A Contemporary Home with an Agrarian Edge

Native ledge resting just below the earth’s surface provided both inspiration and building material for this Fairfield County house. Viewed here from the rear, the home’s outdoor kitchen and seating area, saltwater pool, and spa double down on its connection to the outdoors.

Inside the front door, walls are clad with raw steel, with a painted steel panel extending across the ceiling and outside to shelter the threshold.

The home’s front entry resides in a glass-walled connector topped with a light-filled study area for the clients’ children on the level above.

Bookended tables and a bench off the kitchen were crafted from an oak tree that once stood in the client’s friend’s yard.

A dining bar on the kitchen island, held in place with hand-cut dovetails and a single ebony pin, is made from the same tree used for the kitchen tables and bench.

In a sitting area off the kitchen, ceilings look as though they’ve been excavated to display hidden beams. Not so: too short to span the rooms, the salvaged beams are embedded in soffits that make them appear structural.

A steel staircase designed to accommodate the clients’ chandelier drops to the first floor from one end of the second-floor study area.

More beams, a fireplace built of ledge, and window benches remove any pretension from the primary bedroom suite.

In the primary bathroom, a built-in bench separates the dual sinks

Dressed in stone chiseled from the ground, the garage serves as a gateway to the property and forms a courtyard with the house.

On the other side of the courtyard, a library ladder provides access to tall bookshelves in the owner’s home office.

A pizza oven and wood-fired barbecue grill, or parrilla, fulfill every dining request from the outdoor kitchen.

At dusk, retractable screens offer insect protection on the poolside patio. The deck of the spa on the left is set about two feet higher than that of the pool, making entrances and exits easier.

Lots of houses are built from the ground up. Fewer are built from the ground itself.

In the case of this Fairfield County home, the rock ledge resting just below the earth’s surface would become more than an obstruction to be removed. It would become a natural choice to adorn the new home’s gables, chimneys, fireplaces, and garden walls.

It’s an apt adaptation in a region so rugged that Colonial settlers routinely hiked around the area rather than pass through it, says Thomas McNeill, a principal with Hutker Architects.

“We had to deal with all of that stone,” he explains. “So we started making as much of the house out of the stone as we could. We sort of pulled the house up from the earth.”

There was a lot of stone there. “We excavated 5,000 cubic yards of rock,” says builder Paul Fontana, noting that the volume of the ledge effectively expands as it’s pulled from the ground. “When you blast rock, it fluffs up, like when you’re baking muffins,” he says. This isn’t the first house Fontana has built using native ledge. Nor is it for Tony Pelosi, his head stonecutter, whom Fontana describes as “the world’s last gray-haired Italian mason, right out of central casting.” It was Pelosi, along with three assistants, who created the home’s veneers that read as solid walls and its hand-built fireboxes with herringbone linings.

“Many masons aren’t up to the task of doing this,” says Fontana, “this” meaning chipping boulders the size of golf carts into usable blocks. “They don’t get shot out of the ground at a nice six-inch thickness,” he points out.

It’s very much a handmade house, with an agrarian edge that sets it apart from the more formal estates in the area. Its roof shingles and siding are Alaskan yellow pine, softening to gray at the edges. The walls inside the entry are clad with raw steel with a swirling milled finish. Ragged wooden beams salvaged from Pennsylvania barns, their hand-cut mortises visible, span plaster ceilings. Reclaimed wood of a later vintage was used to build a section of the kitchen island, along with a pair of tables and a bench in the breakfast nook. All three were crafted by master carpenter John Sweeny from a tree that once stood in the yard of some friends of the homeowners.

The house itself is an assemblage: four distinct but conjoined structures contain a garage, a guest/office wing, and, in the two largest sections, family spaces that include a primary bedroom suite, a homework space, and smaller suites for four resident teenagers. A pantry, mudroom, kitchen, and living and dining areas occupy the main floors. A courtyard in front serves as an extension of the living room and a buffer to the street. In the back, a sheltered patio with a pizza oven and wood-fired grill is poised for poolside entertaining.

A few yards away, a hunk of ledge breaks the surface of the lawn. Left in place, says McNeill, as a tribute to all that remains beneath.

Project Team 
Architecture and interior design: Mark Hutker, Thomas McNeill, Ryan Alcaidinho, Hutker Architects
Builder: Paul Fontana, Cum Laude Group
Landscape design: Gregory Lombardi, Gregory Lombardi Design