A Chatham Architect Designs a Prize-Winning Poolhouse
By day, it appears to be a cluster of nicely maintained farm buildings, just as the Chatham architect James Dixon intended. This is but one of the aspects of this poolhouse project that impressed the jury at the Eastern New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, which, on February 22 of this year, granted it a Design Excellence Award—one of just three to be presented in 2010.
Photographs by John Kane
Dixon’s firm designed the adjacent garden sheds in conjunction with the Litchfield county landscape architect Dirk W. Sabin, who oversaw the pool design and developed a master plan for the 200-acre Litchfield County estate. A stone fireplace and pergola provide a windscreen and a shaded sitting area at one end of the pool. During the day, the structure captures daylight from every direction; it is only at night that the plan of Kent, CT lighting designer Matthew Preston kicks in. Outside, his choices are suitably barn-like. Indoors, he specified dim-able overhead halogen fixtures that resemble old-fashioned streetlamps and used concealed beam lights to highlight the upper portion of the frame. According to Dixon, the owners also use lots of candles at night.
Inside, an exposed, custom-designed timber frame, fashioned from reclaimed beams, reinforces the farm vernacular in an otherwise surprisingly streamlined, modern pavilion, open to light, air and views, a design the AIA jury cited for its “lovely clarity of form.” The steel-and-glass doors, some as tall as sixteen feet, were handmade by the Kent, CT fabricator Peter Kirkiles.
The focal point of the kitchen—what Dixon calls “the millwork cube”—is one side of a box containing all of the water and electricity required for the kitchen, bathroom, laundry, and water heater. On the kitchen side, the cube is faced with patinated stainless steel, the same material Dixon specified for the minimalist island counter. “We wanted it to have an industrial feel, not too shiney,” he says. The floor is polished concrete, stained a warm gray. Like all of the surfaces in the structure, it is utilitarian (water-dog-and-kid-proof) yet beautiful.
Instead of protruding in its own separate shed, as is usual, the screened porch shares a roof with the rest of the structure. When the doors between the porch and the interior are open, the entire house becomes, in effect, screened.
In season, the barn doors on each side are usually left open and, during the day, the inner folding glass-and-steel doors are, as well. At night, of course, the latter must be closed to ward off insects. “The magic of these doors is that each panel opens like a casement and has its own screen,” Dixon says. “Even once they are closed for the evening, you can still capture the breezes.” Of Peter Kirkiles, who designed and made the doors, Dixon says, “He’s a genius.”
“I designed the frame and a Canadian company that specializes in this sort of thing made it to measure out of reclaimed timber beams,” Dixon says. It is virtually the only part of the house that was not done by local designers or craftsmen. “They assembled the whole thing up in Canada, took it apart, put it on a truck, then reassembled it on site.”
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 03/02/10 at 07:40 AM • Permalink
Interiors: A Hands-On Couple’s Graphic Redesign
“The day I met him,” says Raina Kattelson of her husband, Robert Butscher, an architect with Wadia Associates in New Canaan, CT, “he was trying to shore up the porch.” For some women, that might have been an uh-oh, see-you-around-pal moment of truth but fortunately, she did not see things that way at all. Kattelson, a fashion and interiors stylist and location scout who now also writes a blog on design and life in the Hudson Valley, recognized a kindred spirit and saw the potential in his 150-year-old wreck of a house on the main street in Tivoli, NY. “One of our early dates,” she ruefully admits, “was me sanding the floors.” Photographs by John Gruen
The house, which in the 1940s and 50s had belonged to the local butcher, sat next door to another abandoned building that had been his shop. A year after Butscher bought the house, the shop burned down, so he was able to acquire that land, as well. Today, the only evidence of the property’s meaty history is the butcher’s outdoor smoker, which sits at the edge of the patio, serving both as focal point and fireplace.
