The Preservationists

“In a project of this scope, sometimes the minor details that were rebuilt to match the originals get overlooked,” says builder Jim Youngblood. He points to the facade’s ornate copper leader heads as an example.

The design team treated the main stairway, with its custom Stark stair runner and Tom Dixon pendants, as an objet d’art.

Sawyer stripped the dark stain from the room’s original oak paneling to reveal how pretty it could be. Kate Spade for Visual Comfort sconces add modernity.

To marry old and new in the living room and brighten up what was once a dark space, interior designer Dean Sawyer replaced a carved oak ceiling with an elegant tray ceiling.

On the second-floor landing, the midcentury modern mirror is from West Elm while the half-circle sconces are from Lawson-Fenning.

To satisfy his clients’ craving for contemporary, architect Kyle Sheffield devised a glass addition in the back of the house that includes the kitchen, dining area, and family room. “This space is such an extension of them,” he says. “It really embraces the point-counterpoint dialogue between modern and traditional.”

Sawyer introduced pattern into the kitchen in the form of a Kelly Wearstler for Ann Sacks backsplash.

“The kitchen backsplash and the stairwell’s brass pendants make encore appearances in the butler’s pantry.

Landscape architect Ryan Wampler says the backyard was “about creating a series of intimately scaled ‘rooms’ that support the family’s needs for a flexible indoor-outdoor lifestyle with a garden that acts as plinth for the restored home to stand prominently upon.”

In what might be the moment that solidifies the theme of the home, the family room’s Missoni Trevi rug by Stark echoes the foyer’s colorful stair runner and stained-glass windows.

The original dining room morphed into a dazzling library with its drawn-plaster ceiling—an in-kind replacement of the original—and navy grasscloth-covered walls.

In the husband’s third-floor office, the design team preserved the defunct fireplace’s herringbone tile.

The Overlay Runner by Paul Smith for The Rug Company in the wife’s dressing room nods to the playful carpet on the central stairway.

A Gothic brick archway, another original element, connects the third-floor offices with the kids’ playroom; recessed floor lighting keeps the space bright, even after the sun goes down.

The powder room off the mudroom is papered in Pierre Frey Otomi and tiled in a tomato-red Ann Sacks ceramic tile.

Prudential Lighting’s O pendants in vibrant primary colors—Interstate Blue, Sunset Red, and Orange Matte—make a statement in the playroom.

In the wife’s third-floor office, which is wrapped in vibrant geometric wallpaper by society6, a small settee tucked under the eaves offers a space for repose.

When you know, you know. And for a couple with three preteens, they knew their pocket of Brookline, Massachusetts, was home sweet home. Unfortunately, they had outgrown their residence, so when they spotted a house with a for sale sign—and a huge yard—just down the street, they turned a blind eye to the overgrown trees and rotting windows and leapt at the opportunity.

The opportunity, though, could just have easily been a nightmare in the wrong hands. The couple hired architect Kyle Sheffield of Blue Hour Design (Sheffield was a partner at LDa Architecture & Interiors when the project was completed) after admiring a remodel he’d undertaken in the same neighborhood. Sheffield will be the first to admit the house needed some major TLC. “It was up to us to figure out how to reorder it for a family of five,” he says. “When we started investigating all of the spaces, it was like an archaeological dig.”

Built in the early 1900s by architect Joseph Everett Chandler, the English Tudor had housed only two other families prior to Sheffield’s clients. Its second owners included one of the first plastic surgeons in Boston, who used the ground level as his offices. A chopped-up floor plan coupled with some rather eccentric features like a second-floor kitchen, a series of backyard koi ponds (one with its own below-grade observation portal), and windows that had been sealed shut to keep out the cold presented a challenge for the design team, to say the least. But the even bigger challenge may have come from the homeowners, whose aesthetic leaned toward contemporary—in a home rooted in one of Brookline’s historic districts.

“Their goal was a modern family home,” remembers interior designer Dean Sawyer. “It was the property and neighborhood that were the draws. I like to refer to them as ‘accidental preservationists.’ ”What followed was a herculean effort by Sheffield, Sawyer, builder Jim Youngblood, the landscape architects at Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design, and Michael S. Coffin’s landscape contractors.

The most significant original features, like the paneling in the living room and the entry’s showstopping oak staircase and stained-glass windows, turned into objets d’art. But others, like the living room’s oak vegetable-and-fruit-motif ceiling, had to go to bring the space into the twenty-first century. And some elements were modified, like the staircase paneling that was stripped, refurbished, and treated to a fresh coat of white paint. Gone is the second-floor kitchen; that room, along with the family room and dining area, now resides in a sunny glass addition at the back of the house.

Sawyer, who admits he was “obsessed” with the original detailing, found it easy to convey the importance of features like the stained glass when he showed the owners how something that might be perceived as fussy could work with, say, an ombré Stark stair runner. “It was easier to talk to them about preservation when we were also talking about the fun we could have with the furnishings,” he says.

Youngblood says the gloomy house was in serious need of an infusion of fun. His team put together a ninety-page report just on restoring the exterior’s limestone and brick masonry. That included recreating decommissioned chimneys so that they look original.

Ryan Wampler, project manager at Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design, was tasked with replacing the overgrown foliage (and the koi ponds) with a landscape that was both lush and modern.

To top it all off, the renovation took place during the pandemic, adding to a long list of challenges. When it’s all said and done, though, Youngblood admits it’s one of his top three favorite projects of all time. And the entire design team eschews the term “clients” for these particular homeowners. Says Youngblood, “They are patrons of art and architecture.”

Project Team
Architecture: Kyle Sheffield, Blue Hour Design (Sheffield was a  partner at LDa Architecture & Interiors when the project was completed)
Interior design: LDa Architecture & Interiors
Builder: Youngblood Builders
Landscape design: Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design