Stylized tradition
In May 2011, after Burgess and Shapiro moved in, DBO broke ground on the addition and that window became a doorway, leading through a narrow passageway to the expansive master suite. “The most important thing Ted brought was that bridge,” said Burgess. “Instead of putting the addition flat on the back, he mimicked this” (meaning the older breezeway off the kitchen). “The bridge lets the different forms breathe.”
The master suite—bedroom, bathroom, and walk-in closet—can be sealed off from the rest of the house with a massive wooden door that slides on metal hardware. “We knew we wanted a big dungeon door, a barn-sized door,” said Nelson. “Literally and figuratively, this is a symbolic element, a powerful moment in the design.”
The addition is indeed a world apart. The front of the house, though decorated with modern art and furniture, is replete with historic details like fireplaces and traditional-style trim. But the master suite takes rustic elements and stylizes them, setting them off within a field of modernist white. And Nelson organized the space in a way that’s anything but traditional.
Take the walk-in closet. “When we came up with the form, we started on the outside and made this long gabled volume. I wanted to subdivide the space without compartmentalizing it,” he explained. “The closet is a big block you can walk around or walk through,” sitting just off-center within the space and dividing bedroom from bathroom. Its flat top leaves space under the cathedral ceiling, allowing light to pass over.
What’s more, it’s a focal point. “We thought, let’s make this thing an interesting object,” said Nelson; “let’s start with this mass and carve away at it.”
Shelving niches articulate the mass on the bedroom side, while the bathroom vanity takes a bite from the opposite side. The outside of the closet block is covered in salvaged wood from a nearby farm, cut up and reassembled like a heavily textured puzzle, then painted white. “The glossy-finish white makes it seem clean, but you still have this character,” said Nelson.
The walls, too, are white: drywall covered with a layer of veneer plaster. “This is a subdued texture, and you have a gnarlier texture [on the painted wood],” said Nelson. The pale surfaces are meant to set off, gallery-style, the striking artwork within—a large painting of Shapiro’s, for one, hung near the big wooden door (which slides behind the closet block to keep the wall free for displaying art).
In the bathroom, dark gray and black provides contrast on shower tile, vanity cabinets, a salvaged W.C. door, and a cast-concrete soaking tub that Burgess calls “my favorite part of the whole addition.” The floors are hand-scraped hickory. All is animated by thoughtfully considered daylight and views, admitted by the large sliding glass doors as well as elongated horizontal and vertical windows.
From the field
Outside, the marriage of the home’s several different historical eras is beautifully clear. A low wooden deck, built by DBO during the kitchen renovation, is echoed by another off the master suite, newer but in the same style. Traditional trim and soffits and metal roofs, along with a single very dark green paint color, pull together all three sections of the house. Nelson said he doesn’t always aim for this kind of deliberate unity.
“In some cases it’s appropriate to make the new part look new,” he said; he sometimes finds himself talking people out of “wanting the whole thing to look like it was built at once.”
At the Shapiro/Burgess house, it’s clear that time has marched on since the antebellum groundbreaking. A 70-foot lap pool cuts a diagonal through the yard, and a corrugated-metal outdoor shower sits on one deck—modern pleasures indeed.
Yet the place still takes its tone from the venerable oak and magnolia trees in the yard, and shady spaces between porches and barns. Finished a year ago this month, the addition honors what Burgess felt about the house as he’d found it: “It was so gorgeous the way it was.”