The house has proved to be a receptive canvas for the couple’s adventures in interior design. Following a family trip to North Africa some years ago, for example, they did up the living room with finds from Morocco. Now, except for the rug they bought in Marrakesh, that incarnation, heavy on earth tones, has vanished. Raina acquires interesting objects as effortlessly as a sweater picks up burs in the woods. Flea markets, junk and antiques shops are both her business and her passion. She grew up in Woodstock among artists. Her father, Sy Kattelson, is a fine art photographer who also founded the movie theater in Woodstock that has just been acquired by Upstate Films. Thanks to the stores of photographs, art, furniture, and ceramics they already owned, when the re-do bug bit them, Raina and Robert had to do little more than sift and tweak.
“I wanted something different, more graphic,” Raina says. She started by painting the combined living-and-dining-room walls a brave shade of green. To find the ideal color, she and Robert bought five or six sample pots, brushing each color onto its own sheet of Masonite, then moving the patches around the room, to see how each looked in various lights. Finally, they settled on Benjamin Moore’s Grape Green (#2027).
“I collect pottery, both old and new,” Raina says. “I use it both for styling gigs and our daily life.” The Emeco chairs at the dining table typically have vinyl seats. Raina replaced them with thick industrial felt pads. The table is from Ikea. “I sanded the top, then whitewashed it. The picture is a scene of New York by my dad.”
A raised platform in the kitchen left over from the original house is now the family’s sunny breakfast nook. “I love the graphic quality of old signs, numbers and letters and have them throughout the house. I also have a weakness for chairs—the green Thonet chairs in the kitchen are the first I ever owned. I bought them when I was 15 and have been painting them different colors ever since. They now look great with the Saarinen table base, which presently which presently has a chalkboard oilcloth top.”
“My office is the only all-white room in the house but is so filled with colorful books, magazines, craft projects and props, it’s sometimes hard to tell. I have lots of collections—vintage knitting needles, old cameras, trays, bottles—all stuff that will end up in my work at some point.” The chair is one of two she found at the Brooklyn Flea Market and reupholstered. “I have always loved the Scandanavian look, so the fabrics on my office chair and lounge pillows are Marimekko. I chose this Ikea desk because it echos the Aalto stools in the living room.” Of the print by Anthony Burrill, Raina says, “Shouldn’t we all?!”
“I love Tord Boontje’s work and own several of his lights. For our daughters’ room (Maeve, 13, and Romi, 9), I did my own version of his style on the floor.”
Romi appears to be a style junky in the making. According to her mother, she requested the Panton chair for her 8th birthday. She also asked that her dresser be painted silver. “She loves to draw on the chalkboard-painted wall ,” says Raina. Colored chalkboard paint available exclusively through Hudson Paint.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 02/11/10 at 10:32 AM • Permalink
Innocents Abroad: Falling in Love with a Fixer Upper
Photographs by Dana Gallagher
From the moment they first saw Columbia County, Australians Sacha Dunn and Edmund Levine were hooked. “It was like a fairy tale to us,” says Sacha, who, like her husband, works in New York as a stylist and set decorator for magazines, print ads, and television commercials. “We’d been visiting friends in Greene County, which we found too built up,” she says. Then they drove across the bridge. “We really loved how the buildings are in the towns, and the countryside and farms are left alone—all green hills, country roads, and red barns. The countryside in Australia isn’t at all like that. We couldn’t help ourselves.”
The couple, whose primary residence is a cramped apartment in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, soon bundled their son Max, now 4, into the car and started their search. “We wanted a little house in a pretty spot, somewhere we could sit in front of the fire,” Sacha recalls, “with a big enough kitchen so we could really cook.” Their first surprise: “Old houses are almost always right on the road.”
They finally found a 2-bedroom cottage in Hillsdale on a deadend dirt road with virtually no traffic. 
Never mind that the floor of one of the rooms was also dirt or that the only fireplace was a leaky woodburning stove, or that there was no actual kitchen, as such. These are hands-on people, whose life’s work is to make things look fabulous—and fast. They took the plunge.
