Warm Welcome

The design of Warm Welcome makes a large house in a historically important location endearing through the use of scale shifts. Windows, columns, shingle coursing, weathervane, trim details and more are all robust—large in size, but not necessarily large in relation to the overall. These exist alongside accent elements like seemingly 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. 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, and the house takes on a balance between the historic and the contemporary.

At the back, facing a large flat yard and woods beyond, an alternate, less formal, architecture takes hold. Here wings cascade out and forward in Shingle Style fashion. The client requested that every room have at least some ocean view. By stepping the rooms at the back of the house to the sides, they each receive a view beyond the main mass of the house in front of them. 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. Inside the main house, is a combination of open-plan flow and traditionally enclosed rooms. The high first floor ceilings allow for transom windows to further enhance the brightly sunlit spaces. Ceiling details and complex shapes add character and definition to the first and second floors. A large arch-topped window opens up a grand playroom to the backyard. Below is an excerpt from Lifting Sun, a poem about the house by GennaRose Nethercott, commissioned by PSD.

Wander through the field to the hill’s apex.
An object is perched on the land, bearing
midnight shutters, chimney caps of bluestone.
Across stained oak floors & robust columns
light floods like birds into an aviary. Behold
this house on the green, its boundlessness.