photographs by Paul Rocheleau

An Eccentric Plan Resulted in a Workable and Beautiful Space.

OVER THE PAST 27 YEARS, Janet and Jim Laverdiere have, with the help of restoration experts, restored nine homes of their own while raising a family. Jim was running his manufacturing business (Kleenline Corp.), but there was always a house project going on. Jim sold his company in 2013 and, after buying the Homan House shown here, decided to turn his hobby into a business. Fine Period Homes was founded in 2014. The company of highly skilled tradespeople selectively chooses important or endangered houses to restore and bring to market.

The front entry long ago was removed to make room for a trolley line. Correct in proportion and details, the new inset design is based on the entry of the General John Glover House. The builder was Nat Emerson. Paint color is ‘Blair House Buff’, custom-mixed by Benjamin Moore from a Colonial Williamsburg color.

Every period architectural detail in this magnificent ca. 1744 Georgian home has been meticulously restored; all 12 original fireplaces—two now in bathrooms—have been preserved. The Homan House in Marblehead, Mass., is the first project of Fine Period Homes, founded by serial restorer Jim Laverdiere to turn his “hobby” of many years into a business.

Every inch of this house on a main street in the old seacoast town needed restoration, repair, or reproduction—from structural members in the roof and basement to fine mouldings. The 12 over 12 windows are new: bench-made and plankframed in mahogany by Architectural Components. Skived cedar clapboards are fastened with forged rosehead nails. Interior walls are plaster over wood lath. Much of the new trim and crown moulding was reproduced using hand planes.

The Kennebec Company kitchen was fitted into an existing addition. opposite: Millwork throughout the house was replicated; paint colors are based on evidence in the house and colors typical of the period.

Fitted into the existing addition, the kitchen has an unusual plan that nevertheless works, as the layout created usage zones. Storage is tucked next to the old hearth, with a cooker opposite and a cleanup area adjacent. A corridor became a practical butler’s pantry next to the dining room; the space terminates in a small powder room. Laverdiere worked closely with The Kennebec Company on the design, asking them to copy the raised-panel profiles from one of the original 18th century doors in the house. (The cabinets are painted in Benjamin Moore’s ‘Alexandria Beige’.) The space includes an abundance of period-appropriate shelving and cupboards. Georgian trim was reproduced for the fireplace surround in the kitchen; another fireplace warms the tiny breakfast room nearby.

Janet and Jim’s previous homes have included an important 1707 house in Massachusetts. They also converted a 1950s Cape Cod house into a period piece, using a dismantled and rebuilt 1690 house as an addition—the small structure thus saved from demolition. The couple also avidly collect late 17th- and early 18th-century decorative arts. Even when they were little, “our kids’ vocabularies included ‘William and Mary highboy’ and ‘English delft’,” Janet laughs.

“When we take on a restoration, we strive to replicate or, in fact, surpass the level of quality the original craftsmen attained,” Jim says. His intention is to bring back antique houses using only time-tested materials and techniques. “I restored a 15,000-square-foot manufactory 15 years ago,” Jim explains; budget constraints had forced him to spec manufactured whitepine windows. “Within five years,” he reports, “their sills had to be replaced because of the poor quality of the pine. That’s true today for many manufactured windows.”

photographs by Paul Rocheleau

This new house was planned around a collection of rugs and furniture passed down for five generations.

Believe it or not, this one is actually a “new old house” in the hills of western Massachusetts. Chip, the owner, developed plans for the Georgian-style dwelling with McKie Wing Roth Jr., a well-known designer of reproduction homes who passed away in 2012. “I liked Roth’s body of work — and we worked together on this design for over a year, mostly through photographs and email,” Chip explains. “We created spaces around my inherited rugs and furniture. I did meet him once, in person, in Maine.”

The kitchen wing includes an informal dining area with a fully paneled fireplace wall.

The plans for the new old house were developed by the owner and McKie Wing Roth Jr., who was a well-known designer of colonial- and Federal-style homes.

The house was built by Victor Morrill Carpentry on land purchased in 2002; actual construction started in 2005 and took about two and a half years. The foundation hole had to be blasted, which yielded many tons of large, flat Goshen stone. The stone was used for exterior steps, retaining walls, walkways, patios, and two fireplace hearths. (The house has six working fireplaces.)

Authenticity comes in great part from the period-accurate windows and doors, all made by Architectural Components of Montague, Massachusetts. Company owner Chuck Bellinger says of his client: “He was an absolute delight — knowledgeable, relaxed, and appreciative of the efforts of all the tradespeople.” Bellinger helped detail the windows and doors. “Chip himself knows the terminology of 18th-century houses; he trusted me to get the details right,” Bellinger says.

The replica Georgian house has foursquare massing and two center chimneys. Exterior colors are Pratt & Lambert’s ‘Pelham Gray’ (clapboards) and ‘Bracken Cream Light’ (trim) with  ‘Old Village Salem Brick Red’ on the doors.

The windows and doors are based on traditional Connecticut River Valley domestic architecture. Bellinger’s company is just across the river from Historic Deerfield, “a treasure trove,” Bellinger says. Windows are of clear Eastern white pine selected to reduce or eliminate the rot-prone sapwood. The 18th-century plank frame windows have reproduction sash; the Georgian-era muntins are 1″ wide with an ovolo profile. Wood-frame storm sash were fitted on the inside — easy to install and remove seasonally.

Exterior doors were built with pattern-grade South American mahogany, which is stable and naturally rot-resistant. The front entry features a pair of narrow six-panel doors with an eight-light transom. The surround is simple yet elegant with plain pilasters and an ogee crown.

The foursquare plan with a center hall is typical. The living room is on the right, den and dining room on the left. Beyond the dining room is the kitchen ell. Doors on the first floor are slightly wider than standard for accessibility.

An island separates the working kitchen from an informal dining area with a board wainscot. The Kennebec Company built Georgian-style raised-panel cabinets of hand-planed pine in the ‘Grover Tavern’ finish. The stone countertop is a New England schist with a softly honed satin finish, not a high polish.

The Kitchen

The owner was already familiar with the Kennebec Company and had visited their showroom in Bath, Maine, where he picked a style for his new kitchen. “Victor and I changed the layout from Roth’s initial plans, which he’d based on my earlier request,” Chip says. “Kennebec sent one of their designers; she came to the house when it was merely stud walls, set up a drafting table, and drew the cabinet layouts right here. When the cabinets arrived, Victor said they fit perfectly.”

Victor Morrill also found the wall of 1700s salvaged paneling and modified it for use in this room. The paneled wall is part old, part new (made with hand tools).

Flooring is slate tile in the work area and wide pine in the rest of the room. Countertops are schist in a satin finish, except for two areas with tiger-maple tops. For practical reasons (and because this is not a historic house), the dishwasher is the only appliance that is hidden.

The Den

Inside, the den is paneled in cherry wood, much of which came from the building site. “The wood was handscraped, not sanded,” Chip says. Barbara and Erik Schutz of Sheffield, Massachusetts, did the finish work.

Window valances in the kitchen and den were made by hand by Kathleen Smith of Textile Reproductions, who mixes her own vegetable dyes for the yarn she uses in her crewelwork. Chip found her after reading about a project she was overseeing for Historic Deerfield.

The house has become a place for friends to assemble — fellow students from a small Quaker school in Pennsylvania, from college and law school. Last summer, Chip hosted friends from England, France, and the Netherlands. The house, filled with history and a legacy of family, welcomed them all.

The Company

• Victor Morrill Carpentry (413) 634-8819, vmorrill(at)yahoo(dot)com
  general contractor & carpentry
• Chuck Bellinger, Architectural Components architecturalcomponentsinc.com
  exterior doors, windows, some interior moldings
• The Kennebec Company kennebeccompany.com
  final kitchen design & cabinets
• Kathleen Smith, Textile Reproductions textilereproductions.com
  fabric window valances & consulting
• Caroline Sly Woodworking carolinesly.com
  18th-century corner cabinet

Sources

• Ashfield Stone ashfieldstone.com
  schist countertops
• Authentic Designs authenticdesigns.com
  interior lighting
• Mary Gray Lewis Lamp Shades (215) 968-3920
  handmade lampshades
• Moravian Tile Works buckscounty.org
  figural fireplace tiles
• Period Lighting Fixtures periodlighting.com
  exterior & interior lighting
• Williamsburg Blacksmiths williamsburgblacksmiths.com
  hardware

photographed by Jason Schmidt

Harris made a virtue of the blind walls surrounding the outdoor space by creating an open garden room with the sky as its ceiling. Understated modern interiors give way to a striking view of the outdoor room, where an Imperial Danby marble patio sets off the artificial lawn. Two Richard Schultz armchairs from DelGreco & Company, NYC, pop against a brick wall lined with bamboo. On the first floor, the living room includes a custom sofa by Rees Roberts + Partners in an off-white cotton and Andrianna Shamarias’s teak and resin low table.

From The Street

Adam Gordon’s house looks like the others on his block, except a little better—beautifully restored 1858 facade, handsome parlor floor windows, and an ironwork fence. “There is so much privacy and decorum about that facade,” says Gordon’s architect, Steven Harris. “It looks like a polite, decorous Jane Street house.” That is, until you get inside.