Two contractors and a second pregnancy later, “We were running behind,” Sacha explains, “so Edmund bought a tablesaw and asked the carpenter to show him how it works. He ended up doing all the trimwork himself. It never would have been finished if he hadn’t.”
Now the family, including daughter, Sadie, 1, spend as much time as possible at the house, which, despite its original
shortcomings, has turned out to be everything they’d hoped. A shed across the back now houses the kitchen, where on weekends they play with the fabulous, fresh ingredients they pick up at Guido’s and nearby Sir William Farm. In winter, when they are there, the entire structure is heated with a Vermont Castings stove that Edmund keeps fed with firewood culled from their own property.
“He found a book, The Backyard Lumberjack,” Sacha says, “that showed him how to chop wood and stack wood.”
And the fact that the house is right on the road? “It turned out to be great because now we don’t have to shovel that much snow.”
Vermont Castings wood-burning stove from Matchless Stove & Chimney; Metalbest stovepipe from Selkirk
The couple used every trick of their trade to furnish the house inexpensively. They found the blue cupboard on Craig’s List; the kitchen chairs, a classic Eames design, were $20 each at a Brooklyn stoop sale.
Max keeps busy in the country. He and his Dad, one of this world’s great autodidacts, tapped maple trees on their property this fall to make syrup.
The original, uninsulated stovepipe went through the living room floor and up through the room that is now Max and Sadie’s, creating a serious hazard. The new, insulated pipe exits the house right behind the woodburning stove and runs up the exterior, where it adds a jaunty touch to the look of the cottage.
To maximize the illusion of light-and-airy spaciousness in the 850-square-foot house, the couple stuck to a white-and-palest-pastel color scheme throughout.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/17/09 at 12:21 PM • Permalink
A Showcase: The Greening of the Hudson Valley & New England
This weekend, Herrington’s, the local hardware chain, is hosting, Lean Toward Green, a showcase of environmentally responsible, home building products and systems that promise to make our houses more energy efficient and comfortable. There will be special seminars on window replacement and insulation, where the tax incentives for doing both will be explained. There are the right things to do. Absolutely. In theory.
But in fact, those who own the antique houses that give our region so much of its special character face greater challenges when it comes to “going green.” Everyone knows that modern windows are tighter, but those leaky old ones with their narrow mullions and ripple glass look so right. And yes, walls thickly padded with insulation obviously cut down on fuel waste. But to get them that way may require the destruction of plaster interior walls that have held their own, and lent character to the building, for a couple of hundred years.
If it were just personal taste vs. energy efficiency, there would be no question of the right thing to do. But these houses contribute mightily to the commonweal. They are historic relics, symbols of all that is right with this region, and a big part of why the Hudson Valley and New England hold such a special place in the hearts of our countrymen nationwide. So this isn’t just about us. And this isn’t just about now. Once these houses have been “upgraded”—once their interiors and all moving parts have been sucked out and replaced with modern materials—the entire region is one step closer to being just another American suburb filled with fake “colonials.” No one wants that. On the other hand, no one wants to live in a museum—unless, of course, it’s the Bryant Homestead, in Lenox, (photo above), which would almost be worth freezing for.
So, on the eve of their Lean Toward Green symposium this weekend and to get a taste of the kind of advice we are likely to get there, we threw a tough one at the wise men and women of Herrington’s: If we are weighing historic preservation against energy conservation, is there an acceptable choice?
As it happens there may well be. In an e-mail response, Herrington’s recommended various ways of tightening an older house without ruining it. Replace old windows with new, insulated ones, using a company that can replicate historical details. Add loose fill or batt insulation to attics without any disruption to the structure. Insulate the basement, and use rigid insulation on the exterior. This last, of course, would require the removal of exterior siding, something purists prefer to leave alone until it rots. Herrington’s even sent a link to the Building Science website that has an excellent article from Fine Homebuilding magazine with three case studies of upgraded older homes, and a list of priorities—first of which is to get more modern mechanicals. No sentimental value there.
