Feature > A Grand Country Retreat
By Andi Axman | Photography by John Hession
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Winding along the driveway that leads to Mark and Diane Goldman’s Lake Sunapee home, you’ll meander through lovely woodlands, cross a bubbling brook and maybe see a wild animal or two. Then, about halfway up the three-quarter-mile drive, an extraordinary house comes into view, high up on the hill above a rolling meadow. Ivy cascades over the home’s stone façade nearest you, and on the far end is a classic white clapboard barn. Stretched in between is what looks like the original farmhouse—the rocking chairs on its porch beckon to come sit awhile and drink in the glorious view of the lake and surrounding mountains below.
Realizing their vision
The Goldmans began looking for a summer home after living in Puerto Rico for four years—the same time they started building a house in Massachusetts. “Initially, we wanted a haven that didn’t need work,” Diane says. They looked at homes in Vermont, where they had enjoyed getaways, but expanded their search to the Lake Sunapee area at a friend’s suggestion. There, what caught their eye was a wooded hillside. After walking the land and climbing the hill, Mark knew that “if we carefully removed trees and chose the right site, we’d have a wonderful place for a home and a spectacular view.”
Realtor Karen Haskell introduced the Goldmans to Louise Bonfiglio, owner of McGray & Nichols Builders Inc., a design/build firm in New London, and also to architect Barbara Freeman of Mehren Freeman Architects in Newbury. “The views were not apparent when the lot was purchased,” Bonfiglio says. “However, Mark was sure that the views would be great, and he was correct. The challenges were taking advantage of those views and building a house that looked old, which is what the Goldmans wanted.”
Diane says she wanted “a house with a porch that faces the lake. I also wanted the house to look like it had been there for years, and for its different components to look like the additions you see built on to traditional New England houses.”
Mark liked a country-house feel, which included lots of fireplaces as well as views of the lake and mountains from all the rooms. I wanted the house to be peaceful and private, and have facilities so our family could do the activities we love—like tennis, basketball and swimming,” he says. “I also wanted to accommodate large gatherings of family and friends.”
The Goldmans brought landscape architect Peter Cummin, of Cummin Associates Inc. in Stonington, Connecticut, to their Sunapee project, as he was working with them on their home in Massachusetts.
Sculpting the view
To site the house and determine the view, swaths of trees were carefully cut from the top of the hill to the bottom. “We didn’t clear-cut because we wanted to make sure to keep certain trees,” Freeman explains. “But we also wanted to take full advantage of the phenomenal views of the mountains and lake.”
To help the house look like it had been there for a while—“old houses look as though they grow out of the land,” Cummin says—he suggested setting the house on a stone base, or plinth. Its walls are “battered,” or sloped, which makes them look like part of the land. “The house feels as though it is up in the air and sits quite nicely on its plinth when you come up the driveway,” Cummin says.
After spending a year planning the house and landscape with Freeman and Cummin, the Goldmans were ready to begin construction in April 1998. They proposed two deadlines for completion to Bonfiglio: one for June 1999 and another for the following June, since their children were still in school and would only have summers available to enjoy the home.
When all the construction and landscaping were completed fourteen months later, the Goldmans were delighted to move in. They still marvel at Bonfiglio’s organizational skills as a builder and her ability to “keep her promise for completing the construction so quickly,” Mark says. She had two crews going and remembers that “there were almost always fifty people working on the house at any one time. The masons would have two crews of ten each; there would be framers and two painting crews, too. We had to be very creative with our schedules.”
“The interesting thing about this project,” says Joseph Rolfe of Stone Mountain Inc. in Belmont, “is that we built the house in reverse. The landscaping was done first, and we built the retaining walls near the pool and worked our way to the patio. Once the framing was done on the house, we placed the stone veneer on the exterior wall.”
Attention to Details Outside
Rolfe, who spent a year at the Goldmans’ site, used schist from a quarry in Chester, Vermont, mixed with other stones to create what he calls his “proprietary blend” for the all the stone work outside of the house—walls in the landscape, patios and steps; the path to the cabana; the coping around the pool—as well as the seven fireplaces inside. “Since the schist is indigenous to the area, it’s a good fit for this house,” says Rolfe.
For Cummin, “the interesting thing about this project was joining the manmade landscape to the natural. Everything beyond the stone wall is wild meadow and woodland, and the challenge was deciding where that line between the man-made and natural would be.”
Cummin created what he calls a “very sustainable type of landscape” by using lots of native plants. “’If it grows well, plant more of it’—that’s my motto,” he says. In the areas close to the house, he used low-maintenance plants, like bearberry (Arctostaphyllos uva-ursi), Virginia sweespire (Itea virginica) and clethra (Clethra ‘Hummingbird’). “All flowers are right under one’s nose, so that color is close to the sitter,” he explains. He also used lots of containers on the porches and patios. “This is not a garden that depends on flowers and color—it’s all about the views,” he says.
Attention to Details Inside
In addition to the remarkable views and beautiful design of the Goldman home, what’s noteworthy is that despite being fifteen thousand square feet, the house feels comfortable and livable. “The biggest challenge was to keep this house warm and not too imposing,” says Freeman. “I broke the design down into friendly elements, so it looks like a gentleman’s farmhouse with additions built on to it.”
Freeman says she thinks of design as “an experiential phenomenon,” as if one were walking though the building. “The linear design of the house pulls you in because when you come through the front door, you immediately see the views,” she says. “This maximizes the site.”
The linear design of the house also takes advantage of the sun. Freeman—a proponent of green design since her days as a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student—oriented the house so that the north side has hallways and service areas, while the south side has windows that offer views and warmth from the sun.
Inside “lots of attention was paid to the details,” says Bonfiglio. The wood flooring was milled from antique oak beams. Interior trim, wainscoting and cabinetry were constructed from butternut with a wax finish that gives the wood an antique look. “Once we sourced the butternut,” says Bonfiglio, “we shipped it to Craftsmen in Wood [in Arizona] and they built the doors.”
Diane says interior designer Nannette Lewis was very good at interpreting her and Mark’s vision for the house, and giving it a feeling of warmth and comfort like that at Twin Farms, the Vermont resort designed by the Jed Johnson Associates where the Goldmans have spent many wonderful times.
That warmth also extends beyond the house. “Sunapee is the most welcoming community,” Diane says. “We’ve had such a good time being part of it and have made new friends here. What a wonderful place!”