Gordon, a real estate developer, bought the house after being warned by the broker that there was a problem. “I don’t think you are going to like it,” he remembers her saying, “because there is something wrong in the back.” What was wrong was that the outdoor space was enclosed by the three blind walls of the surrounding buildings; it had no view. This liability so intrigued Gordon that he bought the place sight unseen. He approached the neglected house with its forlorn rooms and viewless back in a spirit of steadfast optimism. Its limitations inspired him to imagine living in streamlined interiors, but it was Harris who took things to the edge, gutting the building, installing a five-story wall of glass at the back, and creating a garden room that makes a virtue of the site’s defects.

Instead of feeling oppressed by them, Harris reports that he was actually “wowed by the tall blind walls that surrounded the garden.” The unique boundary inspired visions of a “surreal, Magritte-like open garden room where the floor of the garden is the floor, the sky is the ceiling, and the adjacent buildings are the walls.” The idea for the glass walls at the rear of the house was inspired, Harris says, by the Rockefeller guesthouse in midtown Manhattan designed by Philip Johnson, as well as by one wall of the art gallery Louis Kahn designed at Yale, where Harris has been teaching architecture over the past 20 years.

Architect Steven Harris’s Town House Transformation Turns The 19th Century Inside Out

In the second-floor living room, a work by Donald Baechler injects color into the neutral palette, which includes a vintage rosewood armchair, a pair of vintage chrome armchairs by Milo Baughman, and a custom wood coffee table by Rees Roberts + Partners.

The architectural punch of the place arrives the minute you enter and walk to the back, with its spectacular views. “We have done thirty town houses in the city, and nothing is this spare,” Harris says. “I wanted your eye to go pow at ninety-five miles an hour—straight to the back, to feel like you were outside.” To obtain the monumental plates of glass, they researched every supplier in North America, finally acquiring “the biggest sheets of glass you could get that don’t have to come through the Panama Canal.” The pieces were so big that they had to be lifted from the street and over the house to be installed. Harris also removed the bay that jutted from the back of the house, which, in accordance with New York building codes, allowed him to redeploy that space in a rooftop room and create two terraces and indoor and outdoor fireplaces.

The moldy backyard was cleaned out and transformed, enabling the building’s exterior to take on an entirely new character in sync with its reworked interior. The original idea of maintaining a sod lawn surrounded by boxwood hedges gave way to a more imaginative solution. Now synthetic grass and artificial hedges define the lot with a line of actual towering bamboo that reaches for the sky.

Breaking The Rules

Faking It

For those who consider fake grass a travesty, Steven Harris has an answer in the Synlawn he used for the garden. “It’s completely believable,” he says, “and it feels wonderful underfoot.”

Beating City Hall

New York’s strict zoning laws do allow for some flexibility. Harris says, “You cannot increase the size of a building, but you can redeploy that square footage.” That’s how he created the penthouse-like space on the roof.

The Nomad at Home

Adam Gordon attributes the innovations in his house to his nomadic approach to living: “For me, projects are sort of like Tibetan sand mandalas. The monks work laboriously to create a unique design, and when it is over, they move on.” His house is not a monument to himself, and he is not afraid to leave it now that it is finished.

Although Gordon sees this project as a radical departure from his former town house, he maintains that the broad modernist strokes of this place are discreet compared with Richard Meier’s nearby Perry Street apartments. “The Richard Meier houses, which I love, are houses for people who like to preen. It’s a very public statement about your aspirations. This place has the same kind of transparency, but it is very private. No one knows you are here.”

The serene palette of the interiors, designed by Gordon and Harris with some help from Rees Roberts + Partners, is interrupted only by the artwork and emerald green garden floor. The spare furnishings attest to Gordon’s changing aesthetic. “Houses can be like an autobiography,” Gordon says, “and this is mine.” Gone are the pieces of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century furniture from his former town house, where the walls were saturated in hues of burnt orange and bright pink. “When I came down here, I didn’t know what it would be like to live in a modern house,” he says. But he made the transition easily, and it seems to have inspired in him a desire for further transformations.

“I have always said that I am going to leave this house feet first,” Gordon says with a laugh. But that was before he spied another property, whose appeal lies in what he describes as its “grand decay.”

Harris will be accompanying his client on his next adventure, again employing his architectural wizardry on a challenging project. But Jane Street will always hold a special place for him. “Architects do a lot of projects, and there are very few that they want,” he says. “I want that house.”

Harris divided the penthouse into outdoor and indoor spaces. The south terrace, to the rear, with Andrianna Shamaris’s teak spa chair and petrified teak side table, reflects an organic version of the interior space, which includes a vintage Milo Baughman armchair and a vintage chrome end table. Identical custom wood-burning fireplaces with cast-concrete ledges, by Steven Harris Architects, further unify the space.

Produced by Donna Paul. Photographs by Maura McEvoy. Written by Fred A. Bernstein.

Retailers may try to convince you that autumn is back-to-school season, but dedicated home lovers know that falling leaves signal a primal urge to refeather the closest available nest. Face it, redecoration is in the air—either heavy (a whole-house transformation) or light (a quick coat of paint and a new frame on a favorite family photo). Popular TV shows suggest that most of us greedily seek easy solutions and instant gratification when upgrading and updating. But the stories on the following pages suggest that some dedicated homeowners are willing to put up with the time, expense and inconvenience of invasive alterations in order to create environments that best express their unique personalities. The homes we feature have been heavily altered, but each one of these renovations is made up of a series of light changes, many of which we can all do in our own homes. So get ready, get set, go reno!—The Editors

2nd Act: Met Home of the Month

Back in the early 1990s, when Jon Platt, a jet-setting theater producer, was offered a chance to help bring Angels in America to Broadway, it took him about a minute to say yes. Ten years later, after an early run-through of Wicked, a musical that reveals the untold back story of the notorious witches of OZ, Platt signed on just as quickly (Wicked is scheduled to open on Broadway in October).

“When you find the right property,” says Platt, “you know it.” The same principal applied to his beach home, about 50 miles south of Boston, where Platt has an apartment. He was looking for a place to dock his sailboat. The property he found had stunning views of Martha’s Vineyard and the Atlantic Ocean and a lawn expansive enough for a pool as well as tennis and basketball courts. Platt made and offer.

The house itself, Platt says, was dark and failed to take advantage of the views. Windows were small, which was typical for New England in the days when glass was taxed by the size and number of the panes. And the original 18th-century saltbox was flanked by—in the words of interior designer Shelley Benjamin—”hideous additions from the 1920s and 1970s.” In fact, Platt says, most of the potential buyers for the house had considered it a teardown.

Platt hired Benjamin, who had designed his apartment in Boston, and architects Brigid Williams and Patrick Hickox (of Hickox Williams Architects in Boston) to oversee the renovation. (Benjamin’s husband, John, served as contractor.) Later, John Powell, a Boston-based lighting designer, was called in to design the fixtures, and Brown Cranna of New York’s Studio Luxe created custom paint colors. “My job,” Platt says, true to his calling, “was to keep the creative team focused.”

Downstairs, window openings were enlarged, and the center stairway moved to the side, so “when you walk in the front door,” Platt says, “you see the light and the views.” For the sake of surprise, he kept the windows on the front of the house small. “You don’t even know the ocean’s out back until you open the front door.” With the front door open, the view takes in an open entry with large glass doors that open onto the beach. “The challenge,” says Hickox, “was to retain the fundamental character of a colonial house but to address the need for light.”

As for decor, the producer, who is currently represented on Broadway by Man of La Mancha, says he wanted “a look that was fresh but wouldn’t undercut the history of the house.” Benjamin reinforced the colonial architecture with antiques, but—to avoid a too-literal evocation of the past—helped Platt select new pieces from future-forward furniture retailers like Pucci in New York City and Repertoire in Boston. “She introduced me to the idea that everything doesn’t need to match.”

The one thing Platt insisted on was that the house have a soft look. The shiniest things in the house, he jokes, are his three Tony awards-two for Angels in America and one for Copenhagen.

“To me,” says Platt, “shiny means glitz. And when I want glitz, I put it on the stage.”

Kitchens are invariably the most difficult rooms to rework, and Platt’s was no exception. His goal was to slip 21st-century appliances into an 18th-century room—without letting it read too “period” or too modern. The formula involved having counters fabricated of stainless steel, but with a brushed surface that gives them a soft look (and, as a bonus, doesn’t show scratches as readily). The edge of the countertops has a slight cantilevered lip, a detail that Shelley Benjamin designed but which, her husband says, was tricky to fabricate. “Bending sheet metal in one direction is easy,” says John Benjamin. “But to bend it in two directions involves cutting, welding and grinding out the welds.”

“John wanted to kill me,” Shelley claims.

The kitchen cabinets (styled after the 18th-century cabinets over the dining room fireplace) are painted linen white—the same color, Benjamin says, “as all the woodwork in the house.” For backsplashes, she chose thick slabs of bluestone, which, given their weight, posed installation problems. But they give the place a sense of permanency, says Platt, who likes the material so much, he turned part of his yard into “the world’s only bluestone basketball court.”