At the showcase, the vendors and Herrington’s own in-house experts will offer advice to owners of existing houses, old and more modern, and to those considering building from scratch or adding on. One bit of wisdom gleaned from the Fine Homebuilding article: the author points out that, instead of making their existing houses more livable, many homeowners opt to build an addition, then end up spending all their time in the addition, even if its less spacious than the older part of the house. Why? Because it’s comfortable. Had they instead made the older part more livable, she argues, it probably would have cost a great deal less, and the family would have more space to live in.
Herrington’s Building the Green Life Home Show
Saturday, October 24; 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Taconic Hills High School
73 County Route 11A, Craryville, NY
Pre-registration for seminars recommended; 518.325.3131
Refreshments provided by Taconic Hills Senior Class
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 10/20/09 at 06:31 PM • Permalink
Historic Hudson’s Hidden Gems of Greenport Tour
That’s right, Greenport. It’s easy to dismiss this sprawling town, which embraces the city of Hudson on all borders except riverfront. The part north of the city, anchored by Fairview Avenue, is notable mostly for its strip malls. But even within this region, a textbook example of the consequences of a hands-off approach to urban-planning, and, more predictably, in the woodsier eastern and southern parts, there remain traces of an intriguing past. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when Hudson first prospered, what is now called Greenport was then that city’s countryside, and some of the most significant antique buildings in the county are situated there. These days, while driving through, we might occasionally spot something that looks surprisingly good. This weekend, thanks to Historic Hudson, five properties built between 1721 and 1815 will be open for touring. Instead of glimpsing and wondering, we finally get to go inside and find out.
The buildings range in style from early Dutch to Federal and Greek Revival. The one shown at right, Eastview, is remarkable for its matching convex pediments. The interiors of another, the H. A. Dubois House, remain virtually as they were in 1830. Yet another features elements fashioned from marble and limestone quarried nearby. The founders of Hudson’s whaling industry came from Nantucket and Rhode Island; one, Alexander Jenkins, built a house on what is now Joslyn Boulevard that is purported to have once had a tunnel connecting its cellars to the river.
The tour includes a viewing of Spook Rock, the setting of a popular local legend involving star-crossed native-American lovers, and the Columbia Turnpike West Toll House, with it’s two-foot-thick stone walls, where, until 1907, travelers on the road that is now 23B were made to stop and pay for the right to proceed.
The day culminates with a cocktail reception at perhaps the most magnificent house of them all— the Hudson Bush Farm (top photo), listed on the National Register of Historic Places and admired both for its architectural grace and extensive gardens.
Historic Hudson House Tour
Saturday, October 17; 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Tickets: tour only/$40 (reservations appreciated)
Benefit cocktail party 6 p.m. - 8 p.m./$75 (reservations required)
Tour and party/$100
To download reservation form, click here
Mail checks to Historic Hudson, 611 Warren Street., Hudson, 12534.
Tickets and directions on Saturday, October 17 at the Hudson Opera House, 327 Warren Street
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 10/12/09 at 01:13 PM • Permalink
Music Rooms of the Gilded Age, a Lecture
During the Gilded Age, music played a more central role in “high society” than it does today. It is no accident, for example, that Edith Wharton opens The Age of Innocence at the opera in New York City. The behavior her characters exhibit there tells us nearly everything we need to know about them—certainly more than they would have cared to reveal. In the fifty or so Gilded-Age “cottages” that were once tucked discretely from view in Berkshire County, virtually all, it is fair to surmise, had music rooms. On Sunday, Close Encounters with Music hosts a lecture, Music Rooms of the Gilded Age, by Harvey Rosenberg, a veteran professor of the History of Interior Design and Architecture at FIT/SUNY, and a frequent lecturer at Parsons, Pratt, and the New School of Interior Design. And to make Professor Rosenberg’s slides and anecdotes all the more compelling, the lecture is being held at one of those extant cottages, Ventfort Hall (above), the Elizabethan Revival mansion built in 1893 for J.P. Morgan’s sister, and now open to the pubic as the Museum of the Gilded Age.
