Arthur’s was tasked with renovating the existing kitchen and updating the interior of this Dutchess County property, which was cramped and incongruous after a renovation in the late 1980s. After doing a deep dive into the history of the home, many photos and records of which are featured in the Smithsonian National Archive, we learned that for a time that the structure had served as a boarding school for boys during the early 20th century and that the structure housing the kitchen was an addition dating to the 1920s.

Leaning into this institutional past and the clients’ love for clean lines, we imagined an interior that was reminiscent of what the early 20th century European modernists might have done at that time, but executed in a pastoral New England vernacular. We started out by taking the entire space to the studs, reframing the floors, shoring up the existing foundation and blowing out the former entry. Dark cabinetry references the early work of Corbusier and Adolf Loos, which is counterbalanced with honed granite countertops and a newly vaulted ceiling with exposed beams made from the structure’s original framing. A checkerboard floor in shades of green and blue and the scale of the Thermador range hood were informed by the kitchen at Great Dixter, which was originally designed by the architect Edwin Lutyens. This resonated with the project since Lutyens was instrumental in designing the city of New Delhi in India, where one of the clients spent his formative childhood years. The other client, an admitted francophile, inspired the idea to incorporate custom pulls by Jordan McDonald for a touch of French brutalism, and the rest of the property is bathed in bright white as a nod to classic Hausmannian buildings.

Elsewhere in the house, we added HVAC, updated the electrical plan, modified moldings and widened openings to bring it back to its former grandeur, now modernized. She shines anew.