Cape and Islands

Always in Season

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Contributors
Produced By: 
Karin Lidbeck Brent
Eric Roth
Not the usual sun-washed summer house on Cape Cod, a restored early 1900s waterfront home provides a cozy getaway no matter the time of year.  

While most everyone else on the Cape is covering the wicker with sheets and lowering the blinds on yet another summer, one couple on Buzzard’s Bay is arranging wood for the fire and getting ready for their favorite season in their waterfront home.

This house wears no florals or chintz to recall hot July days as the shadows grow longer; rather, an all-season calm carries its owners into the winter months.

Magic Formula

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Contributors
Produced By: 
Karin Lidbeck Brent
Miki Duisterhof
The ingredients for success in this airy waterfront home? A design team skilled at blending the timeless with the up-to-the-minute and a homeowner who trusts the pros to bring her vision to life.

You can’t define it. Still, you sense it when it’s happened. There’s an alchemy that makes a house stand out above the rest. It must be the chemistry of the people involved. Mix up a winning brew—a skilled architect, a high-caliber builder, a creative landscape architect and two talented interior designers—and magic is sure to unfold. Add a homeowner with a vision, one who appreciates the team’s insight and efforts, and you’ve got gold. Everybody is happy. The result is not just a fantastic home but one with an air of sweet contentment, a sort of prevailing “Ah!

True Colors

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Contributors
Produced By: 
Stacy Kunstel
Eric Roth
With an interior palette as vibrant as the abundant gardens outside, a Vineyard Haven summer home offers its owners a refreshing change of pace from the city. 

Opposites attract, which is why a visual artist and a businessman might find love, and why that same couple would split their time between a city nest swathed in jewel tones and an island home of cool coastal hues. After winter has finally left Boston, and spring’s fragile blooms have given way to fertile summer days, Margo Ouellette and her husband, Philip Evans, trade the skyline views of their high-rise Boston condo for the vibrant garden oasis of their Vineyard Haven home.

Singular Sensation

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Contributors
Produced By: 
Stacy Kunstel
Michael Partenio
A couple with an eye for genius and a designer with a gift for blending drama and subtlety join forces to update a rare modernist house on Nantucket, giving its striking architecture the respect it deserves. 

Frank Anton’s first few days on Nantucket left him wondering why his wife-to-be, Georgine, so loved the island. “It was the summer before we married,” he relates. “It was 70 degrees, 100 percent humidity, fog at street level. All I could think was, ‘Can we leave now?’” • A few days passed until, mercifully, the fog lifted and the sky cleared. And, says Frank, “I saw the magic of the place.” • Like Georgine, Frank grew to love Nantucket. The couple flew up from their home in Washington, D.C., often enough that they decided to buy an island house.

The Family That Plays Together

Issue: 
Contributors
Gordon Beall
It’s all about togetherness at a Barnstable vacation home, where a house built to accommodate a brood of grandchildren enfolds three generations in warmth and intimacy.

Grandparents everywhere know that, if you build it, they will come. That’s why these homeowners bought a stunning piece of waterfront land in Barnstable, tore down the inadequate house occupying the property and built an expansive, beautiful gathering place for their six children and ten grandchildren—a vacation home with room for all. As the couple searched for an architect, they noticed that the houses they most admired had one thing in common: they were all designed by Boston architect Tom Catalano. They looked no further.

Dramatic License

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Contributors
Brian Vanden Brink
A contemporary Martha’s Vineyard house proves you don’t have to go the classic route to get a home filled with the mellow vibe of an island summer.

Realtors live and die by three words: location, location, location. In the case of this Martha’s Vineyard house, about twenty-five yards made all the difference. Confronted with an existing structure on the eastern edge of the property, and owners eager to rehab and add on, architect Peter Breese of Vineyard-based Breese Architects, floated a bold plan.

A View to a Thrill

Issue: 
Contributors
Produced By: 
Stacy Kunstel
Michael Partenio
A Martha’s Vineyard vacation home capitalizes on its stunning location, letting the watery panorama outside play the starring role.

A hawk banks left across the sky over a meadow of wildflowers, providing the only interruption to an endless view of waters bluer than the Caribbean. High above the Martha’s Vineyard shoreline sits a new glass, steel and cedar home that frames view upon view over treetops and salty ocean waves. From a fisherman’s perspective, the house would almost go unnoticed, tucked as it is into the landscape. Its impact on the hillside has been kept to a bare minimum both visually and environmentally.

Simple Pleasures

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Issue: 
Contributors
Produced By: 
Stacy Kunstel
Michael Partenio
Husband-and-wife architects restore an eighteenth-century Nantucket house to its original, unfussy beginnings, creating a summer home that’s the very essence of island living.

Who better to lovingly restore a Colonial-era Nantucket home than a couple who have summered on the island for nearly two decades? And not just any couple: besides being husband and wife, Eric Rosenberg and Michele Kolb are architects who have worked together for twenty-five years on residential and commercial projects internationally and in the United States.

Dressed for Success

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Issue: 
Contributors
Brian Vanden Brink
Perfectly turned out in the Shingle style, a new house takes its place among its genteel older neighbors without a whisper of disapproval.

Oh, the misery of showing up in formal attire to find the rest of the party is casual—or vice versa. The wrong type of house being built on a pretty street, though, seems far more painful. You can lose the tie or grab a pair of fancy heels, but what’s to be done about an awkward building?

Nautical and Nice

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Issue: 
Contributors
Produced By: 
Stacy Kunstel
Michael Partenio
A quaint and cozy Nantucket cottage gets a renovation that makes it bright and breezy as a summer day.

Rife with history tied to the sea, the tiny island of Nantucket shimmers like a sandy beacon thirty miles off the Massachusetts coast. Besides its role as a port for sailors, it’s also a vacation paradise for those landlubbers who flock here during the warmer months to enjoy long, sunny days accented by salty sea breezes.

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