The kitchen is really a suite of rooms in which Platt has a choice of places to eat. Some nights, he pulls a wooden chair up to an old French farm table (Shelley had the chairs faux painted to pick up the colors of the walls and cabinets). The nearby dining room is outfitted not for banquets but for intimate dinners in front of the fireplace, with candles burning on an antique Queen Anne dining table surrounded by linen-covered Philippe Starck chairs.

During most of the eight-year renovation period, Platt was on the road; Benjamin and the others e-mailed him photos for approval. But each Memorial Day, the crew cleared out. That way, Platt could spend the summer enjoying the house—and coming up with even more ambitious plans for the next construction season.

“Jon’s thinking was so dynamic,” says his architect, “that as he got to know the house better, he would want to go in directions we hadn’t anticipated.”

Platt says he has half a dozen favorite places in the house, but “nothing beats taking a bath, with a roaring fire on one side and the ocean on the other.” With 200 square feet for the master bathroom, Benjamin installed the tub on an angle and found a graciously proportioned porcelain sink. Like Platt’s best musicals, the sink has legs, which lets light and air flow through the room. A reproduction “satellite” mirror (originally designed by Eileen Gray in the 1920s to be wall-mounted) is installed here as a room divider. Benjamin realized that all it needed was a new back and sleek metal supports. Husband John rose to the challenge. He also built the columns in Platt’s bedroom, which double as a headboard, and the attached night tables. “I didn’t want some big, pompous bed overpowering the architecture,” says Shelley of her preference for built-ins.

But despite his many favorite places, Platt is rarely at home these days. Phoning from San Francisco, he is ecstatic about early reactions to Wicked. It took three years to bring his latest show to Broadway, far less time than it took to complete his house at the beach.

What the Pros Know About Installing Faucets

Installing the faucets in the wall, rather than on the sink, saves inches in a small bathroom. It also means, says Shelley Benjamin, that the hot and cold water pipes aren’t visible under cantilevered sinks. Best of all, “the water falls in just the right place,” she says. In a new house, wall-mounted faucets are “no trouble at all,” but, she says, in Platt’s Colonial-era house, getting the plumbing into the wall in just the right place was “very difficult”—for her husband! Benjamin chose a wall-mounted sink in black enamel. But when Platt saw it, he balked. Benjamin suggested nickel-plating the sink, and Platt agreed.

Details

1. Paintings of America’s Cup yachts from the 1930s, which Platt found at a gallery in Paris, hang on the billiard room walls. To bring as much light as possible to the room, without turning their back on the house’s past, the architects created a clerestory of small, square windows, which Benjamin says “are very indicative of old New England architecture.”

2. John Powell of the Boston firm Light Time in Space designed the more than three dozen nickel-plated sconces for the house; the armatures were custom fabricated in Canada. Benjamin, who says she never paints ceilings white, chose silver for the ceiling of the powder room, because “it picks up on the nickel-plated sconce and sink.” She avoided crown moldings, which would have crowded the tiny space.

3. Every door in the house is mahogany, an extravagance now that they’re painted white. Benjamin said it took more than a dozen tries to get the color of the new floorboards to match the originals perfectly.

4. Platt’s billiard room has two focal points: ocean views (the building is Platt’s guesthouse) and an 1880s Brunswick pool table with ebony inlay. Benjamin had the rug made in Tibet. The light fixtures, from Flos, were designed to hang on short cords, but Benjamin had her husband suspend eight of them from the cathedral ceiling in a perfect grid. “Luckily for me,” she says, “he’s an engineer.”

Large uncurtained windows let in natural light from all sides, giving the traditional house a contemporary, transparent feeling.

Vintage architectural details and traditional design combine with modern comfort in a Martha’s Vineyard house

Travelers to this part of Martha’s Vineyward might easily think they have stumbled across one of the island’s elegant old vacation homes sitting on a slight hill overlooking the water. The gambrel roof, the row of dormer windows, and the shady front porch all recall the leisurely styles of a century ago. But, in fact, the house is less than two years old, owned by a family of four that spends most of every summer on Martha’s Vineyard. Snug and sunny, the house is rich with graceful architectural details without sacrificing any of the comforts of a contemporary beach house. “They had a vision of a 1920s-style seaside hoine,” says architect and builder Gerret Conover, who designed the house, “but with a modern wish list.”

When the owners bought the property it included a 1960s-style house that did not particularly suit their needs, but the lovely sweep of view down to the water and the wild, unspoiled landscape surrounding it was too tempting to pass up.

Although not bound by the historic district guidelines that exist in Edgartown, the island’s principal town, the homeowners wanted to build a house that would blend comfortably with existing local architecture. Even more important, they wanted to be sensitive to the fragile ecology of the shoreline, protected under the guidelines of a local conservation district. In order to avoid disturbing the wetlands, the house sits 200 feet away from the water, out of the conservation district boundaries.

Natural Defenses

The weather is a factor in building any kind of beach house, but with some forethought and a careful selection of materials you can preserve the house without sacrificing style.

• Cedar shingles are a classic for both traditional and contemporary beach houses. Leave them untreated and let them weather to a soft silvery gray.
• Good thermopane windows are a wise investment both for protecting against storm damage and containing energy costs.
• Moisture and salt air take their toll on painted wood. Any painted trim or other details should be well-primed and given an extra coat of paint. In some cases durable man-made materials can be used as a stand-in for wood: the porch columns on this traditional house, for instance, are molded of fiberglass with aluminum tops and bases.

Building actually occurred in two phases. The first year, the main house, a nearby swimming pool, and the surrounding landscaping were completed; the next year, a carriage house with two guest bedrooms was built.

Since they knew from the beginning they were going to install separate guest quarters, the homeowners kept the total size of the main house relatively modest—just 4,000 feet—but still plenty large enough for themselves and their two children.

Rooms flow comfortably into each other but large openings without doors provide just a hint of demarcation, which allows rooms to work as individual spaces while still making a single unified sweep. “No matter where you are inside the house you can see through to the other rooms and often further to the outside,” says Conover.

Wide French doors and traditional six-over-six double hung windows let in floods of light; a softly neutral color scheme with an emphasis on glossy white paint and natural wood lets the views outside the uncurtained windows take center stage. The furniture is traditional without being formal, an easy-to-live-with combination of antiques and new pieces.

Photography by Sam Gray, Styling by Nan Whitney

The house owes much of its vintage style to antique architectural details, discovered in salvage yards and antique shops up and down the east coast. Custom molding, inspired by detailing on some of the older pieces, and refinished antique oak flooring add to the sunny house’s timeless feeling.

A massive antique cupboard provided the cue for the kitchen’s handsome millwork. The cupboard was cut in half and installed next to the kitchen window seat, switching halves so that its cut sides are hidden and its two finished ends exposed. In the nearby dining room a handsome corner cupboard was retrofitted as a wet bar; Conover then cleverly picked up the V-groove motif at the back of the cupboard and used it for the molding in the kitchen and dining room.

The house’s style offers some practical as well as aesthetic advantages. Island building codes restrict roof heights to 26 feet, but the broad gambrel roof makes it possible to still have nine-and-a-half foot ceilings within those limits; dormer windows and larger Palladian-style windows let in copious natural light. Air handlers are tucked into attic space and extra sump pumps in the basement take care of occasional storm flooding.

One of the family’s favorite rooms is the octagonal sun porch reminiscent of an old-fashioned conservatory, just off the dining room; a flagstone terrace beyond the sun porch has space for pots of geraniums and a barbecue grill. The room, lit with a combination of soft valance up-lighting and an iron chandelier, started out as a screened porch with removable glass panels, but the family discovered that glass panels not only gave more all-weather versatility but opened up the spectacular view. “This is a house,” says Conover, “where the view is everything.”

The new house’s Queen Anne-style features include a steeply pitched slate roof, a mix of brick, clapboard, and shingle siding, and a (right) rounded tower. Custom woodwork and a plan true to Queen Anne style give a brand-new house the old-fashioned character its homeowners cherish.

When it comes to building a house, there’s only one mantra to remember: plan, plan, and plan. And that’s just what Mickey and Jackie Herbert did. Having lived in a Victorian-style house for 10 years, the Herberts knew they loved that architectural style. But their needs had changed over the years. So when they purchased six waterfront acres in Southport, Connecticut, and started envisioning the house they would build there, they found themselves taking stock of their family lifestyle. With two young sons, ages 8 and 9, and three older children from Mickey’s previous marriage, they needed bedrooms placed strategically throughout the house. They also considered the possibility that their own parents might need to move in with them. And although their previous house had an open kitchen/family room—essential when toddlers are in the house—they didn’t need that feature in the floor plan for the new house.

The stunning entry is a showplace of custom work rendered in quarter-sawn oak: paneling, arch, double stairway, and floors. The dining room, directly ahead through the arch, can be closed off with pocket doors.

With function assessed, they moved on to form. “I love Victorian architecture,” says Jackie, who mentions a trip to the Inn at Shelburne Farms, an 1888 Queen Anne-style estate on Vermont’s Lake Champlain, as pivotal. The Herberts knew they wanted many Queen Anne features, such as corbelled stone chimneys and turrets on the exterior, a grand entry, and formal public rooms for the interior.

