A BEWITCHING OLD STONE HOUSE IN THE HUDSON VALLEY
Old stone house, Kingston - New York
Old stone house, Kingston - New York
Above image: The dining room fireplace. A Hudson Valley School painting sits atop the mantle. Deer skull purchased at a flea market in Dallas.
My neighbor John McKinney is an optometrist with a serious eye for design (pun absolutely, shamelessly intended). Although his days are filled with eye charts, optical exams, and glasses fittings, his evenings and weekends are packed with trips to local auctions, estate sales, and flea markets—all part of his tireless and passion-driven journey to renovate and furnish his 1723 house in the heart of uptown Kingston, New York.
John’s home, an absolutely stunning stone construction, is a a gem amongst gems—one of the neighborhood’s oldest and longest-standing structures, dating back to Kingston’s pre-Revolution days when it originally functioned as the town’s Elmendorf Tavern. It has survived not just the Revolutionary War and the infamous 1777 burning of Kingston, but centuries of change. Nineteenth century Italianate and Victorian homes have sprung up around it, but this quaint colonial construction has remained one of the area’s most beautiful homes.
Above image: Once the original tavern room, the front room now functions as John’s main living room. The room is filled with an assortment of vintage and antique furniture, culled from auctions, estate sales, and tag sales. Walls painted in Benjamin Moore’s Linen.
Throughout my first months as a Kingston resident, I had always admired John’s home when walking past it on trips to the city’s center, but I was absolutely floored when I was first welcomed inside for afternoon cocktails. After purchasing the home from a former medical practice five years ago, John has been painstakingly renovating it to its former glory—right down to period-appropriate antique furnishings and woodwork.
John’s loving commitment to his home is clear in every detail—and the story of how he purchased the home and ultimately furnished it in its colonial and colonial revival style is downright fascinating. John’s previous home—a split-level ranch filled exclusively with midcentury modern furnishings—was a far cry from the pre-Revolution styles he currently surrounds himself with. When he put his former home on the market five years ago, though, the purchaser chose to buy with one proviso: that the home come with all of its furnishings.
Despite having obsessively culled all of the home’s authentic Modernist pieces over the years, John split with them willfully and amicably, relishing the opportunity to start fresh. Although John seems to have broken up with his midcentury obsession when he broke up with his former home, the colonial style, with its hallmark simplicity, has proven to be an unexpected complement to his eye for the clean, modern line. “As long as you keep it simple,” he notes, “it’s all ‘modern’ for that time period. If you pick the right pieces from each time period, you can see the clean lines in it.” John’s house might have a 1723 date on it, but its classic styling and timeless beauty makes it right at home in the twenty-first century. —Max
Above image: A view into the living room from the dining room. To the right is an 1820s cupboard with original blue paint. On top is a small collection of miscellaneous earthenware. The walls are bare, unfinished horse hair plaster (ca. 1790), a look that is carried out throughout a number of the home’s other rooms.
Above image: The dining room’s eastern wall.
Above image: White dinnerware from Fishs Eddy fills a cabinet along the kitchen’s southern wall. An antique sausage stuffer, colander, and cherry pitter sit on the bottom shelf.
Above image: The view into the dining room from the kitchen. Honed marble countertop. Kitchen appliances like the refrigerator and a Kitchenaid two-door dish washer are hidden beneath custom-crafted cabinet fronts.
Above image: A collection of books and a painting (another Ebay purchase) in the bedroom’s anteroom.
Above image: A Shaw Original farmhouse sink. A shelf above the countertop holds various antique items.
Above image: The bedroom’s western wall. The mirror was originally the “O” from a Woolworth’s sign. Victorian exercise weights sit on the nightstand.
Above image: The house’s front facade. Built in 1723, originally the Elmendorf Tavern.
Elegant Garden Walkway
Above image: The upstairs hallway. Original wide board floors. In the corner are a 18th Century Hudson Valley Chippendale chair alongside Tiger Maple Pembrook Table. Paintings, both mid-19th Century, purchased from Ebay. Drapes by Tim Lester Designs.
Above image: A Hudson Valley banister-back chair and a Pennsylvania tavern table sit along the living room’s front wall. Atop the table are a set of early 20th Century steer horns mounted on tramp art bases. Wainscoting is painted in Benjamin Moore’s Revere Pewter.
Above image: A portrait of a horse by G. Fowler, a nineteenth century animal portrait painter, 1882.
Above image: The bedroom. A cannonball rope bed, ca. 1830, rebuilt to hold a queen-size mattress. In an effort to save money, one of the home’s previous owners only refinished the room’s floor along its borders, leaving the interior covered in the original black paint, where a rug would cover it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment