The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Couple gives 18th-century farmhouse a modern refresh
With their two young children in tow, Marcia Santoni and John Morris would often leave their apartment in Manhattan and retreat to the family cottage in Stonington that Morris’ grandfather had built in 1938. They dreamed of one day having a place of their own here, and looked at property off and on. But first, they were on the hunt for a bigger apartment in the city for their expanding family.
“A broker told us that a property had come on the market that he thought we’d love, and said he’d show it to us if we were going to be up that weekend,” says Santoni, who figured they’d look “for the heck of it.”
“When we toured, I didn’t even go upstairs. I knew that it would be a great project for someone, but not us. I thought we’d continue to look for that bigger apartment.” But the house, a 1775 Colonial with a central chimney, spoke to something deep inside Morris. It was owned by a couple in their 80s who had raised their family and lived there for 40 years. While it had been added to a few times in the 1970s and ’80s, Morris was moved by the home’s history and simplicity, and relished the opportunity to tend to its picturesque 40 acres of wild, natural beauty. He looked through this haze of many projects and instantly envisioned possibilities.
“It hit me in the gut that I could peel back the layers that had grown over the property both literally and figuratively over the years,” remembers Morris, who at the time was a financial analyst in New York City and didn’t know the first thing about tractors. “This whole area was part of the Wheeler farm, and I don’t know if this particular property is part of that, but we’re right next to Wheeler Road and my family are direct descendants of the Wheelers. It’s hard to describe how passionate and visceral it was for me. I’m not superstitious, but I’ve come to believe that there was something calling me back.”
“Well, we bought the house 20 years ago and still have the same small apartment in New York,” says Santoni, who had the couple’s third child after buying the property. “It’s become the epicenter of our family over the years — the place where we spend our holidays and escape to in summer.”
Today, their three children are young adults, and the couple are empty nesters. Morris lives at the home full time, working as CEO of Stone Acres Farm, a regenerative farm in Stonington. Santoni enjoys the home on the weekends and whenever she can get away, living in their apartment during the week while running a settlement house in the Bronx.
When they first bought the property in 2000, they primarily did cosmetic work to the house, and Morris bought a John Deere tractor and started clearing land and repairing fences. It was so overgrown that they couldn’t see the water in either pond in front or back of the house. “My husband has probably spent years of his life clearing the land,” Santoni laughs. “That process was about reflecting, editing and opening up vistas so we could see the streams that feed into the ponds and the undulation of the old stone walls.”
While Morris worked on the outside, Santoni over time figured out what they needed to do on the inside. As children got older, and as ideas evolved, a plan emerged. Around 2015, they started speaking with architects before settling on Meg Lyons Architects, whose principal was local and a modernist by training. “When renovating, we wanted to honor the history of the house without trying to replicate it,” Santoni says. “There’s a simplicity to the original house with its footprint, windows and framing. It’s just beautiful, very austere and clean, which is my aesthetic. But the back was a choppy 1970s addition with little rhyme or reason. That part of the house was in the greatest disrepair with bay windows that cranked open, dark wood paneling, linoleum tiles peeling up at the corners, six doors that opened to the backyard and closets plunked in the middle of the space.”
Lyons tapped Gary M. Vacca Building Contractor of Pawcatuck, with whom she’s worked on many projects. The renovation included a revised entry foyer, new kitchen, dining and family room, a sequestered office, master bedroom suite, and updated bathrooms on the first floor. Another bathroom was updated on the second floor, along with a few minor renovations.
By knocking down walls, Lyons created a flow between the rooms and connected the historic interiors to modern additions. New windows line the back and flood the first floor with light and reveal views of the surrounding landscape. Clean, modern materials were selected to complement the richness of the original house.
A completely new kitchen has become a gathering place thanks to a newfound openness to living spaces, as well as the addition of a large marble island, which hosts two dishwashers and two sinks. Without many upper cabinets, Lyons’ design included floor-to-ceiling white cabinets along one wall with
shelving for storage and a pantry near the dining room.
The 18th-century farmhouse kitchen’s fireplace hearth and beehive oven, where the family often makes pizza, was already part of an old living area that opened up to a 1970s addition. Original, dark-wood supporting columns mark the demarcation between what is now a cohesive joining of the old and new space.
“I am at heart a modernist because I live in the 21st century, but at the same time, I have a love for the history of architecture and believe in honoring what came before,” notes Lyons, who earned a degree in architectural history from Wesleyan University before receiving a master’s in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. “Merging the historical and the modern together creates a sweet spot. The renovation marries well to the historic rooms because the original was a simple country house. There was no elaborate trim work, no crown moldings, or coffered ceilings.”
While a bit hesitant about the renovation, and after having lost many debates with his wife, Morris says he was surprised by how beautifully and seamlessly the design creates a dialogue not only between the old and the new, but also between the inside and outside. In fact, an abstract painting of a sequoia tree by American
painter Claire Sherman, which is situated between the old living room and modern kitchen, signifies both. Santoni, who worked with the New York City firm of Kari McCabe to pick colors and materials and work through the furniture layout, knew she wanted something big for that wall and found it at Sherman’s studio in Weehawken, New Jersey. “It’s a perfect bridge between the old and the new, but if you turn 90 degrees, it also ties the inside to the outside,” says Morris, who notes that it also reflects each of their loves for California and trees. “The sequoia tree is clearly nature and it echoes the panorama of the hill and the pond in the distance and the fields, streams and woods. And to use the cliché, Marcia is the city mouse and I’m the country mouse, and this painting bridges those two worlds as well in that it’s both abstract and of nature.”
The couple also put their personal stamp on the house by having trees that had fallen after a tropical storm turned into a kitchen table, a bench, a set of cutting boards and more by Higganum-based City Bench, which creates furniture from reclaimed wood. The company also made shelving for the family room from a maple tree that had fallen at Wesleyan University, attended by both Santoni and Lyons, and where the couple’s youngest daughter now goes.
Lyons also tied nature into the design, creating a corner window in the master bedroom with a view to an impressive rock and view of the landscape beyond. An old bathroom with a door to the outside previously occupied the space, which they all agreed didn’t make sense. “I now have that view looking up at the stars from my pillow at night,” says Morris, who noted that the space was originally designed to be the guest suite, but the couple loved it so much that they made it their own. “The night before last, my dog was growling a little bit and I looked on top of the rock in the moonlight and there’s a bobcat.”
Outside, Lyons designed an exterior deck atop an existing dry-laid stone wall, extending the living space into the landscape. Before, there was an oddly shaped deck with gardens up close and a vinyl-lined pool right outside the house that took away from the property’s beauty. With Lyons’ involvement, they filled in the pool to their “children’s horror,” Santoni says. But the stream that flows into one of the ponds offers a waterfall to cool off on hot days. “The deck celebrates the foreground, middle ground and background,” Lyons says. “You see into the landscape and get a greater sense of the property.”
For 20 years, the family has worked on the house, from the children’s involvement to Santoni working on the inside and Morris on the outside. And since Santoni has thrown herself into the renovation, Morris says, “I am surprised how she’s embraced the house. She now has a passion for it.”
Santoni recalls: “The couple who sold us the house said, ‘You don’t choose old houses, they choose you.’ Like the many families who have lived here before us, we’ve come in and made the house work for us. The house will outlive us, but we’re creating our story — that’s the humbling and beautiful part for me.”