, was near Meyersdale. The Kendalls, who had four children, lived at the Hotel Schenley for at least 10 years before moving into the Fifth Avenue house, which the July 1926 issue of the Pittsburgh architectural journal Charette called "one of the best houses in the city."

For all its grandeur, the house exudes a cozy comfort. The downstairs rooms are full of natural light; the walls are warmed by oak and walnut paneling and in the living room retain their original painted canvas decoration.

If the house seems little changed from the Kendalls' tenure, a little history puts things in perspective. When the Junior League staged its Designers' Showhouse there in 1997, it rescued water-damaged plaster walls throughout the house from the edge of ruin. The dining room's plaster ribbed ceiling was recast, restored and glazed.

While previous owner Joedda Sampson and Ms. Donohue banished the Showhouse excesses, the house retains some of the more livable, even lovable, designer features, including the satiny padded fabric wall covering in the dining room and the lemon tree mural on the back staircase.

Ms. Donohue put her own stamp on the house, but thoughtfully not in a permanent way, filling the long hall between the living and dining rooms with a series of paintings depicting the women of Homer's Odyssey. She sees in them a metaphor for the journey that brought her to this house.

Outside, she replaced the small canopy and concrete steps at the front door with limestone steps and pillars and an ample wood and copper roof, all designed for her just after she bought the house. It took several years to save the money to have it done, along with the restoration of the fountain opposite the front door and the creation of a limestone courtyard surrounding it. The limestone came from the patio that surrounded the outdoor swimming pool, which she saw as inappropriate and filled in to create a lawn. She also replaced the pot-holed asphalt driveway with a handsome aggregate concrete one.

The 30th annual house tour, self-guided and sponsored by Shadyside Action Coalition, also features seven other homes, including a 1928 Beaux Arts house on Fifth Avenue and a 2006 house on Filbert Street that incorporates green building techniques.

It's a brave thing, opening your house to the world. Ms. Donohue and her dog Isabella aren't quite up to watching hundreds of people trek through their home tomorrow, but it will be open top to bottom, all the way up to the servants' rooms -- now outfitted as guest bedrooms in cheery colors and white-painted antiques -- on the third floor.

"To me this has always been a public house" because of its location at the intersection of two of the East End's most prominent streets, said Ms. Donohue, who knows, yet seems to still not quite believe, how fortunate she is.

"I always thought one day I would wake up and be sort of ho-hum about how beautiful this house is. But in five years it hasn't happened.

"The whole house is a constant joy to me."

Architecture critic Patricia Lowry can be reached at plowry@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1590.