With a scrapbook of ideas culled over the years from books and magazines, (“it was about a foot thick,” laughs Jackie), the Herberts met with Southport architect Jack Franzen and started turning their dreams into reality. The result: a 17,000-square-foot house with 10 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, formal and informal parlors, a grand foyer with a double stairway, and such modern amenities as an exercise room and a home theater.

Throughout the house, custom woodwork, including mahogany windows, quartersawn oak paneling and floors, and a massive oak front door, create the Queen Anne character the Herberts admire.

Architect Franzen incorporated classic elements of the style for the exterior: a steeply pitched roof, cross gables, turrets, half-timber detailing, corbelled chimneys, turned-wood columns, and a sweeping veranda overlooking Long Island Sound. “Queen Anne houses typically used many different materials,” says Franzen, and the Herbert house does the same. The first floor is clad in brick, the upper floors in clapboard and shingles; the roof is slate. The rounded tower on the waterfront side is a quintessential example of the mix of elements.

At the tower’s ground level stands the veranda, with its turned-wood railing and beadboard ceiling; the second floor of the tower is a small porch (off the master bedroom) with a kneewall clad in clapboards; and the uppermost portion of the tower has a shingled base capped by a curved row of windows and a slate roof. “The view from those tower windows is the most magnificent view in the house,” says Mickey, whose home office and exercise rooms occupy the top.

Franzen and the Herberts chose authentic Victorian colors for the exterior. “People mistakenly think Queen Anne houses were white because so many have been repainted that way,” says Franzen. “But earth tones were more typical.” Window trim, porch posts, columns, and railings are painted forest green, while clapboards are brick red, and gable fronts are mustard.

Evoking Victorian appeal are such elements as decorative plaster details and a custom fireplace surround

One step inside the front door gives immediate proof that the Victorian styling extends indoors as well. Here, ]ackie got the grand entry she had long wanted. A double stairway of quartersawn oak ascends from the foyer, with a turned balustrade dazzling the eye all the way up to the second floor landing. An impressive arch, trimmed in quartersawn oak, forms the doorway from the foyer to the first-floor hallway and dining room ahead. Floors in the foyer are also quartersawn oak, with an 18-inch border laid in a herringbone pattern. The Herberts use the stunning space as a reception room for holiday gatherings and other events relating to Mickey’s ownership of the Bridgeport Bluefish, a nearby professional baseball team.

The plan of the entire first floor follows Queen Anne conventions: A formal dining room and two parlors provide space for entertaining, whether it’s dinner for 10 or a reception for 100. These areas also have flexibility built in by way of pocket doors, a Victorian technique for making rooms more cozy or more grand with the pull of a latch. For example, if guests are mingling in the Herbert’s foyer, pocket doors can close off the dining room, keeping preparations there out of view and giving the foyer a more intimate feeling.

In the kitchen, a beadboard-paneled island base and painted tin ceiling evoke Victorian style, but amenities are thoroughly modern. “This is a great two-cook kitchen,” says Franzen. The layout includes two sinks, three dishwashers, a commercial-style cooktop, warming drawers, wall ovens, a walk-in pantry, floor-to-ceiling cabinets, and honed granite countertops. The adjacent family room includes a brick fireplace and a painted poplar coffered ceiling, features that make for a cozy atmosphere.

The 20-by-22-foot family room is adjacent to the kitchen, and includes a custom-coffered ceiling, made of painted poplar, and a brick fireplace wall.

Careful consideration of the family’s needs guided the placement of the bedrooms. Rooms for guests, older siblings, and in-laws are placed throughout the third floor, basement, and above the garage. The master bedroom and bath occupy the waterfront side of the second floor, with children’s rooms nearby but facing the front yard. The basement can function as its own hideaway, thanks to a kitchen, game room, and laundry area. The basement is also the location of the home theater; a room that comfortably seats eight to 10 people.

In a nod to the era that made porch living an art, a veranda lines the waterfront side of the house, with custom mahogany French doors leading to it from the dining room, living room, family room, and kitchen. The 10-foot-deep porch has mahogany floors, a painted green ceiling, and turned-wood railing. Here, perhaps more than any other place in the house, one senses the spirit of the Victorian age, a time when functional rooms were rendered in splendid style. For the Herberts and their new home, the era lives on.

Elements of Queen Anne Style

Between 1800 and 1910, the architectural style know as Queen Anne flourished. It received its name from a group of 19th-century British architects who were alluding to the British queen who reigned from 1702-1714, but the style actually borrows more from earlier medieval times. Existing examples of Queen Anne houses throughout this country can be found along the water in such summer enclaves as Newport, Rhode Island, and Mackinac Island, Michigan, as well as in such western cities as Boulder, Colorado, and San Francisco. Key elements of the style include:

• A steeply pitched roof with one or more lower cross gables
• Patterned siding shingles, in scalloped rows.
• Turrets and towers, typically with porches and windows.
• Asymmetrical facades, broken up by gables, porches, and other features.
• Bay windows.

Authentic Queen Anne styling requires skilled craftsmen and a bounty of oak and mahogany

When architect Jack Franzen set out to create a modern-day, Queen Anne-style house for Jackie and Mickey Herbert, he knew that custom woodwork would be the key to the finished product. Nowhere is that wisdom more apparent than in the grand entry foyer, with its quartersawn oak stairway, paneling and floors, and its handsome oak door. Here’s a breakdown of the custom woodwork elements that went into the house:

• Oak front door: The house’s massive oak front door, with its raised panels and oval glass insert, was custom-made by Architectural Components, a Montague, Massachusetts, company that specializes in reproduction doors and windows. Bolection molding gives the front door its distinctive look. “This is a type of molding that projects beyond the surface of the door,” explains Chuck Bellinger, president of Architectural Components.
• Mahogany windows: Architectural Components also made all the windows for the Herbert house, which range in style from basic double-hungs, to bays, ovals, and round tops. All the windows are manufactured of mahogany. Bellinger says mahogany was used because it is a stable, rot-resistant wood with an attractive look. He points out that the windows have a period look because they are true divided-light windows with muntins that are just 7/8 inch. Whereas 19th-century windows typically had muntins of just 3/4 inch or 5/8 inch, today commercial window makers tend to use muntins as large as 1 1/4 inch or even use simulated divided lights.
• Quartersawn oak double stairway: Jackie Herbert’s inspiration for this foyer was a picture she found of the double stairway in a summer cottage built in the late 1800s on Mackinac Island, Michigan. Quartersawn oak, which was a hallmark of elaborately detailed Queen Anne interiors, refers to oak that is sawed from quartered logs, creating a beautifully consistent grain pattern. For the Herbert stairway, builder John Ludwig called on New England Stair, a subcontractor specializing in custom stairs and balustrades.
• Quartersawn oak arches: In the foyer, massive arches provide gracious doorways leading to the interior. They were crafted of quartersawn oak on site by Comstock Millwork.
• Quartersawn oak floors: Builder John Ludwig’s team installed the quartersawn oak floors, adding an 18-inch border in a herringbone pattern in the foyer and dining room.
• Mahogany french doors: Architectural Components made the custom mahogany French doors that lead from several first-floor rooms out to the veranda. Bellinger says the doors were designed so that the top two-thirds are glass, with the bottom one-third paneled.

Estimate the number of historic buildings demolished each year because American communities can’t figure out how to use them, and you would—conservatively—reach a number in the hundreds. Internationally, the number is much greater.

“Unlike a picture or a statue, a building must continue to justify itself on more than artistic grounds,” wrote Constance Greiff in Lost America, From the Atlantic to the Mississippi. “It must continue, in some way, to be functional if it is to survive. And, only recently have Americans begun to accept the notion that function might include the provision of visual delight, variety in the townscape, or a sense of place and identity.”

One of several institutions of higher learning to recognize this latter truth is Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, which is working to restore many of its historic buildings, originally designed as residences, and adapt them for educational use. What’s relevant about this project for individual homeowners is decisions the university made about what features to retain, which to rework, and how to accommodate modern systems and codes.

Yale acquired the Skinner-Trowbridge house in 1978. It had been used in various ways through the years, including for classrooms, but had suffered deterioration over time. In 1999, Yale’s governing board decided to use the mansion, which the New Haven Preservation Trust has called “New Haven’s finest Greek Revival house … a priceless heritage,” to accommodate the School of Management’s prestigious International Center for Finance. For restoration of the 14,OOO-square-foot space, Yale turned to Helpern Architects of New York City, a firm known for its educational and preservation work.

The building is located on Hillhouse Avenue, which was developed in 1792 by James Hillhouse, a 1773 Yale graduate and contemporary of Nathan Hale, on his farm in a rural section of New Haven. Senator Hillhouse, who served in Congress during George Washington’s presidency and as Yale’s treasurer for more than fifty years, laid out a road and lined it with elms. He specified that houses must be set back fifty feet from the two-lane street and mandated that homeowners hire a leading architect for residential design. The result of Hillhouse’s plan was a street Charles Dickens called “the most beautiful in America.” All but two of the homes Dickens admired on the upper section of the street have survived, and all are owned by the university. (Ironically, one of the two no longer standing is Hillhouse’s own, demolished in 1942 at the instruction of its owner, who feared it would “fall to decay, or pass into the hands of strangers who have no interest in it.” Local preservationists tried, but failed, to save it.)