Ventfort Hall
104 Walker Street, Lenox
Lecturer Harvey Rosenberg: Music Rooms of the Gilded Age
Sunday, October 11; 2 p.m.
Reservations encouraged.
Admission: $25 includes light refreshment
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 10/08/09 at 08:37 AM • Permalink
A New Gilded Age Cottage With A Happy Disposition
It seems like it would be impossible to wake up in a bad mood in this house in Lenox, MA. When the publicity-shy owners called the New York design team of William Diamond and Anthony Baratta to see the house they were building in the Berkshires, Diamond demanded that they halt construction. “We arrived at this house when it was being framed,” recalls Diamond in the new monograph All-American: The Exuberant Style of William Diamond and Anthony Baratta (Pointed Leaf Press; $95), which yours truly co-wrote. “The architect, who we knew, had designed a bridge that spanned the living room, connecting the two wings of the house. We told our stunned clients that we would not work on this house as long as there was a skybridge cutting the living room in half. We would not negotiate. So as a replacement we designed a pair mathing staircases that flank the front door.” And then Diamond & Baratta did what they often do with McMansions: They turned it into a home with a sense of history, pedigree and coziness. Filled with wonderful pieces of folk art, the house is high-spirited country style—a house where you smile the moment you walk through the front door.
All photographs by Michel Arnaud from “All-American: The Exuberant Style of William Diamond and Anthony Baratta” (Copyright © 2009 Pointed Leaf Press, LLC)
Weathervanes are a leitmotif for the house.Once the overhead gallery was replaced by twin stairs with nineteenth-century-style woodwork detailing, the living room could be furnished symmetrically. The large sofa is covered in a custom print with weather vanes by Diamond Baratta Design.
The hooked and braided rug custom-designed for the living room incorporates round vignettes, each encircled in braid, that relate to the surrounding Lenox countryside. Hooked Pennsylvania hex signs fill in the pattern. The wing chairs are covered in a custom-woven plaid.
An antique weather vane and a vintage barber pole hang by a staircase; each of the circles in the rug depicts a different local, historic scene.
A spectacular antique album quilt is hung like a painting over one of the the two fireplaces in the living room. A pair of plaid-covered wing chairs flanks each mantelpiece.
The fireplace surrounds are made from a series of ceramic reproduction-delft tiles, and the cast-iron andirons, in the shape of Hessian soldiers, match the fireplace tools; an antique star quilt hangs over the other living room fireplace.
The original dining room was lackluster, so Baratta designed a version of eighteenth-century American paneling and created a firebox to better balance the fireplace wall. Above the paneling, Ilya Shevel painted the mural depicting the town of Lenox inn earlier times. A collection of blue Staffordshire platters offers a decorative touch. The rug, woven by Stark Carpet, was inspired by eighteenth-century American felt work and includes a variety of animal and floral motifs. A red wing chair is placed at the head of the table to contrast with the more rustic Windsor side chairs.
The seats of the chairs are covered with exquisite needlepoint cushions; a detail of the mural.
The red-and-white-checkerboard backsplash resembles a quilt and gives the kitchen a fresh, high-spirited look. The English lantern is one of six in the kitchen.
Instead of fitting glass panels into the doors of the huge pantry cabinet in the kitchen, the designers created a series of patterns that were punched out of tin panels in the manner of old pie safes. The initial of the clients’ last name was also punched out, in the panel at the top right.
Because the sitting room off the master bedroom has a row of small windows admitting very little natural light, the designers decided to keep the space on the dark side. The walls are covered in red felt, and the furniture is upholstered with a handwoven red-and-white plaid. Shutters were added to the windows, and shelves are filled with a collection of old firkins
In keeping with the folk art feeling of the house, the rug has an abstracted pattern of hex signs. The tall cabinet is a French-Canadian piece that came from Monique Shay Antiques in Woodbury, Connecticut.
All photographs by Michel Arnaud from “All-American: The Exuberant Style of William Diamond and Anthony Baratta” (Copyright © 2009 Pointed Leaf Press, LLC)
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 09/14/09 at 12:34 PM • Permalink
Decorate Like A Pro: Custom Curtains by Kristen Foster
Bedding for Carolyne Roehm by curtain maker Kristen Foster of Falls Village
Interior designers sell taste. They also sell connections. And if you are one of those people who’s confident in your taste but don’t know the artisans who can execute your ideas, you should make an appointment with Kristen Foster, a master curtain maker in Falls Village, CT. Although she always seems to be working on a project for the iconic style arbiter Carolyne Roehm (who has a landmark estate called Weatherstone in Sharon, CT, as well as homes in Aspen and Manhattan), no custom job is too small for Foster, who makes shades, pillows, shower curtains, draperies, valances, cushions, and headboards. “I will do anything with fabric but reupholstery, which is just too messy,” says Foster, whose throw pillows start at $65 and roman shades at $200.
Foster offers small-town service and world-class workmanship. “I first used Kristin to make table cloths for me,” says Roehm. “While I was redoing Weatherstone after the fire, I hired Kristin to make all of my decorative pillows, bedspreads, bed dressings for canopy beds, and skirts for dressers. She is capable of making anything and unlike so many vendors in the interior design world she is always on time! She continues to work with me and did all of the same types of items for my apartment in New York and my house in Aspen. For me, she is an indispensable professional.”
While most custom curtain makers insist that you buy fabric from them (so they can get the markup), Foster does not charge extra if you provide your own fabric (what’s known in the trade as COM—customer’s own material.) You can bring her a piece of cloth that you found at a flea market or warehouse sale, and she’ll be happy to make you a cushion or shade. But she’ll also help you find fabrics, and she even makes house calls. “We needed new cushions for our porch furniture and she brought over sample books and we made our choices in ten minutes,” says Dan Dwyer, the owner of Johnnycake Books in Salisbury, CT. “She measured everything and we could not be happier with the results.” Ray Attanasio, a New York interior designer who co-owns Balsamo Antiques in Pine Plains (and designed the room at left), often brings Foster to job sites in New Jersey and Connecticut so they can collaborate on the best solutions for specific situations. “She has great ideas and knows what can and cannot be done,” he says. “She’s impeccable. She has very high standards. I have never been disappointed.”
Foster, who learned to sew from her grandmother and high school Home Economics classes, says it took years for her to become a master curtain maker. “Making window treatments requires a lot of trial and error,” says Foster, who doesn’t have a shop because she prefers to work at home in her basement studio. “I like being able to go to work at 5 a.m. in my jammies if I feel like it.” She says that she enjoys the challenges posed by clients like Roehm, a former fashion designer, who have extravagant taste. “I love making draperies with dressmaker details,” she says, adding “but there’s nothing more satisfying than making a simple Roman shade.”
Compared to the ready-made pillows and curtains sold at places like Pottery Barn, Foster’s prices are quite reasonable and will be exactly what you want instead of a compromise. “Made to fit is made to last!” she says. “Most of what I make will last for the life of your house. You don’t have to be a millionaire to afford something truly fabulous.”
Kristen Foster
Falls Village, CT
860.824.5045
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 09/08/09 at 10:26 AM • Permalink
Two House Tours with a Focus on History
To get the most out of a historic house tour, it’s crucial to use your imagination, to “be there” at every stage in the property’s development. Same building, 100 years later, is never the same, even when it has been preserved in amber as a house museum. Ventfort Hall, where the Lenox house tour begins this weekend, was saved from the wrecking ball in 1997 through the heroic efforts of the Ventfort Hall Association, a consortium of neighbors and historic preservationists from Lenox headed by Tjasa Sprague. At the time, the massive, 35-room brick edifice was so engulfed in vegetation, a visitor had to be within inches of it even to know it was there.
