Design New England September/October 2009

Written by Gail Ravgiala
Photography by Peter Vanderwarker

In 1816, respected local house Wright William Saunders built a three-story Federal style house on Brattle Street, a stretch of road in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that would gain renown for its stately homes and their wealthy and learned occupants. The house was large but, as one Cambridge Historical Commission member would later describe it, “a real Plain Jane,” to which she added, “and she is beautiful that way.” Thanks to the stewardship of its current owners, the respectful vision of their architectural team, and the erudite input of the historical commission, so it remains today. “The original owners did not believe in ostentation,” say Charles Sullivan, executive director of the commission. To the credit of its newest owners, who were dissuaded from a plan to add 19th-century embellishments to the stately but simple exterior, today the house reflects the commission’s preservation ethic. “Imagining a grander house out of a plain house,” says Sullivan, “is misleading the public to thinking the building is something now that it never was.”

Apparently the straightforward architecture of the house did not appeal to James Greenleaf, a businessman married to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s sister Mary, who purchased the property in 1857. He planned to build a new house on the land, and the unpretentious residence Saunders built stood in the way. Greenleaf had the structure moved it to its current location around the corner, and, in the process, an ell that had been on the side of the house ended up behind it. It was a fortuitous change for the current owners, who were charmed by the design of the front facade, but wanted to bring the rear portion of the house into historically sympathetic modernity.

“We loved the presentation of the house when we walked by,” says the owner, who with his wife had been looking in Cambridge “for an old house that no one had compromised.” The building didn’t entirely fill the bill. “It had suffered a long period of decline with a series of unfortunate additions in the 1900s,” says the owner, “but the essential bones were intact. The Federal-style rooms and fireplaces were there.” They saw the potential in its architectural significance. “That began a very long process.”

In fact, it took from 2000, when the couple purchased the property, until 2007 to complete the final phase of the renovation. Initially, they worked with an architect for a year before concluding that “we were just not on the same page in terms of sensibility.” They then hired an architectural historian and spent months looking at other Federal buildings. “We got a thorough grounding in the period. My wife pulled together details of the houses that she liked … We got a much better concept of what we wanted.” They had two goals: to restore the street view of the Federal architecture and to replace the hodgepodge of ells and additions at the back with family-friendly open interiors and a historically compatible exterior.

In 2002, they turned to architect Christopher Dallmus, founding principal of Design Associates in Cambridge, to help them execute the plan. “One of the great breaks for us in this project,” says the homeowner, “was finding Design Associates. Chris is a brilliant conceptual architect.”

In order to demolish and rebuild the back section of the house, the owners needed the historical commission’s blessing. “We had been worried that the commission could be meddlesome and contentious,” says the owner, “but we found the process incredibly helpful. We came in with changes that we thought would add to the house.” But the commission persuaded the couple that the decorative elaborations — a rooftop balustrade, a Palladian window above the entry, beefed-up detailing for the window frames — they were proposing would impart a formality the original owners would have abhorred. “One member of the commission likened it to a woman with beautiful long straight hair getting a perm,” says the owner. This lovely lady didn’t need improvement.

Working closely with Dallmus and Design Associates principal and project architect Darin Mardock, the owners pared things down, taking their cues from the house itself. They kept the simple window frames, for example, and installed new single- glaze wooden sashes, which, says Dallmus, “are more visually pleasant” than double- or triple-glazed replacements. So-called “invisible” storm windows, which have to be manually put up and taken down each year, provide insulation. They added wooden shutters and restored the nearly 200-year-old scarf-joint clapboards. “We feathered in new clapboards to blend with the old,” says Alex Slive of S+H Construction of Cambridge, who, with project supervisor John Murphy, tended to every detail of the restoration and new construction. “We were fortunate that the timber-frame structure in the front section was very sound,” says Dallmus.

However, the original stair configuration “was completely unworkable, with a small boxlike hallway and the steps just a few feet from the front door,” says the owner. Now a wide and welcoming front hallway with a Federal-style staircase handcrafted by Jed Dixon of North Road Stair Builders in Foster, Rhode Island, corrects what had been a confusing traffic pattern. To the left is the restored parlor, to the right is the formal dining room, and straight ahead is a view to the newly built section of the home that includes an informal dining room, a large comfortable family room, and a traditional- style state-of-the-art kitchen. From this vantage point, the line between old and new is imperceptible.

Upstairs, Dallmus added by subtraction, doing away with the three-story configuration of the original ell, which, perhaps due to the limitations of the moving technologies of the 1800s, never quite aligned with the front of the house. In its place is a two-story building that connects to the master suite, which is above the garage, an existing structure that was incorporated into the new building scheme. Inside, the spaces are open and fresh, thanks to a restrained decorating scheme by New York interior designer Victoria Hagan. Outside, gracious architectural gestures such as the brick archway between the kitchen and the garage and the arched double doors that open to an informal garden off the kitchen subtly tie the new to the old.

As with any restoration, says Dallmus, the challenge was deciding what should be replaced and what should be saved. The consensus around Cambridge is that the team got it just right. And as one historical commission member says, “The building, the street, and city are better for it.