A Step Back in Time: A New England Classic Reflects a Simpler Age

Creating a completely new residence in the middle of a previously working farm presents many challenges, not the least of which is making the house look as if it had been there for years. Newport-based Ronald F. DiMauro Architects took elements from Classical, Shaker, European and 19th-century American styles to produce a 4,600-sq.ft. equestrian estate on just such a site in Rhode Island.

The farm-style estate includes a two-story, 4,200-sq.ft. residence and a three-car garage with an au pair studio above that is set at a 45-degree angle and is connected to the house via a porte cochère. A six-stall horse barn, riding ring, paddocks, sheep barn, pool house and a cabana complete the picture. The house itself was built on a concrete foundation with a 6-in. shelf built in with stone on the face so it would look like an old, dry-laid fieldstone foundation.

Wings were added to the house to give the appearance of a larger building, including a large, covered-back veranda, a guest cottage wing through an archway and the front covered porch. The kitchen, dining room, living room and a guest suite are found on the first floor. The second floor includes the guest cottage, master bedroom and bath, two children’s rooms and a private sun deck. The basement has a playroom and an exercise room, as well as a wine cellar and storage space for the mechanical equipment.

The clients wanted something timeless. They especially liked the New England vernacular style. “I went down to the site, a 36-acre working farm. There were pastures, fields still mowed, rolling hills and native fieldstone walls – it was really an impressive and peaceful site. So I took a chance and did a hand sketch for them, whatever came into my mind first. They fell in love with the design,” says Ronald F. DiMauro, AIA.

“My first two thoughts when I saw the J-shaped site, with a vast field emerging in front as you round the corner, were that the house needed to be set back into the corner so it would be reminiscent of an old farm in the Midwest, and that needed a dramatic approach through the farms and the horse fields with a long and winding road. This would provide a transition from the outside world to the peaceful enclave the client was looking for,” says DiMauro.

DiMauro identifies two challenges involved with designing this estate. “The front of the house faces south. Ideally, that’s where the kitchen and dining room should face, as well as where the children would play because of the amount of sun. However, the house is approached from there – this was not the place for the front entry or for parked cars.” To address this problem, the architects created a “backwards courtyard.” To reach the front entry, one passes through an archway. In addition, the porte-cochère, at 14 ft., had to be oversized but not over-scaled for the estate. “We had to massage it a couple of times until it proportionally fit,” DiMauro says. “The horse trailer as well as cars had to fit through it and its scale had to balance harmoniously with the rest of the house.” To create some enclosure in the courtyard, “we centered the six-stall horse barn on the axis of the porte-cochère. This horse barn, together with the main house and three-car garage, created the sense of a safe and private enclosed English court.”

The second challenge was the amount of square feet available. “For an estate, 4,200 sq.ft. is small, especially when divided into two floors,” says DiMauro. “We wanted to create the feeling of a large estate while limiting the footprint of the main residence to just 2,100 sq.ft.” To make the building appear larger and to integrate it with the landscape, the architects created wings on the house and added a wraparound porch on the west side that is viewable from the approaches. They also added a sloping covered 12-ft. veranda in the front and the porte-cochère, which gives the illusion of length. The railing detail to the entrance of the Tuscan column-supported veranda matches the circle and cross wood detail of the double-hung Cottage-style windows, elements that are repeated throughout the house.

The estate interior was designed so form followed function. “What was best for the clients as a living environment decided what the interior layout would be,” DiMauro says. The interiors were designed with oversized elements, following the tradition of the 1880s farm buildings in the area, made to look like heavy millwork with high-quality details.

The colors on both the interior and exterior were chosen carefully to reflect the natural palate of colors presented by the site: the exterior tones reflect nature and the interior ones sunlight. “We used natural cedar shingles that softened to a light gray and a warm white trim. We used sea green shingles on the roof to reflect the moss that grows on the trees nearby,” DiMauro says. On the interior, the architect and interior designer used warm colors, including earth tones, golds and muted yellows on everything from the fabrics to the wallpaper, to bring the sunlight into the spaces.

“In this project, we were influenced by several styles and blended them into each other to create a cohesive whole,” says DiMauro. “The design was based on Shingle-style ideals, in which the structure creates the beauty by casting shapes and shadows based on the nooks in the house. The ornamentation celebrates the internal structure and we refined the details to reflect Roman proportions. The details are connected with the massing.” On the exterior, the buildings and the barn are in scale and the same materials and details were used to relate them to each other. – Marieke Cassia Gartner

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