ADDITION TO HISTORIC COTTAGE

Financier Pierre Lorillard and the architect Bruce Price created Tuxedo Park  out of several thousand acres of rocky woodland in 1886.  It was to be a private hunting and fishing club, complete with clubhouse, close to New York City.  Part of the original plan was a series of cottages, designed by Price, owned by the Tuxedo Park Association, and leased or sold to club members; some dozen or so of the original structures remain.  With their shingled walls and roofs and often sitting on fieldstone bases, the cottages harmonized with the forest landscape and embody the principles of the American shingle style of the late nineteenth century.

For all their obvious virtues, the original cottages could not respond to changes in social structure which began to erode the availability of servants to manage households, and particularly to deal efficiently with kitchens one full floor below dining rooms.  The client asked us to create a new kitchen where once there had been a butler's pantry, and to enlarge the building to accommodate an adjacent breakfast area.

The addition is intended to blend with the existing house and to look "as if it were always there".  The materials are consistent with the rest of the house; painted shingles, wood windows.  Inside, the new kitchen cabinets are all natural cherry.  The large serliana anchors the addition on the elevation and fosters the illusion that the breakfast pavilion sits in, rather than next to, the garden.

RESIDENCE V

The neighborhood context for this large suburban villa consists of boxy houses with vaguely Mediterranean associations.  An obvious tension exists between the desires of the inhabitants for large, grand houses and the very limited size of the lots available.  The basic form and materials of the house, stone, brick, stucco and clay roof tile, are common to the neighborhood context.  To complete the project, we provided interior design services including the custom design of nearly all of the furniture.  The clients asked for a house enriched in form, surface ornament and color.  Through the manipulation of scale and traditional ornament, a potentially intimidating environment  becomes intimate.

The stair hall rises through the house, topped by a bronze and art glass laylight; the weatherproofing function is satisfied by a clear-glazed skylight at the roof.  The design of the laylight recalls late nineteenth-century examples, with its mostly clear edges and brilliantly colored band at the center.    The stair itself, which is set free from the wall at the first floor, functions as an independent element in the hall.

The entertaining rooms on the ground floor, the living and dining rooms, straddle the entry foyer, with its grand stair.  Beyond the stair hall are the panelled formal library and den, which is more private and casual in character.  This organization of rooms allows for relatively long vistas through the house, creating the illusion of greater size.  The private hall on the second floor is also quite generous in width, fostering this illusion.  Just as the hall organizes the long axis of the house,  the stair hall controls the short axis, serving as the vertical organization element. 

In the cellar, in addition to the requisite mechanical equipment and storage rooms, a half-court basketball court and home theater complete the entertainment portion of the house.  The theater doubles as a playroom and billiard room, and the gym can, through the use of the theatrical lighting system, be transformed into a space for parties.

RESIDENCE III

This residence sits between Coney Island and Manhattan in a neighborhood of boxy houses with vaguely Mediterranean associations; nearly all have been renovated and expanded many times. The basic form and materials of the house, stone, brick, stucco and clay roof tile, are common to the neighborhood context. In plan, the project incorporates two additions. The new front door and paneled entry vestibule allow for the reorganization of the foyer and stair. The green and white marble diamond floor pattern accentuates the length and narrowness of the space. Changes in plan and second floor massing allowed for a resurfacing of the street facade. The exterior of the house is, for the small change in volume, much altered. The balusters and polished granite column with its overscaled limestone capital and base are intentionally gothicized and compressed versions of the Corinthian order, and recall the Philadelphia work of Frank Furness as does the front door surround, with its modified gothic profile. The new limestone quoins are very flat, emphasizing the planar qualities of the wall itself. The projecting cornice interrupts the quoins at the second floor level. With the stone detailing and basic approach we attempted to honor a tougher brand of romantic urbanism than that of the Mediterranean villas common to the neighborhood.