Ventfort Hall (above, as it was in its heyday and is on its way to becoming again) was built in1893 in the Elizabethan-Revival style as a summer cottage for a Morgan. Today, this restoration-in-progress is The Museum of the Gilded Age, presently featuring, among other exhibits, a show of vintage and antique wedding gowns, on loan from the Berkshire Museum. Like Ventfort, the other properties on the tour reflect aspects of Lenox’s varied history, from farming community, through Gilded-Age resort, and right up to the present digital age (there is even one contemporary house on the tour), when it has become a viable home base for artists, writers, retirees, and anyone who can “commute” via the internet.
Among the other properties on the tour, Stonover Farm (above) was built in 1890 as a gentleman’s farm, today, it is a B & B stylishly outfitted with contemporary art and furnishings. Hotchkin House (below), on Cliffwood Street overlooking the Triangle Park in the center of town, was built in about 1805 by the father of John Hotchkin, who continued to live there for his entire life, for a time serving as principal of the Lenox Academy, a boys school. Now, the recently renovated house is the well-appointed family gathering place for a semi-retired couple from Washington, D.C. The original portion of the modern “cottage”, Foothill Farm, is a fine, brick, federal-style farmhouse, built in the early 1800s, and known for it’s first century as Belden Farm, for the owners, who were one of the founding families of Lenox. 
Later generations of Beldons sold portions of their land to their new, wealthy, gilded-age neighbors, the Tappens, who named the estate they built on it Tanglewood. In 1928 the Belden’s brick house and fifty acres were transformed into a fashionable sportsman’s domain, renamed Foothill Farm. Thanks to subsequent remodelings and substantial additions, the property remains fashionable to this day. Another house on the tour, built c.1820 as a modest two-story colonial, was later updated in the Victorian Eclectic style. For a while, the “dean of Lenox barbers” lived there; later it was an inn. Now it has been restored to its single-family Victorian splendor, and it houses the current owners’ fine collection of early American decorative arts and furnishings. In an adjacent barn, there is another collection of vintage model trains.
And so it goes; each house adapted over the decades and centuries, as the times, the town, and the owners’ needs and aspirations changed.
Lenox House Tour, 5 Private Homes plus historic Ventfort Hall
Saturday, August 8, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Tickets $30 after 9:30 a.m. at Ventfort Hall
104 Walker St, Lenox; 413.637.3206
And Coming Up: Another House Tour in Hillsdale
We strongly advise that you not keep your options open for Saturday, August 22. Just this once, plan ahead or miss out on the First Annual Hillsdale Historic House Tour and Picnic. The tour is comprised of four open houses, all in the hamlet, all within easy walking distance of one another. There is also a History of Hillsdale Exhibit in another historically significant building. All ticket holders are invited to gather at noon for a box lunch and live music in a private garden. Lovely. The only hitch: The deadline for ordering tickets is August 12. In other words, the time to commit is now.
The houses on the tour are worth waiting for. They include a distinctive, intact 1865 example of the picturesque Italianate style, an 1855 house reflecting both the Greek Revival and Italianate styles and a 1917 Craftsman that is in the process of being restored, using original blueprints. The church, a classic example of rural religious architecture in the Greek Revival style, was dedicated in 1847. A house built in 1783 in the Classical style by one of the most influential early settlers of Hillsdale will be the location of the History of Hillsdale Exhibit, organized by the Roeliff Jansen Historical Society. The building’s facade is little changed from the day it was completed, 227 years ago.
“The Hillsdale hamlet contains an extraordinary number of nineteenth century buildings that have retained their historic character and represent the area’s commercial and social history”, says Hillsdale Preservation Committee’s Matthew White, an interior designer named one of Architectural Digest’s top 100 designers in the world. “The exteriors of the buildings on the tour look much as they did when they were built, while the insides combine modern comforts with original detail. We chose them for their historical significance.” White’s house, designed by the architect Dennis Wedlick, will be the site of the patron’s cocktail party on the 23rd.