Aaron N. Skinner, a Yale-trained lawyer, bought his 100-foot-wide lot for $1,000 in September 1830 and agreed to build a residence costing at least $3,500 in the six-month period beginning May 1, 1834. For his home’s design, Skinner hired architects Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis; Town’s extensive architectural library stood at the lower end of Hillhouse Avenue. It is said that Davis based his design on Decimus Burton’s plans for the 1823 Greenough Villa in Regent’s Park, London.

His Greek Revival design was cruciform with a two-story Ionic-columned portico facing east to the street. Its central core was balanced by two one-story pavilions, which made a graceful transition from the imposing portico to the landscape. The main entry was a Doric-columned porch on the south side. Built of brick, it was veneered in stucco, coursed to imitate stone blocks, and painted a light stone color. According to one historian, Skinner’s house was the model for “at least nine other Town and Davis temple houses within a radius of fifty miles.”

Skinner, who was admitted to the bar in 1829, founded an exclusive school for boys in the house, served four terms in the Connecticut legislature, and, as mayor of New Haven from 1850-54, took an interest in the city’s parks and streetscape. In 1858 he sold the house to Judge W.W. Boardman, who had it remodeled in a more eclectic style, possibly by Henry Austin, who designed New Haven’s City Hall. The roof parapet was removed and a second story was added to both flanking wings. The upper windows of these additions were outlined with round-headed gouged frames popular in the Victorian period. Inside, the front hall received a new staircase and carved deep-relief crown moldings with chevronesque banding.

In 1907 another new owner, Rutherford Trowbridge, scion of a wealthy New Haven shipping family, expanded the mansion. He added a large dining room featuring a semicircular bay with leaded windows on its north side and an open porch and two-story kitchen/service addition on the west.

For Yale’s restoration, project architect Margaret Castillo took her lead from the building’s architectural pedigree and from historic sources, such as Davis’s diaries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. The intent of the changes was to be consistent with the character of the house and its anticipated use.

Outdoors, sections of original cast-iron fence, found in an outbuilding, were reproduced, and a parterre garden, a buffer between house and rear parking lot, was recreated from plans by Marian Coffin, dating to 1926. The grade behind the house and the basement slab were lowered, permitting the basement to be used for office and administrative space. The basement was also expanded under the west porch, with a scored stucco facing that matches the adjacent foundation. Landscaping and a system of outdoor paths integrate the house with the School of Management complex.

Inside, twelve-foot-seven-inch ceilings on the first floor and ten-foot-seven-inch ceilings on the second floor were retained. The original room configuration was also kept, with a few exceptions. The southwest comer room was subdivided to create space for an elevator, pantry and recycling areas, and an office on each floor. For the elevator, a mezzanine was added off the main stair landing. The rear wing was redesigned to accommodate a staircase and offices. The mansion now houses about twenty administrative and faculty offices, a computer center, a library with desk space for visiting scholars and dignitaries, and a reception/gathering room in the 1907 dining room.

Interior finishes were as important as space design. In the front hall, missing sections of circa 1858 crown molding were meticulously copied—and redone when installation revealed they did not perfectly imitate the originals. The entry’s glass tracery was restored and the sweeping staircase was retained, as were all five of the mansion’s fireplaces. Double-hung replacement windows with true divided lights and wooden muntins were custom-made using insulated glass; new weights carry their heavier bulk. In the library, use of the original interior pocket shutters was revived. Where Greek Revival period curtains once divided rooms, custom-made wooden doors were installed; on the second floor they function as smoke doors off the open stairhall. Inlaid oak and mahogany floors were restored and laid with area rugs instead of institutional wall-to-wall carpeting. The rear staircase has brass handrails and unfading green slate flooring similar to the material used for the outdoor paths—prettier and quieter than metal stairs. In the historic rooms, incandescent chandeliers and lamps replaced fluorescent lighting.

The result of thoughtful planning and careful craftsmanship is a building that meets current codes and standards but minimizes their visual impact. The architects declined to eliminate small sliding panels under the oversized windows, designed to allow the windows to open as doors onto the terrace, to install HVAC units. Instead, they kept the panels and installed discreet brass floor grates under the windows to channel forced hot air heat up from the basement; air conditioning is ducted in the attic through equally discreet ceiling grilles. In the front hall, the required fire command panel is just one foot square; a larger panel is located in the basement. A new rear entry convenient to the parking lot and other School of Management buildings provides access for the disabled, rather than exterior ramps.

At present, the future of the Skinner-Trowbridge house seems assured. Perhaps it is not just a building that has “learned” to function in a new way, but one that has something to teach future architects, international business people, and other communities.

In keeping with the building’s use, work focused on restoring the gracious residential character of the house. The main entrance’s beveled-glass-panel door, sidelights, and flat-arched fanlight with leaded tracery offer a graceful introduction to the interior. Sections of the deeply carved, chevronesque banding on the ceiling’s crown moldings were reproduced.

The grand staircase, once closed off because of water damage to the second floor, was reopened, with the aid of rear fire stairs, sprinklers, and smoke detectors. Here, as throughout the house, incandescent chandeliers and wall sconces were preferred over more institutional fluorescent lighting. Wall decorations include a permanent exhibition of international bond certificates in reproduction frames.

In the lounge/seminar room, added as a dining room in 1907, the clear and rippled leaded-glass bay windows were fully restored, as was the room’s oak wall paneling and fireplace, which is surmounted by the Trowbridge family crest. The joist design of the Colonial Revival ceiling was emphasized, and incandescent light fixtures replaced fluorescent ones.

Restoration Standards

The U.S. Secretary of Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, drawn from Stewart Brand’s 1994 book, How Buildings Learn:

1. A property shall be used for its historic purpose or be placed in a new use that requires minimal change to the defining characteristics of the building and its site and environment.

2. The historic character of a property shall be retained and preserved. The removal of historic materials or alteration of features and spaces that characterize a property shall be avoided.

3. Each property shall be recognized as a physical record of its time, place, and use. Changes that create a false sense of historical development, such as adding conjectural features or architectural elements taken from other buildings, shall not be undertaken.

4. Most properties change over time; those changes that have acquired historic significance in their own right shall be retained and preserved.

5. Distinctive features, finishes, and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that characterize a historic property shall be preserved.

6. Deteriorated historic features shall be repaired rather than replaced. Where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a distinctive feature, the new feature shall match the old in design, texture, and other visual qualities and, where possible, materials. Replacement of missing features shall be substantiated by documentary, physical, or pictorial evidence.

7. Chemical or physical treatments, such as sandblasting, that cause damage to the historic materials shall not be used. The surface cleaning of structures, if appropriate, shall be undertaken using the gentlest means possible.

8. Significant archaeological resources affected by a project shall be protected and preserved. If such resources must be disturbed, mitigation measures shall be undertaken.

9. New additions, exterior alterations, or related new construction shall not destroy historic materials that characterize the property. The new work shall be differentiated from the old and shall be compatible with the massing, size, scale, and architectural features to protect the historic integrity of the property and its environment.

10. New additions and adjacent or related new construction shall be undertaken in such a manner that if removed in the future, the essential form and integrity of the historic property and its environment would be unimpaired.

Windows manufactured by:
Architectural Components Inc.
26 North Leverett Road
Montague, Massachusetts 01351
413-367-9441 Fax 413-367-9461

Photographs by John Crispin

Making Period Doors From Plank to Paint

When Richard Pieper began restoring his vernacular farmhouse, he knew he would be re-creating parts lost over two centuries of architectural changes. Erected in a rural valley east of Albany, New York, around 1790, the house was slowly losing key structural members in the Dutch timber frame. Plus, an 1830s makeover had updated the exterior with Greek Revival details, and in 1990 remodelers rearranged walls and rooms on the first floor. And then there were those doors.

After he bought the house in 1992, Richard assumed the original front door was long gone—that is, until he opened walls in the attic. There, nailed across studs as a brace, and plastered with newspapers, were three boards spanning nearly a yard in width. When he wasn’t spending weekends restoring the house with brother Robert and friend Hugo Corrigan, Richard was in the field as Director of Preservation for a New York City architectural firm. He recognized the boards as the classic pattern of an 18th-century three-board batten door—most likely his door.

What Defines A Door?

Exterior doors must withstand tremendous seasonal forces. In winter, they’re dry and warm on the interior side, wet and cold on the exterior. In summer the conditions are nearly reversed. All these changes in moisture and temperature contribute to wood expansion and contraction that would quickly warp a door made from a single board. The solution in traditional joinery is to construct the door with multiple boards in ways that counteract these forces.

BATTEN DOORS

To create a relatively stable door, batten doors simply run battens (horizontal boards) across a set of vertical boards. Beyond the usual edge-matching of boards, there is no joinery in a batten door, so it must rely on fasteners (screws or nails) to hold it together. Traditional batten doors are clinch-nailed, a method where the carpenter drives the nail through the door once, then bends the shank over so it penetrates the wood again. Traditionally, handmade wrought nails were the best for clinching. Since the metal grain runs with the length of the nail, they are less likely to break. Cut nails, on the other hand, tend to snap because the metal grain runs perpendicular to the length of the nail.

