On her first visit to what would eventually become a beguiling and much-loved gathering spot for a host of family members and friends, Katie Jordan couldn’t actually get inside. It was November, and the house—which had been built in 1912 and never winterized—was boarded up. Nonetheless, as she and a friend wandered its autumnal grounds, the conviction grew that she’d at long last found exactly what she was looking for.
“The whole ocean side is all these incredible rocks, and then the harbor is just to your right,” she explains. Standing sentinel at the edge of a weathered granite promontory on Cape Ann in Massachusetts, the dwelling overlooks both a bustling fishing port and a stretch of scenic coast. The glorious view loses none of its romance even at night, when the distant lights of Boston often glimmer bewitchingly across the dark waters.
“I was looking for an older home that nobody had ruined,” Jordan continues, and this particular structure—once she was able to enter—proved perfect for her and her son. It was one of two houses that belonged to the local yacht club, and after being sold in 1951 it had passed down in the same family ever since. With no notable additions and only minor changes having been made through the decades, it remained a pristine specimen of a modest New England seaside cottage.
So the task became one of equipping her prize with the amenities modern life requires (heat, for one) without erasing the home’s period charm. For assistance, it was only natural to recruit AD100 laureate Frances Merrill of Reath Design in Los Angeles, who had already partnered happily with Jordan on her full-time residence in California (AD, February 2020).
Merrill understood her brief immediately. Rather than trying to carve the interior into a more contemporary layout, she and Jordan opted to keep much of its old-style configuration of smaller rooms—all the better to provide a wealth of intimate nooks and corners where lucky occupants can simply enjoy hanging out. There’s a table for cards and games, quiet places to sit with a laptop, a snug den that shelters a U-shaped sectional ideal for movie watching on the occasional rainy day. Comfy rockers and wicker sofas line the wraparound porch, marvelous perches for contemplating the ever-changing nautical panorama. “We just wanted it to feel easy and comfortable,” Merrill says.
No Reath Design project, of course, would be complete without a zestful dose of pattern and bold (yet carefully calibrated) color to kick it into high gear—and this one doesn’t disappoint in either respect.
Whereas Jordan’s West Coast home is dressed in a rich mélange of wood paneling, saturated hues, and dense figuration, her summer abode wears its sophisticated style a bit more lightly. With a few decided exceptions, such as the brilliantly purple third-floor “girls’ room,” walls and floors are kept light and relatively neutral; the spaces’ dynamism comes by way of their color-blocked contents. Door and window casings, for instance, glow in tones of rose or cornflower blue, and a fiery vermillion Chambers stove presides over the kitchen.
Fabrics and wallpapers are chockablock with designs any Yankee great-grandmother would recognize—tattersalls and other plaids, small-scale florals, quilted motifs—but amped up with an extra jolt of energy. Quirky hooked rugs abound. The furnishings are eclectic but on point in that “acquired over generations” kind of way. Vintage and flea-market finds rub shoulders with the occasional piece from a more recent era: Consider the inlaid kitchen table and its sunny attendant ring of Bruno Rey chairs.
Some of the choicer treasures came from antiques dealer Andrew Spindler’s shop in the nearby town of Essex. Spindler, in fact, quickly fell into place as unofficial godfather for the project, not only suggesting a contractor for the job but also clueing the group in to vibe-appropriate local makers like the Folly Cove Designers, a mid-20th-century cooperative of women whose jaunty hand-printed fabrics remain in high demand. He also introduced Jordan and Merrill to Beauport, the sublimely idiosyncratic warm-weather retreat of Henry Davis Sleeper, a seminal figure among designers in the US—and it’s hard not to sense a certain kinship between the two homes.
“It’s always scary when you renovate a house,” Jordan muses. “Things can go wrong so quickly; you can really ruin it.” Ruination was never a worry in the present case, though. “There was a joyousness to all of these people collaborating and figuring things out that I think you feel in the house,” says Merrill. “It was all people who got what needed to happen. Everything felt very much meant to be.”
This story appears in AD’s January 2023 issue. To see this home designed by Frances Merrill in print, subscribe to AD.
