Ashley Whittaker Bedroom
You probably wouldn't expect one of the most memorable and defining spaces of an august, 1930s neo-Georgian mansion in Connecticut to be a game room. Yet, if you ask designer Ashley Whittaker to name her favorite spaces in the Greenwich residence she decorated for longtime clients, her list starts with the intimate yet spirited spot that speaks to casually stylish good times. "There's a playfulness to the space," says Whittaker, noting the cozy, wool-clad banquette, chic brass drinks tables, and antique Russian cabinet with dominoes, cards, and much-used board games. "It doesn't take itself too seriously, but at the same time, feels elegant."
Thomas Loof
The sense of balance encapsulates her approach to the rest of the house too. Whittaker's clients acquired the residence about five years ago when they decided to decamp from New York City to find more space for their five active, sports-playing sons, now ranging in age from 8 to 18. Sitting on about six acres with stately, mature trees, the house had been expanded over the decades, with new wings added in the '90s. Plus, there's a pool house, swimming pool, and two freestanding garages, one with a guest apartment. "The house rambles in a really charming way," says Whittaker. Upon discovering the property, the wife called architect George Knight to rave about her perfect find. She had enlisted his help in the search process, because of his New Haven firm's extensive experience renovating old Connecticut homes, and learned he had overseen a previous update of that very house.
While preserving the home's historical character, Knight had modernized parts of the interior originally designed to keep service areas separate from the living and entertaining spaces. He overhauled the kitchen to make it "an attractive social space, meant to be in the foreground rather than the background." At the same time, he reconfigured a back stair in a way that allows the current owners' kids to "tumble down from their bedrooms and happily land in the kitchen, where there is ample space for homework and such." To further enhance the flow and sense of openness, he and Whittaker expanded a doorway between the kitchen and family room. The idea throughout, Knight says, was to make the house feel "more familial than formal."
For Whittaker that meant, for example, furnishing the 30-foot-long living room in such a way that it "brings it down to scale," she says, so that it's "as comfortable when entertaining 60 people for cocktails as it is for the family sitting around the fireplace after dinner, or even just two people reading."
Thomas Loof
The designer composed two seating areas, anchored by matching velvet sofas, with a mix of comfortable chairs of varying shapes and scales. Distinctive upholstery patterns, from botanicals and ikats to zigzagging chevrons, all in a palette of complementary blues, greens, and earthy taupes, play off a large Carol Greenan Bouyoucos landscape photograph that Whittaker notes brings a "modern" element to the space.
While unabashedly fond of spirited interplay between color and pattern, Whittaker is not a more-is-more maximalist. "There's something really soothing about the living room's creamy Venetian plaster walls in contrast to the fabrics in the room and everything else going on in the house," she says.
Thomas Loof
Nowhere is Whittaker's confident way with color more evident than in the dining room, where she lacquered the paneled walls in a lustrous peacock blue and enlisted decorative painter Chris Pearson to overlay the dark-stained floor with zippy chevron bands of white. It's a combination borrowed from a room by Albert Hadley that Whittaker says she and her client had "both been in love with for years."
Overlooking the room's antique mahogany table is a kaleidoscopic abstraction by painter Melinda Hackett. The artist is a friend of the homeowners, whose collection also includes works by Robert Motherwell and Peter Beard that are displayed in the pale-paneled library, and Susanna Howe, whose photograph of a flower meadow is layered playfully atop a hollyhock-pattern wall covering in the primary bedroom.
This time of year, there's plenty of drama in this house, between the holiday decorations and the dinners for 30. Outside, each window is covered in a wreath with a big red bow. In the double-height stair hall—a showstopping space in any season—a magnificent magnolia garland festoons the banister, while the tree holds court in the center. "Plus, they've got three roaring fireplaces, so it's a cozy, very pretty Christmas house," says Whittaker, whose work here is ongoing. She and Knight are creating a new bar area and renovating the garage guest apartment. "It's never ending," she says. Or, in the spirit of the season, a gift that keeps on giving.
This article originally appeared in the November/December 2021 issue of VERANDA.
This feature originally appeared in the November/December 2021 issue of VERANDA. Interior design by Ashley Whittaker; architecture by George Knight; photography by Thomas Loof; produced by Carolyn Englefield; written by Stephen Wallis .
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Source: https://www.veranda.com/decorating-ideas/house-tours/a37815046/ashley-whittaker-connecticut-house-tour/
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