For an active young family, this 6,800 square foot project transformed a working nineteenth century barn into modern recreation space. Essential to the project was maintaining the quiet vernacular feel of the barn in the landscape.
A gut renovation, work began with underpinning foundations and structural rehabilitation, and extended to all new windows & doors, systems and finishes, inside and out. The tall main barn now houses living space with lofts and adjacent half-court basketball. A one-story ell to the west includes a lodge-style man cave, exercise room, bath, ski room and garage, while the east ell is a garden shed and greenhouse.
The site is carefully preserved, including the front court and main doors through the barn, and a rustic fence & gate are added.
Expanding the five-star Mayflower Inn, the project incorporates guest rooms and a destination spa facility that has been touted by both Conde Nast Traveler and Travel & Leisure Magazine as the best destination spa in the world.
Design objectives were: a familial relationship with the Mayflower Inn; absolute comfort, peace and quiet for guests; and elegant, residential character. The presence of service functions and staff were to be invisible to the extent possible. Spa guests were to enjoy total privacy.
For Allerton House, the program required 4 guestrooms and 2 guest suites, all with private porches. The Spa program included: a bath facility with indoor pool, whirlpool and Hammam (with heated walls, cool steam and color therapy); 8 treatment rooms (dry, wet and for couples); 4 exercise studios for yoga, cardiovascular, Pilates and training programs; dressing rooms and baths (convertible to accommodate varying gender proportions of Spa programs);
lounge, salon, dining and retail spaces; and administration and service.
The gross conditioned area of 33,000sf far exceeds residential scale, so building massing is modulated to a series of distinct parts. To guests, the Spa and Allerton are independent structures with distinct functional identities. To management, the buildings are one, connected below grade for ease of service and consolidation of mechanical systems. A single service access minimizes the presence of vehicles, staff and associated disturbance.
Building envelope, acoustic and mechanical systems are particularly careful due to the proportion of water-oriented program and requirements for quiet and comfort. Users are wet and undressed, requiring a wind-free environment. Program diversity and guest preferences require immediate response for temperature and humidity, while scented air is filtered, heat-recovered and returned. Special acoustical assemblies and finishes contribute to a hushed, serene interior environment.
Built in 1756 and expanded in 1775, Gideon Hollister’s landmark sawmill employed an undershot “flutter-wheel” powering a rare “up-and-down” saw. Milling continuously until 1926, it was then neglected until 1955 when it washed down the brook in a spring freshet. In 1956, the remaining parts were reassembled. The flume was removed and many mill parts were left for lost. The building was little used thereafter.
Purchase of the property was contingent upon conversion of the mill to an accessory house. Recognizing the historical significance, the civic-minded owner embraced the idea of reconstructing the millworks, presenting the challenge of melding the residential program with a working sawmill.
When listed on the Connecticut Register, the building and dam were near collapse. Structure and surviving millworks were fully documented and dismantled. Existing fragments, research and streambed archaeology yielded patterns for reconstruction. The pond, dam, relief-canal, flume, timber frame and millworks were restored to original configuration.
The project is periodically opened to the community to view the mill in operation:
A log is set and the carriage dogs are hammered in,
The flume gate is lifted to flood the wood sluice box,
The box gate is lifted to spin the flutter wheel, powering the saw at 200 cycles per minute,
The tub gate is lifted to rotate the tub wheel, turning the wrag wheel to advance the log carriage,
As the log passes through the saw, the roar and vibration are astonishing.
Nestled in the center of a rolling Litchfield County farm, the Lodge replaces an outdoorsman’s dilapidated cabin. Despite its irreparable condition, the old cabin was central to defining the character and spirit of the place, and maintaining its essence became the program priority for the new lodge.
For family retreats and recreation, the lodge encloses an attic bunk room, small bedroom, kitchen and living room. Of equal importance are the covered porch, sleeping porch and dining terrace with fireplace. A front door faces the vineyard across a farm lane. Opposite, porches and expansive windows maximize exposure to the pond and valley beyond. Porches with “tree” columns soften the transition from building to landscape.
Forms are derived from the rural, agricultural landscape. Materials such as fieldstone, Mine Hill granite, brainstorm siding, hemlock and eastern cedar timbers are gathered from the site or its immediate surroundings. Interior finishes are predominantly clear-finished woodwork, all reclaimed local materials such as chestnut floors, pine and hemlock walls, and limed oak doors and cabinets.
The heating-only system utilizes a high-efficiency propane-fired boiler with cast-iron baseboard radiation. Necessitated by the super-insulated perimeter, a modest air system provides fresh air and make-up air for the fireplace.
To insure the health of the pond and other proximate inland wetlands, conservation measures were essential to the project. They included: installation of subsurface recharge for roof water; designation of wetland buffer areas; construction of a protected, vegetated drainage basin; installation of native plantings, and ongoing remediation of the invasive species Phragmites australis.
