Conestoga Road Residence

This spectacular property began in the late 1700's as a simple 3-room home, perhaps belonging to a worker associated with gathering peat for nearby iron making activities. The early 1800's brought two additions - a second attached family residence and a summer kitchen with a cellar. Major additions in the 1960's and 1970's carefully maintained a rustic country flavor, introduced arts and crafts decorative themes and established an intimate relationship between the home and a carefully planned romantic garden landscape.
While every addition and change successfully retained the charm of the home, each had added confusion to the layout resulting in a maze of rooms with nothing but the original colonial era spiral stairs to access the upper floors. Our initial challenge was to introduce a gracious stairway while protecting the scale and charm of the home. Ultimately a new addition, inserted into and above the existing construction addressed the stairway, created a new primary entry and added several new spaces including a guest suite, laundry and basement utility room to support new air conditioning and geothermal heating systems. The existing two-story exterior wall of the kitchen and primary bedroom including its balcony was rebuilt with increased window area connecting these spaces to a renewed upper terrace that in turn opens to the existing formal gardens below. Smaller renovation and refinishing projects throughout the home completed the restoration. Work on the grounds has continued including restoration of the pond and a spring house.