FRAME-AND-PANEL DOORS

A more stable method for making a door is to fashion a frame of stiles and rails. This frame holds panels in such a way that they are free to move with seasonal changes. The number and pattern of panels in any door (as well as their decoration) may vary widely, but the construction remains principally the same. Traditional panel door frames are held together with mortise and tenon joints, secured with pegs through the sides of the tenon, or wedges on the end. If the joints in a frame-and-panel door do not remain tight all year round, the door will sag. A particular concern is compression set. This is a phenomenon where wood in a confined joint expands to the point the fibers become compressed, never to regain their original dimensions. To avoid the problems of compression set, doormakers never use tenons over a certain size.

Carpenters of the 18th century often made doors with three exterior boards because they could ioln them with a standard bead-and-bevel joint (see drawing).

Later, Richard discovered equally revealing evidence about a side door added in the 1830s. Working with Chuck Bellinger of Architectural Components Inc. he turned this promising evidence into museum quality reproductions. The steps they used provide a quick education in not only what doors of the 1790s and the 1840s look like, but also how they can be constructed.

BATTEN DOOR BEGINNINGS

Once Richard pried his lucky find out of the attic, it was clear he had uncovered a fully battened exterior door. Unlike a two- or three-batten door, which uses a minimum of boards to span the back, a fully battened door runs boards horizontally (or diagonally) the full length of the door. This method of construction, while still not as sophisticated as a panel door, is common for exterior doors because it creates a thicker—hence warmer—door than the two-batten method. A fully battened door also offers far more security than a thinner version.

Richard carefully measured all the details so that Chuck could reproduce them in the shop. The outer vertical finish boards are mated in a “feather edge” joint much used in the 18th century for interior paneling as well as doors. Here, both edges of the middle board are planed into bevels so they fit into grooves on both the large outer boards, which are moulded at their edges. On the backside, however, the horizontal battens are matched in a shiplap joint finished with a flattened thumbnail bead. Each of these methods adds weather-blocking integrity to board junctions, while disguising joints with decorative shadow lines. Like the original, Richard chose to make the new door from eastern white pine, an easy-to-work species often used for exterior trim. The outside boards are 7/8″ thick; inside boards measure up to 3/4″.

Though all the joinery on the original door would have been cut with hand planes, Chuck’s shop used a modern power-driven shaper and stock feeder to make all moulded and beveled edges on the door boards, as well as the thumbnail profile in the door battens. In this tool, the shaper motor in the base powers the patterned knives that rotate above the table. Wheels in the bottom of the feeder, positioned on top of the table, feed the stock, making for a smoother finished product than feeding by hand. Having the feeder wheels on top not only protects the user, it maintains a constant back-to-front thickness dimension in critical parts, such as panels. Since the feather edge bevel is a common pattern in Chuck’s business, the knives are always in the shop. However, the flattened thumbnail pattern that Richard specified for the battens had to be copied from the original door and then custom ground.

In Richard’s original batten door, the clinched nails are T-heads—that is, handmade wrought nails with heads flattened on two sides so they resemble the letter T in profile. Richard had a modern blacksmith rehead his nails with this period technique. T-head nails are only 1/8″ or so in width and less conspicuous in the work—finish nails in effect. The blacksmith also annealed (heated and slowly cooled) the reproduction nails, a process that removes the brittleness from the metal so the nails can be clinched. Beyond this, batten door assembly is basically a matter of nailing the intersection of every two boards, while making sure board ends are well attached.

THE PANEL DOOR PROCESS

While investigating the side entrance on the gable end of the house, Richard uncovered a piece of old door stile nailed to the framing—a tantalizing clue to a past appearance. Though only a fragment, the stile provided nearly all the information to deduce the size and proportions of a much earlier door. By looking at the paint ghosts, Richard determined that this was a flat-panel door with square-edge stiles and rails—pretty typical joinery for the 1830s to 1860s. The number and positions of mortises showed there was a single lock rail, which meant the door had four panels. Moreover, the lock rail was wide at 11 1/8″—unusual, but not surprising in a vernacular farmhouse. The doorway itself provided the width dimension. At 76″ tall then, this was once a rather squat door: wide and short.

As the name implies, a panel door is basically a rigid frame of stiles and rails. The remainder of the door is filled with panels that float in grooves in the frame, so they are are free to expand and contract. The frame is secured not with nails, but mortise and tenon joints. After documenting all the door’s dimensions, Richard composed shop drawings for the new door. The one departure was increasing the original 1 1/8″ thickness by 1/4″ to make the door a little more energy efficient. Again, the door would be made from eastern white pine.

When making panel doors of this era, Chuck’s shop uses full mortises (also called through mortises) that extend completely through the stiles. This construction method is traditional, plus it provides the joint with maximum strength. (In a concession to looks, after 1880 door makers started to use half or blind tenons that do not penetrate the stile.)

SHOP SPECIFICS

Once an exacting hand process, mortising door stiles is swift work in the shop with a power hollow-chisel mortiser. Basically a sophisticated drill press, the tool’s heart is a twist bit encased in a square chisel. By lowering the mortiser with a foot pedal, the operator punches several square holes in a row to make a rectangular mortise, moving the stile across the table as he goes. It’s customary to make the mortises in a door the same width as the panels because plowing the groove for the panel also takes away part of the tenon. Since Richard beefed-up the dimensions of his door, both panels and mortises are increased to 5/8″ thick.

No less ingenious is the equipment for making tenons. With the single-end tenoner the stock rides on a carriage through three sets of cutters that 1) shape the top and bottom of the tenon, 2) cope the shoulder so it matches the profile on the door stile, and 3) trim the end of the tenon to length. Depending upon the length of the tenon, making a finished tenon may take two or three passes through the machine. However, this is still only a fraction of the time once required to cut tenons by hand with a backsaw, and considerably more accurate.

Once all the pieces are made, panel doors must be carefully assembled on a large work-table. Starting with a middle rail, the joiner fits pieces together, sliding the panels into ploughs or grooves as he goes. Last to go on are the stiles at each side, followed by pipe clamps that hold the door together temporarily. At this point, the joiner bores 1/4″ or 5/16″ holes in the mortise and tenon joints and secures them with pegs. These pine pegs are made with squared off sides to produce the proverbial “square peg in a round hole” that wedges the peg in a very tight joint.

Chuck also likes to glue his joints with common aliphatic resin carpenter’s glue, a product unavailable to 18th century joiners. Though the glue makes the joints doubly secure, it has a quick set-up time that means assembly must move quickly. Altogether, the door is a very sturdy piece of construction. The big mortise and tenon shoulders, cut to close tolerances on precision equipment, add considerable strength to the system.

However, for the final period touch on doors like Richard’s, Chuck and his shop turn to hand tools. Here they hand-plane all stiles and rails before they’re assembled. This process takes some skill and care to maintain uniform thicknesses of all parts so that there is no difference in the completed joints.

Before the age of steam-powered milling machinery, early joiners used surfacing planes to smooth and reduce the wood to the desired thickness. Workaday woodwork might warrant only a basic “scrub planing”; finish joinery demanded a second round of planing. The cutting irons in these planes are ground to a slight arc, which keeps the edges of the iron from gouging the wood, as would happen with a straight-edged iron. Chuck’s shop shapes their irons in the same way, so the plane produces a characteristic, slightly scalloped appearance in raking light. This look is the hallmark of all handmade joinery and the fitting finish to two newly recreated pre-industrial doors.

Panel Doors in Production

Though adding raised panels and mouldings on the frame dresses up the door, construction remains the same—even when produced with modern millwork machinery: 1) Dave Sylvester slides panels into a door frame of rails and stiles; 2) the shaper/feeder does the work of planes for adding moulded edges and profiles; 3) cutters on the tenoner form both sides of the tenon, then trim it to length; 4) the chisel mortiser punches several holes in a row for one mortise; 5) surface planing by hand adds period finish.

SPECIAL THANKS to Richard Pieper (Jan Hird Pokorny Associates, New York, NY) and Chuck Bellinger (Architectural Components,. 26 North Leverett Rd. Montague, MA 01351; 413-367-9441)

Always intrigued by eighteenth-century architecture, Mark Harbold designed a New England saltbox house as a mechanical drafting project when he was a senior in high school. Twenty-two years later he and his wife, Lorraine, built it. It looks like a Connecticut original, down to the weathered brown paint and faded red door and window sashes—except it stands about 400 miles south of its authentic counterparts, in a housing development just west of Baltimore.

The house the Harbolds built is a fortuitous combination of research, planning, timing, and connections. Compromises were made to suit a modern family’s lifestyle, but aesthetically the house remains true to its eighteenth-century inspirations.

Although born and raised in Maryland, Mark has an affinity for New England style, developed early and honed as an architecture major in college and later as owner of a shop specializing in eighteenth-century New England reproductions. To find new craftsmen and vendors, he made frequent trips north. After he and Lorraine married, he closed the shop and moved himself and the remaining inventory into her house. Still the New England trips continued, though less frequently. Lorraine also liked antiques, favoring Victoriana. As she traveled with Mark to antiques shows and traditional crafts shows, she grew to appreciate the earlier styles.