This addition to an historic saltbox provides needed living space where the Owner can be immersed in their art and antiques collection. Reorganizing the home’s entry sequence, the addition involves a main floor living gallery, stone-lined inglenook, conservatory and loft library.
Early American massing and details are derived from the original house, and executed using hewn timbers, reclaimed chestnut paneling, plaster walls and antique limestone floors.
The meadow site of 15 acres is near the town center, in an historic district characterized by wood-framed Colonial and Classical Revival houses and outbuildings, modestly scaled. Well off the road, the house site is approached from the east and orients south, toward meadow views and framing specimen trees.
The design attempts balanced asymmetry with a relaxed arrangement of its parts, suggesting growth-over-time and sympathizing with the smaller scale houses in the district. Two formal fronts respond to the approach and site: a south facing gable and porch over the gardens and view; and east facing entry façade with loggia leading to the front door, reminiscent of Charleston’s typology.
The classical details follow patterns for rural colonial buildings made of wood, significantly lighter than Vignola’s models, and some builders’ mannerisms are incorporated, i.e. doubling corner pilasters for ease of construction and stopping the frieze and architrave to allow for window heads.
Rooms are modestly scaled. On the main gable, a monitor brings daylight to an upstairs hall and, through a round opening in the floor, to the center hall below.
Perched on a ledge overlooking an unspoiled Litchfield County lake, the Camp fulfills a client’s dream of cabin life. The site is rustic, a native woodland of oak, laurel and hemlock footed among surface boulders and ledge outcrops. Re-creating the meandering, built-over-time, grounded feel that characterizes great camps was the priority for this house. Style was to be rustic in spirit, “of the forest”.
For family retreats and recreation, the 4-bedroom lodge gathers its occupants into a centered great room where living, cooking and dining take place. The surrounding porches with “tree” columns are spaces of equal importance, softening the transition from building to landscape and enabling the occupant to move about outside under cover. Expansive windows maximize views of the lake and valley beyond.
Forms are derived from the rustic regional vernacular. Materials such as fieldstone, Mine Hill granite, wane-edge siding, laurel ornament, oak and eastern cedar timbers are found on the site or its surroundings. Interior finishes are predominantly clear-finished woodwork, all local materials such as oak floors, pine and hemlock walls, cherry doors and butternut cabinets.
HVAC is a ground-source heat pump system with high-efficiency propane-fired hydronic support. Conservation measures included installation of subsurface recharge for roof water; designation of wetland buffer areas; construction of a protected, vegetated drainage basin and installation of native plantings.
A tree-lined stone fence delineates the northerly limit of the property’s lawns and gardens, and is the threshold to a natural landscape beyond. The property has remarkable views to the north, west and south, and the landscape is home to a distinguished collection of modern sculpture.
Program spaces include indoor and outdoor sitting rooms, a modest kitchen and 2 bedrooms, each with bath. There was to be only one door. Total area was limited by zoning regulation to 1500sf. The architecture was to be familial to other projects on the site designed by this firm over the previous 15 years.
Selected for its views, proximity and natural structure, the house is sited along the existing hedgerow. The stone fence and trees are a strong and literal edge, grounding the building that functions simultaneously as a barrier and a threshold to the larger landscape beyond it.
The composition involves a bar of private spaces set parallel to the hedgerow. A roof plate on columns overlays the bar, fixing its location and establishing a gate that is organized axially to main house. The roof extends south of the bar for shade and sheltered entry. North of the bar, it defines a sitting room enclosed by glass overlooking the meadow and panoramic views.
For weekend living, program elements were conventional and included a main living space, kitchen, family room, dining room, porches, 4 bedrooms and play space for a young family. The house was to incorporate the timber frame from an early 19th century Dutch cow barn from Upstate New York.
The building site is a sloping clearing high in the swale connecting Segar and Bull Mountains in Kent. It is a remote location, characterized by a long, steep, dirt road ascent through a hemlock and oak forest, opening to a mountain meadow with long southerly views over Bull’s Bridge and Long Mountain. Structure on the site is limited to a modest cabin, overgrown wood road and random portions of failed stone fences; but nothing to impart geometry.
Two barn-like volumes are arranged around a loose court to establish a fundamental vernacular relationship to the rustic landscape, and rationale for the barn frame. The strength of the simple forms tolerates sculpting without losing meaning, thus the inherent incompatibility of antique frame and its newly adopted program offers opportunity; connecting elements, extensions and subtractions can be created, each capable of illuminating the relationship.
Centering the family, the interior is interconnected in plan and section. The Great Room with massive hearth lies at the center, enabled by deep “swiggle beams” that once supported haylofts. Living spaces surrounding the Great Room each fall within the antique frame, including outdoor spaces and an attic loft demised by glass. Where the frame is exposed to the south creating porches, the sloping site affords an elevated stage overlooking the view and lower landscape.
The barn’s simple stylistic aspirations result in a plain but textured interior of timbers, plaster, oak floors, blued steel and glass. Structural and architectural insertions are made distinct from the antique frame to retain its clarity.