Hacin Designs a Back Bay Home for Art Collectors

This Back Bay home’s courtyard and greenhouse were repurposed as a tranquil spa area with furniture from Casa Design Group.

The greenhouse now shelters an eleven-foot-by-seven-foot in-ground plunge pool and a preserved-moss (translation: no watering) mural. The pastoral scene depicts grasses native to New England.

The front entrance opens into the dining room. “It’s an interior room,” says senior designer Christine Rankin, “so using steel-and-glass doors allows for natural light from other spaces to filter in.”

The 8,200-square-foot, five-bedroom, Romanesque townhouse was built in 1881.

Though not necessarily the homeowners’ taste, the townhouse’s original stained-glass windows, seen here in the formal living room, became an important part of the design. “They recognized it as art,” explains architect David Hacin.

A sculptural ebonized limed-oak chair in the living room reflects the serpentine shape of the nearby staircase and dialogues with artwork by Delita Martin.

The basketball-loving husband’s list of must-haves included large TVs in every room (except the dining room). Witness the patinated-steel range hood that conceals a flat-screen in the kitchen.

The designers hunted far and wide for a slab of Panda White marble with just a touch of green veining for the kitchen island. They finally found what they were looking for at Marble and Granite.

A mirror framed in panga panga wood, the first piece sold by Rhode Island School of Design alum Tiarra Bell, receives a place of honor in the formal dining room.

Payne|Bouchier designed and built the home’s central staircase for the previous homeowners. The glass door behind the staircase reveals the home’s elevator; the shaft transformed from mint-green to white during the renovation.

The windowless fourth-floor music room and library, with a photograph by Gordon Parks, is the wife’s private retreat.

Swathed in rich blue-gray tones, the sultry second-floor primary bedroom is anchored by a plush leather, wool, and silk-tufted carpet—and it’s watched over by Russell Young’s enamel-and-diamond-dust screen print of Muhammad Ali.

The wife took inspiration from her favorite home away from home, Miami’s 1 Hotel South Beach, when it came to spaces like the primary bath.

The shared dressing room features a window seat for two at the far end.

Outdoor space was high on the list of priorities for the homeowners, and this townhouse boasts a courtyard and three decks, including this roof-deck with views of Boston landmarks, Cambridge, and the Charles River.

Sometimes art takes the lead in a home. Other times it acts as backup to the furnishings and architecture. But in an 1881-built townhome in Boston’s Back Bay, paintings, photography, and sculpture are the chorus in a composition of architecture and design so harmonious it’s hard to tell where one refrain begins and another ends. As it turns out, that was the homeowners’ intention all along.

“She saw the stone and materials as works of art,” says architect and creative director David Hacin. “To her, they were statement pieces all on their own, with stories of their own. The boundaries between the background and the art blur; where do the art, architecture, and design begin and end? They all feed into each other in a loop.”

“She” is Robin, one half of a previously suburban couple from Indiana with three adult children who, after living and traveling globally, decided to start a new chapter in Boston. The six-story townhouse offered the amount of indoor and outdoor space Robin and her husband, Derica, desired along with the flexibility to make it their own. Their real estate broker recommended Sea-Dar Construction to help the couple realize their vision.

Vice president and principal Tony Salem toured the property with the couple prior to the purchase, and then he introduced them to the team at Hacin for the architecture and interiors. “The building had good bones,” remembers Salem, “because it had been renovated in the 1990s. It had some beautiful elements that needed to be reworked and some that needed to be fixed to be more functional for this family.”

The designers changed the layout to create a more seamless connection between rooms and to meet the contemporary needs of a family living in a traditional locale. The existing elliptical staircase, designed and built by Payne|Bouchier in a previous remodel, was modified and painted ebony. Fireplaces were converted to gas. And, in perhaps the most labor-intensive moment, the elevator shaft, visible from glass doors on each floor, went from mint green to white to harmonize with the home’s neutral palette.

Robin had her heart set on a spa-like sanctuary within the home, so the team reimagined the courtyard and existing greenhouse. The greenhouse floor was lowered and an in-ground plunge pool—an anomaly in the middle of the city—installed. And a preserved-moss mural, designed by Florida-based Plant the Future, connects the interior’s focus on artwork with the outdoors. The mural, says senior designer Christine Rankin, was another element Robin brought to the design. “She’s really attracted to things she’s never seen before,” Rankin says. “She doesn’t want what other people have, and that’s so exciting.”

What Robin definitely did want, says interior designer Matthew Woodward, was a mix of handcrafted, grounding, tactile elements—witness the tufted-leather carpets and horsehair pillows—with a touch of contemporary glitz. “She has this unique duality of being equal parts glamorous and down-to-earth,” Woodward says of a client he now considers a friend. “We wanted to design a space that reflected both her boldness and her peaceful demeanor.”

“She was definitely part of our design team—perhaps more than any other client,” Woodward continues. “There was a strong collaborative spirit for the duration of the project that resulted in an amalgamation of styles and influences.”

The artwork just might illustrate that amalgamation most effectively. The homeowners’ existing art collection features pieces by contemporary Black artists including Delita Martin, Whitfield Lovell, Jacob Lawrence, and Kehinde Wiley. British-American artist Russell Young’s enamel-and-diamond-dust screen print of former president Barack Obama hangs in the dining room and is the first piece of art seen from the front door. Hacin commissioned additional artwork to complement the project.

The excitement, awe, and, yes, pride, that’s evident when the design team talks about the townhome is contagious, like a melody that gets stuck in your head. The designers and homeowners haven’t been able to quit each other, either. They have since collaborated on a secondary home near Atlanta. “Robin has opened our eyes like we’ve opened hers,” says Woodward.

Project Team
Architecture and interior design: Hacin
Builder: Sea-Dar Construction