Once they decided to build, they spent three years researching and refining the design and collecting architectural elements. They toured New England house museums and old neighborhoods, filling albums with snapshots. “We’d even be out at night measuring things,” Lorraine remembers, “taking pictures of historic house interiors through windows, figuring proportions. What we found was that they varied very little, even from town to town.” Their house has the typical dimensions and classic facade of a Connecticut saltbox—a gable overhang; a thirty-eight-foot, three-bay front with a center chimney; a transom of bull’s-eye glass over the nine-panel front door; twelve-over-twelve windows. Because it was built new, the Harbolds were able to incorporate all the eighteenth-century architectural details they liked in a single structure.

Inside, the house recreates the evolution of an authentic saltbox. Its rooms flow chronologically from a circa 1700 hall, with exposed hand-hewn beams, simple beaded paneling, and a large cooking fireplace, to the 1760’s lean-to that forms the saltbox profile and encloses the kitchen and keeping room. “This is as accurate a floor plan as could be modernly made,” Mark says. “I don’t think they’ve improved on the eighteenth-century floor plan for traffic flow and ambiance. It’s really very practical and functional. I saw no reason to alter it.”

They did alter it, of course, making it work in the twentieth century. It has bathrooms, a modem kitchen, closets, an ell with a family room, and a screened porch. The initial compromises, Mark says, were not moving to New England to restore an old house and not transporting one to Maryland and rebuilding it (though they considered it). Structurally, they chose a conventional frame over a traditional timber frame because the cost to do it right would have been exorbitant. They also eliminated the traditional center dogleg front staircase; since it would not have met fire codes, a back staircase was mandatory. The staircase’s absence yielded a walk-in closet in their daughter’s bedroom and a half-height linen closet in the upstairs hallway. Mark designed the interior around the antique two-panel doors he and Lorraine found in Connecticut; they enclose closets, bathrooms, the basement, and the attic. Others had to be reproduced to meet fire codes for width and height.

Mark’s position with a company that salvages and remills old lumber for new flooring gave him advantages: he had first choice of room-length antique floor boards, and, as part of a company bid, he removed nearly 400 pounds of glass panes from an 1840’s Quaker house. He sent the glass to a glazier in Massachusetts, who installed it in new sashes, enough for all twenty-three of the home’s windows: twelve-over-twelve, twelve-over-eight, nine-over-nine, six-over-six. The Harbolds had to buy radial-sawn spruce siding even before they applied for their construction loan because the Vermont manufacturer ran it only once a year. Mark stored it—along with the windows and floor boards—in his company’s warehouse.

With each trip to New England, they made new contacts. A Connecticut antiques dealer introduced them to a dairy farmer who stored pieces of old houses in two-hundred-foot chicken bams, where the Harbolds found thumb latches and eight of their twenty antique doors. Answering an ad in the Newtown Bee led them to a state trooper who salvaged and sold architectural elements; he recommended they see “the young guy down the road.” Cabinetmaker Bill Treiss, who had just started his own business, became a primary source. His price for interior paneling, an extra they had planned to add later, was too good to pass up. Treiss also made the paneled doors for the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, installed over inexpensive boxes made by a local carpenter. Reproduction furnishings and accessories left from Mark’s store, along with antiques (mainly chairs) the Harbolds have collected, fill the house.

There were no decisions without financial ramifications, Mark says, but the couple’s advance planning and some lucky connections allowed them to stay very close to their initial budget. “If you can pay $125 a square foot for high-quality custom work you’re doing well,and that’s without windows,” he says. “Ours cost under $100 a square foot. It’s a matter of doing your homework.”

For the Harbolds, doing their homework paid tangible dividends.

EXTERIOR SIDING
Ward Clapboard Mill
P.O. Box 1030
Waitsfield, VT 05673
802-496-3581

REPRODUCTION WINDOWS AND EXTERIOR DOORS
Chuck Bellinger
Architectural Components
26 North Leverett Road
Montague, MA 01351
413-367-9441

ARCHITECTURAL MILLWORK, PANELING, INTERIOR DOORS, AND CABINETRY
Bill Treiss
Lost Art Joinery
811 Waterman Road
Lebanon, CT 06249
860-887-3215

ANTIQUE WOOD FLOORING AND BEAMS
Vintage Lumber Company
1 Council Drive
P.O. Box 104
Woodsboro, MD 21798
800-499-7859

ANTIQUE DOORS, PANELING, AND HARDWARE
Brooklyn Restoration Supply
12 Gorman Road
Brooklyn, CT 06234
860-774-6759

STAIR BANISTER AND BALUSTERS
Ken Heiser
Yellow Breeches Box Company
1000 Sandbank Road
P.O. Box 127
Mount Holly Springs, PA 17065
717-486-4058

REPRODUCTION IRON HARDWARE
John Tyler, Blacksmith
1917 Walnut Bottom Road
Carlisle, PA 17013
717-243-9971

ELECTRIC CHANDELIERS AND SCONCES
Lighting by Hammerworks
6 Fremont Street
Worcester, MA 01603
508-755-3434

INTERIOR WOODWORK PAINT
Stulb’s Old Village Paint
P.O. Box 1030
Fort Washington, PA 19034
215-654-1770

BLUEPRINTS OF SALTBOX AVAILABLE FROM
Mark Harbold
P.O. Box 104
Woodsboro, MD 21798
800-499-7859

Completed in early January 1993, Weld Hall looks now as it did when it was originally built in 1870. Brick and sandstone were cleaned and fire escapes were removed, replaced by fire code compliant interior stairs.

The new wood sash installed as part of a comprehensive dormitory improvement program at Harvard University feature true-divided-lites and insulating glass.

Harvard freshmen may be the smartest of the lot. But they are not necessarily kinder or gentler than their colleagues at other schools around the country. So, when the University began a five year restoration program of the 16 freshman dorms on the storied Harvard Yard, the durability of the materials and the quality of the skills that the manufacturers and contractors could provide was paramount. But while the school would have liked the buildings in the Yard, which is a National Register Historic District, to endure indefinitely, budget constraints and a tight construction schedule precluded an iron-clad restoration. What they did manage to pull-off, however, bears testament to the fact that compromise is not always one step down from perfection; sometimes it’s better. Particularly when it comes to windows.

Dorms on the Yard had been painted white since the early 1920s. While this single palette had been an enduring part of Harvard’s image, the architects felt each building should be painted in colors dating to its period of construction. above.

3 BUILDINGS, 2 CONTRACTORS, MANY WINDOWS

This ambitious project—part renovation and part restoration—began in late 1991, nearly thirty years after Benjamin Thompson and his firm, The Architect’s Collaborative (TAC), completed a similar project on the Yard. TAC’s approach, stripping back much of the early or original finishes and exposing brick walls, lent a distinctly modern tone to what were then a complex of worn and stodgy dorms. But, by the late eighties, the stark white finishes had begun to gray and the sealer that coated the brick walls had darkened. While the interior was bad, the exteriors were worse. The dorms had reached a state where a simple coat of paint and a good scrubbing were far from adequate to reverse the decay. The roofs leaked, the paint wouldn’t stay on the trim, and replacement windows and storm sash were broken. Handicapped accessibility and the capacity of the existing mechanical and electrical systems were also pressing issues that pointed the school toward a comprehensive renovation plan.

Goody Clancy & Associates, a Boston-based architectural firm, handled the renovation of three of the sixteen dorms on the Yard. This article looks at two of these buildings, Weld and Hollis Halls. The third, Stoughton Hall, is similar to Hollis. Because the time scheduled for these projects was short, general contractors were brought on board before design work was completed to work in collaboration with the architect and the owner. Contracts for construction were let to two firms; Beacon Construction for Weld Hall and Shawmut Design and Construction for Hollis and Stoughton. The general contractors bid the subcontracts competitively and eventually selected two window manufacturers to supply the new sash: Architectural Components, a small shop in Montague, Massachusetts, was awarded the contract for the windows at Weld and KSD Custom Windows, another small shop in Tilton, New Hampshire, was awarded the contract for Hollis and Stoughton. While each of the projects required different windows—the number of lites and the muntin profiles of the sash differed slightly from one building to the next—performance and durability standards were exacting and universal.

WORKING VACATION

Weld Hall, built in 1870 to designs by the Boston-based architectural firm Ware and Van Brunt, was one of the first of the 16 dorms to be renovated. Because the University had limited overflow space for the first year class—they had determined the minimum number of beds it could have available at anyone time during the five year project—renovation of each building was kept to an extremely stringent schedule. Weld was one of several consecutive projects for which the University had scheduled a seven month period for construction—demolition could begin after commencement in June and had to be completed by New Year’s Day.

Goody Clancy’s first contact with the University was in November 1991; the scope of the project was discussed and access to the structure was scheduled during a portion of the winter break—from the day after Christmas to New Year’s Day—to conduct investigations and draft preliminary design drawings. Architectural contracts were awarded in December 1991 and construction documents were completed by March 1992.

