View Project

Situated, in mid-country Greenwich, our client purchased a four-acre parcel spurred on by his dream of expanding his beloved gardens from his adjacent Georgian estate and the idea of having his own organic French farm. Inspired by Marie Antoinette’s Petit Hamlet, located on the grounds of Versailles, the new main house was designed to reflect a French Norman manor house. The home features steeply pitched graduated slate roofs with engaged timber dormers and a façade of half-timbering in-filled with terra cotta brick tiles and is anchored by a rustic stone base. Aptly named ‘Sleepy Cat Farm,’ the stone tower of the home is capped with a custom CHA-designed cat and mouse motif weathervane. The heart of the home is a two-and-a-half story great room composed of timber planks supported by antique hand-hewn timber trusses. A walk-in limestone fireplace sits counterpoint to a two-story bay window with stunning views of the estate’s extensive gardens.

The new French Norman main house is complemented by a gut-renovated caretaker’s cottage, studio, and chicken coop. Originally, a dilapidated early 1900s shingle style building, the structure was stripped down to the studs and given new life as a half-timbered, stucco and stone French cottage. A new potting area and a greenhouse were added to the caretaker’s cottage to serve the adjacent vegetable gardens.

The addition of a new rusticated stone limonaia allows our client to shelter his citrus trees from the harsh northeastern winters.