Polhemus Savery DaSilva’s client’s house occupies a very prominent site across from the Chatham lighthouse and high above Chatham’s most coveted ocean beach. It began life in the late 19th century as an ice cream shop and was later expanded into a house. When our client bought it, the house had been unchanged for generations. Our client sought to transform the small dark rooms into a light-filled open interior and to add a first-floor master bedroom, while maintaining the exterior form and character of the historic original.

We completely gutted the interior, and we removed two out-buildings and used their square footage to add a master bedroom wing to a house that would otherwise not have been expandable. We rebuilt the second floor and roof with the same shapes that had been existing, but tucked in a new second-floor balcony off the three guest rooms that face the ocean, and an attic "loft" for play space reached by a ship’s ladder from the boys’ room.