Warm Welcome
One of Cape Cod’s most beloved oceanfront boulevards is home to estate properties, a historic resort hotel, and large traditional houses in an array of styles. Over the years, PSD has designed and built several new or renovated homes here. Warm Welcome sits on a plateau at the highest ground of the neighborhood. It is a commanding site, and the house was designed to fit the symbolic needs for such a location.
| Project Category | Seaside |
|---|---|
| Scope of Work | Architecture, Construction |
| Finished Space Above Grade | 6,205 |
| Guest House Finished Space Above Grade | 734 |
| Photography | Brian Vanden Brink, Nat Rea |
The design of Warm Welcome makes a large house in this historically important location endearing through the manipulation of scale and rhythm.
Windows, columns, shingle coursing, weathervane, trim details, and more are all robust—large in size, but not necessarily large in scale relative to the overall. These exist alongside accent elements like small windows squeezed between others or into small rooftop dormers. Adding to its friendly nature, the balanced asymmetry of the street-facing façade allows for a classical composition without overwhelming formality. The front porch mitigates its horizontal stretch with a column bay repeat diagram (moving left to right, ABBCBBBA, where C is the entry and A are the diagonal ends). The off-center front entry tower is counterbalanced by a second-floor window and rooftop dormer that sit, non-classically, above the solid mass of the column between the two bays to its right. Overall proportions invoke a hunkered-down stockiness as the house takes on a balance between the historic and the contemporary.
Inside the main house, there is a combination of open plan flow and traditionally enclosed rooms.
The high first-floor ceilings allow for transom windows that contribute to the brightly sunlit spaces. Complex ceiling shapes and details add character and definition to the spaces on both levels. Family and living spaces have soaring ceilings because there is no second-floor living space above them.
The primary suite occurs at the front of the house and has spectacular views over harbor, outer beach, and ocean.
A sitting space set up for two is in the tower above the front entry. Its projecting bay implies attention outward and widens the view to the sides. It is a magical place to contemplate the world and one’s place in it.
At the back, facing a large yard and woods, an alternate architecture is apparent. Here wings cascade out and forward in Shingle Style fashion.
By stepping the rooms at the back out to the sides, they each receive a view beyond the main mass of the house. Even the living room and bedroom in the guest apartment above the freestanding garage have views due to a slight tilt in plan. A fully enclosed screened-in porch, a three-sided courtyard, and the wide-open backyard and pool allow for different types of outdoor living.