A MATERIAL THING

Goody Clancy retained the consulting firm Preservation Technology Associates (PTA) to assist in the investigation of the building exterior and prepare recommendations for the repair of the windows and roof, and the repair, cleaning, and conservation of the brick and sandstone facades. After considerable forensic and archival work, Goody Clancy and PTA provided the University with recommendations for the exterior conservation work and a package describing an architecturally sensitive, yet cost efficient and thermally effective, solution of the windows. Several options were presented; single-glazed true-divided wood sash with exterior storm windows, the same sash with a single interior storm panel, and true-divided wood sash with insulating glass. To avoid the maintenance headaches that had plagued the buildings with wood sash over the years, the University insisted that aluminum units also be considered.

A full section of the sash at Weld reveals the similarity of this and the sash used at Hollis Hall. Note, however, that the brick mould, muntin profile, and the number of lites in each sash is different. Fiberglass screens were installed on each window, as much to keep students and their popers in the buildings as insects and other unwanted guests out. An applied molded-wood stop was used to secure the insulating glass units from the interior. This puttyless glazing detail was used in an effort t0 reduce maintenance costs and improve durability. It also conveniently eliminated the need to resolve compatibility problems between the seal on the insulating glass and glazing putty.

Harvard had worked hard to build a strong relationship with the community, particularly the Cambridge Historical Commission, and made sure they were brought into the decision process. And, in fact, the Commission’s experience with other projects in which aluminum windows had not performed as specified was central to the sash selection. The savings the school expected from reducing the need for periodic painting were lost when it noted that the existing trim—cornices, doors, mullions, and dormers—would continue to need painting and that when the finish on the aluminum failed, costs associated with repairing the windows would be considerably higher. The building team and Commission also expressed a concern about the historical accuracy of the new sash; the aluminum sash required a metal subframe, that would either reduce the sight lines (by making the frame wider) or require removal or modification of the existing wood frame. Removing the existing frame was not feasible. The loss of that much historic fabric was unacceptable and it would have been nearly impossible to remove the frames without destroying the existing masonry surrounding the window openings. Lastly, the Commission and the University also wanted to see mockups of the windows. The long lead times for both the fabrication of the mock-up and manufacture of the aluminum windows led the building team, including the school, to reach a joint decision to pursue wood sash options.

MOCKING UP

Three mock-ups were installed and tested. A true-divided lite sash, with insulating glass was selected as the most durable and maintenance free of the mock-ups—single glazed sash with exterior storms were too dependent on the user for their thermal performance, and the sash with interior storm panels were considered problematic from a maintenance and safety standpoint. Because the applied glazing is flush with the interior face of the sash, there is a tendency for people to hit the glass while attempting to open the window by pushing on the meeting rail. In fact, the glass in the mock-up was broken within a week of being installed.

Because the Yard is part of the Old Cambridge Historic District, the Commission required that work on the exterior the buildings meet the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards. At Weld, where the lites in the sash are quite large, this mandate meant the glazing had to appear hand-blown. A local manufacturer built the glass units by hand; standard mechanical fabrication would not have kept the aluminum dividing strip between the panes within the 3/8- to 5/16-inch sightlines of the reproduction windows. (Industry standard is 1/2 inch.) The exterior sheet of each unit is restoration glass made in Germany that is separated from a sheet of standard float glass by a dual seal of poly-isobutalene and silicone.

SPEEDY DELIVERY

Once the University had been convinced that the wood sash were the most appropriate choice, the real work began. Windows were ordered as the selection meeting was disbanding; the manufacturers needed as great a lead time as possible and the architects had little time to spare.

As the work of preparing the existing frames got underway, it became apparent that the amount of repair was more extensive than the subcontractor had anticipated. Goody Clancy and PTA worked as a team with Beacon and the subcontractor to establish procedures and standards for scraping, selecting areas for dutchman repair, and epoxy consolidation.

Despite the incredible pace of the project, the building team had done its homework thoroughly, and discoveries and disputes over standards were few. The cooperative environment that had been established at the outset of the project set the tone for the few problems that did arise, which were quickly resolved and had little effect on the tight delivery schedule. The job, new windows and all, was delivered as promised on January first.

Although Hollis, shown here, and Stoughton appear to be twins, Hollis was built in 1763 in the Georgian style and Stoughton, designed 40 years later by Charles Bulfinch, in the Federal style.

While the work at Weld had focused on finding an appropriate replacement sash and minor repairs to the frame, at Hollis and Stoughton the windows had suffered greater abuse. So, while the overall scope of the project on these buildings was not as wide as it had been at Weld—there was considerably less structural work here—repairing the wood window frames that had been damaged less than twenty years earlier when aluminum windows were installed was a considerable task. And, with a two and one-half month slot to complete the renovation (work was to be completed during the summer intersession, between June and August 31) there was a lot to do in a little time.

TEARING OUT THE TIN

Because the schedule on this project was so short, and the building was occupied, access for investigations was limited to a few representative areas. Only a single aluminum replacement window and its panning systems was removed to document the existing and original conditions. When the aluminum windows had been installed, the contractors had torn-off the blind stops, much of the moulding, and several of the outermost edges of the sills. Despite the damage, PTA and Goody Clancy uncovered evidence of the original sash thickness and weight pockets that had been cut out from the solid 3 by 5 inch frame sections. The original sash was approximately 15/16 inches thick and had broad flat muntins. These sash were replaced during a renovation in the early nineteenth century with sash that had a narrower muntin, similar to those originally used in Stoughton Hall. Information on the size and profile of this later muntin was available both in HABS documentation for Hollis and in a single surviving example of the Stoughton muntin, which was on display in the dormitory. The design of the muntins, which was based on the archival evidence, and several variations to accommodate the thicker glass were reviewed and revised with the input of both window manufacturers—to ensure strength and durability—and the Cambridge Historical Commission—to ensure historical appropriateness. Eventually, a slightly narrower and much deeper muntin was selected to accommodate the insulating glass and the durability performance requirements.

Detail drawings of the sash show construction of the wood glazing stop that holds the insulating glass and the different waterproofing details between the wood window frame and masonry. At Hollis and Stoughton, both pieces of glass in the insulating units are standard float glass. While restoration glass would have been more appropriate, the University decided that the smaller lites in these sash would not reveal the irregularity in the more expensive glass.

MATCHING NEW BITS WITH OLD

Paint was stripped from the existing frame material and soft spots and checks were repaired with epoxy consolidants and fillers. Dutchmen for portions of several sills and dozens of blindstops were milled from white pine and mahogany before they were fitted to the frames. To ensure that the repair would be durable, the dutchmen were custom cut to fit the straight and square rabbets and mortises that the mechanics from Colony Architectural, the window subcontractor, had pared out of the jagged edges of the damaged frames. Colony’s mechanics used galvanized nails and waterproof glue to secure the dutchmen. Once the frame repair was done, they hung the new mahogany sash using brass pulleys, locks, and lifts and copper sash chains.

LOOKING OUT ON THE YARD

After more than a year of service, the restored and renovated dorms have been well received by students and the University. The historically accurate paint palettes on the window frames and the substantial wood sash have brought a rich variety of architectural detail back to the Yard and have met, or exceeded, the University’s performance expectations. In the end, it seems the thoughtful debate about windows and the cooperative working relationships developed during the project have left Harvard with a physical plant that matches its academic reputation.

Technical information for this article was supplied by Judith Selwyn, John Clancy, Susan Pranger, and Seth Ravitz.

Project: Hollis, Stoughton, and Weld Halls, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Owner: President & Fellows of Harvard College

Client: Weld: Harvard Real Estate (Peter Riley, proj. manager). Hollis & Stoughton: Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Alana Knuff, proj. manager)

Architect: Goody Clancy & Associates, Boston, MA (John Clancy, partner-in-charge; Susan Pranger, proj. manager; James Norris, Victor Ortale, Randi Holland, and Martin Deluga, proj. architects)

Architecturol Conservation: Preservation Technology Associates (Judith Selwyn, principal; William Finch, associate)

Contractor, Weld Hall: Beacon Construction (Seth Ravitz, proj. manager)

Contractor, Hollis Hall: Shawmut Design & Const. (Michele Murphy, proj. manager) Painting Subcontractor, Weld Hall: Soep Painting Corporation

Window Controctor: Colony Architectural. Cost: Weld, $5m; Hollis & Stoughton $5.4m

Building Materials: Slate, Weld: Buckingham Slate. Slate, Hollis & Stoughton: Pethryn Purple (Wales). Copper: Revere Copper Products. PVC membrane: Sarnalil. Windows, Weld: Architectural Components. Windows, Hollis & Stoughton: KSD Custom Windows. Glass (Weld Hall, only): SA Bendheim. Windows, Hollis & Stoughton: KSD Custom Wood Products. Paint, exterior: Hancock and Conlux. Paint, interior, Benjamin Moore. Epoxy consolidants and lillers: Abatron.

Photos: PTA, unless otherwise noted.

Architect
Goody, Clancy & Associates
334 Boylston Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
617-262-2760

Architectural Conservation
Preservation Technology Associates, Inc.
One Washington Mall
Boston, Massachusetts 02108
617-227-0900

Contractor (Weld Hall)
Beacon Construction Company
Three Center Plaza
Boston, Massachusetts 02108
617-742-8800

Contractor (Hollis and Stoughton Halls)
Shawmut Design & Construction
173 B Norfolk Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02119
617-427-4700