1st Annual Hillsdale Historic House Tour & Picnic
August 22, noon - 4 p.m.; 518.325.1498
Tickets: $35/general admission, includes tour and picnic; $100/patron, includes tour, picnic, and on Sunday, August 23rd, a patrons cocktail party 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Also available at B&G Wine & Gourmet and Passiflora in Hillsdale, and the Rocky Field Farm booth, Hillsdale Farmer’s Market.
Deadline for ordering tickets, August 12. No tickets will be sold the day of the tour.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 08/04/09 at 06:15 AM • Permalink
Come Spy With Me
For house and garden voyeurs the best movie of the season is Summer Hours, which begins with children on a treasure hunt racing through their grandmother’s garden. Despite the cozy opening scene, the film tackles a lot of big themes (France, globalization, the death of a beautiful but no-longer-viable way of life) and the small things that fall prey to them (a couple of Corots, a Georg Jensen tea set, a Majorelle desk, a Josef Hoffmann cabinet). Early in the film we see these precious objects in daily use at the slightly disheveled (by American haute bourgeois standards) country place of Madame Berthier, where they are treated not as works of art but as functional commonplaces. Later in the film, we see the desk spotlit in a display at Paris’s Musee d’Orsay. In this setting, its virtues are impossible to miss, yet it seems almost artificial, as if it had been embalmed. Little wonder tour groups barely glance its way as their guide hustles them to whatever is next.
Thanks to the generous owners of the many superlative houses and gardens on tour this weekend, we, their Nosy Neighbors, have no shortage of interesting places to snoop.
If there’s a more idyllic town in all New England than Litchfield, Connecticut, I’ve yet to see it. Litchfield Open House Tour to benefit the Connecticut Junior Republic has been going strong for 62 years, so they’ve gotten the wrinkles ironed out. It always includes several of the finest old houses in town, such as the 1754 Oliver Wolcott House shown here, the earliest extant Georgian house in the area. What follows is a quote from the tour website: “The house was constructed on land bequeathed to [Oliver] by his father, Roger, who was Colonial High Sheriff of Litchfield, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Governor of Connecticut from 1796 until his death in December 1797. On September 23, 1780, while en-route to West Point to meet with Benedict Arnold, George Washington stopped at this house to have dinner and to sleep. The property also has an orchard where the women and children of Litchfield gathered to melt down a statue of George, III, to make bullets for the Revolutionary War soldiers to use against the British.” Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up. Four other houses, all within walking distance of the village green, are included in the tour. Those who attend the benefit Friday-evening tour and cocktail party get inside a sixth property, and, I promise you, it is a gem.
Preview Tour; Friday, July 10, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m., followed by a cocktail reception from 7 - 9:30 p.m.
Tickets from $75.
Saturday, July 11, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., rain or shine, self-guided walking tour starts at the Information Booth on the Litchfield Green.
Tickets: $25/advance sale; $30/day of tour
Hidden Treasures of the Berkshires, a tour in its 19th season, organized by the Lenox Garden Club is being held this year in the towns of Sheffield and Ashley Falls. Properties include an old dairy farm, a former marble quarry, and a 1737 grist mill, with features ranging from a dramatic waterfall to a garden that echos the architecture of a modern house it surrounds.
Saturday, July 11, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., rain or shine
Tickets, $35 available from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Trinity United Methodist Church, 1156 Ashley Fall Road, Ashley Falls, MA.
Winner for most unusual and, in its way, romantic property has to be the Hudson Athens Lighthouse Tour. A Hudson Cruise Boat departs from the Henry Hudson Riverfront Park in Hudson on the hour every hour between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. for the 10 minute ride out to the lighthouse. The tour takes about one hour and features a talk by Emily Brunner, who has actually lived there. There’s a picnic table for those who wish to linger. This is one tour that’s suitable for kids.
Adults/$20; children/$10; members/$10 and $5
Reservations essential; 518.822.1014 or 518.828.5294
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 07/08/09 at 05:48 PM • Permalink
