Sixteen years ago when the opportunity arose to purchase a cistern perched on a hillside just outside of New Haven with views of Long Island Sound and the Gothic spires of Yale, architect Peter de Bretteville didn’t hesitate. “There’s something extraordinary about industrial buildings like warehouses, mills and water tanks. They are bigger than life—taller, wider and more robust—than normal residential buildings,” says de Bretteville. “And there’s something so appealing about living in an old relic.”
See the amazing images of home build inside an abandoned water tower.
Connecticut is famous for its barn-style homes, a type of dwelling that allows ex-urbanites
to live in a loft that looks humble—appealing to our Yankee desire to avoid flashy fanciness—
but is loaded to the rafters with cool stuff. And this 15,000-square-foot conversion may be the coolest barn home we’ve ever seen. Kudos go to owners Katie and Steve Hylen, both photographers (he an Academy Award–winning one), who took this Roxbury landmark and made a chic home out of it. Its most stunning feature is the entire wall given over to windows, held in place by steel girders and overlooking hayfields, meadows and sunsets. The home’s central space also boasts 17-foot vaulted ceilings and a tall, freestanding sculptural fireplace, encircled with built-in sofas. There is also a professional kitchen with a wood-fired pizza oven, three en suite bedrooms, a screening room, a sauna, a gallery space with a fountain and an open-plan top floor that has been used, variously, as a photo and art studio and a dance space.
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5,300-square-foot home is modern in its styling, with soaring rooflines, walls of windows and open, airy interior spaces. But it manages to modernize our notion of modern by taking advantage of today’s best green practices in home building. Its sleek exteriors are constructed of recycled steel; other features include photovoltaic panels, a solar hot water system and super-efficient radiant heating. And it’s within walking distance of town, shops and the MetroNorth station, representing a trend in New Canaan, says builder Dave Prutting, who adds that people want to want to ‘drop the big properties, the overhead and the maintenance. They want to walk to the train now.’ There are countless cool features on the four floors of this brand-new home, but our favorite remains the 900-square-foot roof deck with a hot tub, outdoor kitchen, fireplace and stunning views over Mead Park.
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Interesting back story: A couple of decades ago, this property was used as a horse farm by Mike Nichols, Phillip Roth and William Styron, among other investors. The environmentally minded group bought it, in part, to save the land from development. They sold it in 1985, with Nichols establishing another horse farm in Bridgewater and Roth decamping to Warren. With the help of architects Haver & Skolnick, subsequent owners converted what was once a working barn into an elegantly rustic, 6,000-square-foot home. Although the home is rebuilt from the ground up, the architects retained the silo—now rising above the foyer area. The structure’s double-height ceilings are especially impressive in the 66-by-31-foot great room with exposed beams, sliding barn-style doors and a massive stone hearth. Equally dramatic is the master suite, with cathedral ceilings and a screen porch that’s cantilevered over Cobble Brook. The nearly 47-acre property, which offers gardens, an orchard, a pool, two guesthouses and open pastures, abuts an 1,100-acre land trust. There’s also an antique barn with a hayloft and cow stanchions, perfect for would-be gentlemen/women farmers.
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With unrivaled views, this one-bedroom, 28-foot-high antique lighthouse is a 3,600 foot dinghy ride from the mainland. Now here’s something you don’t see every day: A bona fide antique lighthouse that was built in 1881 and remained in service until the mid-1950s, when it sold for $1 to a former Stamford mayor. The lighthouse sold again in the 1980s—this time for $230,000—to a banker who thought the decommissioned structure would be an excellent and ‘cheap place to park my boat.’ He spent a reported $300,000 on renovations, which included a new kitchen and dock. In 2009, the 28-foot-high, cast-iron lighthouse, also known as Chatham Rock, has again hit the market, advertised as a ‘one-bedroom loft’ just a 3,600-foot dinghy ride away from the mainland, accessed via a private, floating dock. While it appears to lack certain amenities (there is no bathroom, for instance) its views are unrivaled—the Stamford and Manhattan skylines and sunrise and sundown seascapes.
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Cow barns dating from the 1790s comprise the main house, which sits on the original Mead estate in Belle Haven, on a peninsula to the west of Greenwich Harbor. The well-documented property remained in the Mead family for well over a century; the barns were converted into living quarters by interim owners. Today the compound includes a guesthouse, pool, squash court and climbing gym.
See more images of this gorgeous converted barn home.
A bridge ties together two unmatched, two-story sections of the house, with ample room for parking, garage space and guest rooms below. By siting the structure on a hillside, architect Paul Masi was able to incorporate several different styles of stairs into the design, along with native plantings, such as grasses.
See more of this Modern Montauk marvel
