Serene Home Design on Long Island Sound

Nature loves a soft curve and a gentle line that dips and soars. In fact, the natural world is full of these sublime details: budding flowers, a bird’s wing, an ocean wave cresting. And that idea seems to be infused into the lines of this two-story stone home on the coast of Long Island Sound in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Achieving the home’s serene mood—amid amenities such as a theater, wine room, and hammam, or Turkish bath—required a collaborative approach. The home’s diligent design team included McKee Patterson, partner-in-charge of Austin Patterson Disston Architects in Southport, Connecticut and Quogue, New York; interior designer Maria Barry, cofounder of Le Dimora Home Furniture & Decor in San Diego; and Scott Hobbs, president of Hobbs, Inc., in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Since it’s been said that good things come to those who wait, Patterson’s firm looked for seven years before locating the property for their clients. “They wanted a place with real charm and views,” he says. The home lot, highly elevated with a steep drop to the water, posed a challenge but also rendered remarkable vistas of Long Island Sound.
The vistas also include the home’s own carefully planned landscape, laced with stone walls, coves, harbors, and several islands set, Patterson says, “like little dumplings.” The owners and their two young-adult daughters kayak though the waters offshore within sight of a fishing shed tucked into the granite at the water’s edge.
Patterson answered the terrain’s challenge by designing two rectilinear volumes that are canted in the middle by a circular breakfast room and oval-shaped dining room. Details inside and out, including columns and pilasters, harken to a European aesthetic, particularly the wife’s Turkish roots.
As Barry developed a design for the home’s interior, she weighed every conceivable detail, focusing on a soft, clean color scheme and techniques that play up the structure’s stone architecture and the dramatic ocean scenery outside. The mood, she says, is very much a reflection of the owners.
“We stayed with a clean white background throughout,” Barry says, “adding shots of blue and silver for interest.” Treated with a Venetian plastering technique by Art of Walls in San Diego, the entry, dining room, living room, and master bedroom walls were hand troweled and burnished to a silky sheen.
This plaster creates a perfect background for the formal living room’s stunning navy blue sofa, glass-topped surfaces, and original art. In the dining room, a table custom made in Turkey is paired with upholstered chairs in a soft lavender that “warms up the space,” notes the designer.
Family centered and an avid cook, the wife relishes being in the kitchen, a warm space with a nook that is outfitted with a bar of Calcutta marble. Barry went to great lengths to find just the right marble slab. The second-floor master suite has the same luxe touches, including a circular sitting area.
The main-level office’s custom wood paneling and beautiful detail evoke a special request of the husband who wanted it to have the look and feel of a yacht.
Furnishings are from Swaim, Roche Bobois, and Ralph Lauren. Also on the main level is a covered sun porch with removable glass walls and screens. Its eye-catching arched rope sofa and matching chairs are from Henry Hall Furnishings, one of Barry’s favorites.
The home’s lowest level is luxuriant, kitted up with the hammam, a movie room, wine room, exercise space, and car storage. This floor shows the powerful effect that excellent lighting can have on a space. In the wine room, Ron Neal, the home’s lighting designer, devised sophisticated backlighting, fronted by frosted glass, for the bottle displays. “Even the layout of the bottles is strategic,” Barry says. “It’s masterful.”
Up on the roof, a pavilion—accessed by spiral stairs off the master suite’s sitting area—renders spectacular aerial views that include Shell Island. Closer by, the home’s own landscape by Wesley Stout Associates in New Canaan, Connecticut, is award winning.
Patterson praises the tight collaborative effort by homeowners and professionals alike that focused on the family’s needs and desires and the best principles for marrying the home with its setting. Barry agrees. “It was more than work,” she says. “It was like working with great friends and people I respect.”