Tour a Chic Victorian in Southport, Connecticut

The living room’s faux-shearling ottomans stand ready to be used for extra seating; the paintings above the console tables and the sitting room’s mantel are by Boston-based artist Brittney Ciccone.

The family’s dog, Leonard, makes himself at home in the foyer, where designer William Lyon installed a bold Sanderson wallpaper with a metallic sheen and a deco-glam settee from Christian Siriano as modern foils for the ornate staircase.

The 1870s house has all the classic Victorian features and was so well-preserved that the new homeowners didn’t need to change a thing on the exterior.

The living room’s original parquet floor makes a gleaming base for a seating arrangement that includes a pair of Kravet chairs in a striped velvet fabric from Romo

With its circular shape and golden tone, the showstopping light fixture from Visual Comfort & Co. plays off the Kravet dining table’s brass feet and circular cutout. The Zuber wallpaper came with the house, and Lyon and his clients wisely agreed it should stay.

A vintage milk-glass light fixture that was in the house when the owners bought it adds a touch of glamour to the sitting room.

The breakfast nook’s L-shaped banquette sports a family-friendly vinyl shagreen seat.

Working with Kloter Farms, Lyon and his clients gutted the kitchen and reworked it to make space for a large island and to create access to the adjacent mudroom and pantry.

Melt light fixtures from Tom Dixon hang above the island.

A checkerboard floor and Cole & Son wallpaper on the ceiling pack a visual punch in the pantry.

Architectural designer John W. Sliva was called in to reconfigure the third-floor attic to hold a guest room, gym, media room, and this guest bath with its oversize tub.

The third-floor bath holds a floating sink crafted from a single slab of stone.

The homeowners’ existing bed was treated to new Matouk linens and placed on a rug from Palace Oriental Rug of Wilton.

For Andrew, it was love at first sight. “When we walked in, you could tell everything was exceptionally well done,” he says. “It was a beautiful Victorian home—who would say no?”

Laura, however, had a handful of practical considerations before she could lose her heart to any house, even one as charming as the beautifully restored 1870s home in question. “I had very specific criteria,” she says. “I wanted to be able to walk to the train station, the beach, and a downtown area.”

Luckily, the Southport location ticked all those boxes. All the couple needed was an interior designer who could help them turn the lovely old house into a family-friendly home for them and their three young daughters. On the advice of their real estate agent, they checked out the website for Southport’s annual Rooms with a View fundraiser and were smitten once again, this time with the work of Norwalk designer William Lyon. “His vignette was so cool—very chic and modern but approachable, not trendy,” Laura says.

On their first tour of the house together, Lyon recalls, he looked at the dining room’s Zuber wallpaper mural and jokingly told his clients he wouldn’t take the job if they removed it. “I loved the challenge of giving it a fresh life, making it work with what we wanted,” he says.

Indeed, the idea of enhancing the old home’s beautiful bones—its moldings and wainscoting, plaster ceiling medallions, and parquet floors—by adding a distinctly modern layer was what drew Lyon to the job. “It was my dream project to work on a house with this much character,” he says.

The foyer gives the first hint that this isn’t your great-grandmother’s fusty Victorian. The polished wood floors, white moldings, and ornate banister may say yesteryear, but the striking Sanderson wallpaper depicting a flock of swallows against a midnight-black sky is both contemporary and timeless.

Lyon used color—predominantly moody shades of blue/gray/green—to give the first-floor rooms visual flow. The fireplace wall in the white living room, for example, is painted Farrow & Ball Down Pipe, a dark gray with blue undertones, to match the walls of the sitting room across the foyer. The kitchen cabinets, from Ellington’s Kloter Farms, sport a similar gray-blue, while the dining room’s woodwork wears Farrow & Ball’s evocative Inchyra Blue.

Contemporary light fixtures, such as the knockout Visual Comfort & Co. chandelier that hangs above the dining table and the trio of Melt pendants from Tom Dixon that illuminate the kitchen island, are a chic, sophisticated addition. So are the furniture choices, like the
living room’s smoked-glass console tables, brass-based white ottomans, and golden River Stone coffee table from the Phillips Collection, as well as the dining room’s Kravet table and easy-clean leather chairs.

That contemporary-traditional juxtaposition makes both Andrew and Laura happy. “I love that we’ve been able to modernize an old home but keep it authentic,” Laura says.

Project Team
Interior design: William Lyon Designs
Builder: Landwide Service
Renovation architectural design: John W. Sliva Design & Build