Wendy Killeen Photography by Joseph St. Pierre

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When Jack and Judy Shields bought a turn-of-the-century home on Boston’s North Shore in 1986, it needed a total renovation. In a year, the oceanfront estate—built in 1896 as a summer home for the Longworth family of Ohio—was restored to its architectural and artistic beauty. And modern conveniences, such as a new kitchen and bathrooms, where added. While spectacular, it still wasn’t perfect.

“When you looked at the house, it was architecturally very pleasing, except the view of the west end,” says Jack. “That end had a garage that people put on in the 1960s and it was not attractive at all.” About five years ago, that changed.

The Shieldses hired Siemasko + Verbridge, an architectural and design firm in Beverly, Massachusetts, to create an addition to replace the garage and a glass solarium. The result is a relatively small, but visually pleasing addition that blends seamlessly with the historic home. “The replication is exquisite,” says Jack.

Skerryvore
The Shieldses were living in Northborough, Massachusetts, and had a summer home in Chatham, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, when they decided to look for a year-round home on the ocean. They were familiar with Boston’s North Shore because they had sailed in the area.

After looking at several houses, they found Skerryvore—named after a lighthouse off the coast of Scotland—on a granite cliff forty feet above the ocean. They were drawn to the beauty of the location and the history of the house.

The Longworths’ son, Nicholas, a U.S. congressman from Ohio, was married to Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice, and the couple often summered at Skerryvore.

The Shingle-style house was part of what is known as the North Shore’s Gold Coast, where wealthy Boston socialites and their families vacationed. “We saw such great potential in this house,” says Judy, adding many summer homes in the area didn’t have the same decorative treatments and detail. And, says Jack, “The original quality of the woodwork was outstanding.”

“When we bought the house we decided we would renovate it tastefully and in the way it should be renovated,” explains Judy. “We put modern bathrooms in, so we were comfortable, but the integrity of the house remains the same.”

The twenty-two-room house has 16 working fireplaces and unusual touches such as an octagonal tearoom and a round library. It’s filled with many antiques and works of art. And Jack and Judy did all the interior design.

It’s also been a great house for the Shieldses’ large family, including children and grandchildren. "Christmas and Thanksgiving we typically have twenty-five to twenty-seven people, and that’s just immediate family members,” says Jack. “We’ve had a lot of good times here,” Judy adds.

In need of improvements
Architect Thad Siemasko says Skerryvore is “certainly a classic. It’s one of my favorite houses. It has a very grand feeling, but it is also very comfortable.” He says while it appears large from the outside, when you’re inside it feels “just the right size to live in.”

Thad says such summer houses were designed to be narrow, so breezes would pass through. And, he explains, “Rooms were strung out along the water like a string of pearls, to take in the view.” The Shieldses’ is no exception, with spectacular ocean vistas from every room in the rear of the house.

Thad says when he first drove up to the property he thought of a pledge in the Hippocratic Oath, “do no harm,” which, in this case, he interpreted as “don’t wreck it.” Then he saw one area of the house that did need improvement—the garage—which he describes as “pretty bad.”

“It was a place to fix the house and bring it back to the grandeur it deserved,” Thad says.

As part of a renovation by architectural and design firm Siemasko + Verbridge in Beverly, Mass., a solarium—added to the house in the 1960s—was removed, allowing for expansion of the kitchen to include a bright eating area with ocean views.

First the kitchen
As part of a renovation by architectural and design firm Siemasko + Verbridge in Beverly, Mass., a solarium—added to the house in the 1960s—was removed, allowing for expansion of the kitchen to include a bright eating area with ocean views.

In the original house, the kitchen where servants prepared meals was in the basement and there was a butler’s pantry on the first floor. The Shieldses’ first renovation turned the pantry into a modern kitchen for the family, complete with cherry cabinets, black appliances, granite countertops and a polished granite floor. The Siemasko + Verbridge design brought more improvements.

There was a solarium on the ocean side of the kitchen that Thad says, “you might describe as unfortunate.” That was removed and the room expanded to allow for an eating area, with a terrace beyond.

It also provided the opportunity for a second floor deck off a guest bedroom, matching a balcony at the opposite end of the house. “We got the balance back,” Thad says.

The terrace off the kitchen’s eating area was also expanded, with special care given to replicate existing stone walls.

“A lot of the stone used on the North Shore is quarried locally and we found stone that was a good match to the existing, which was fortunate,” says Thad. “It does make a big difference. The Shieldses were great in being willing to invest, and getting it to truly look like part of the original design.”

Beyond the terrace are a perennial garden and a woodland garden of juniper, cedar, blue spruce, cherry and other trees planted by Jack.

Building the addition

A one thousand-square-foot  addition designed by Siemasko + Verbridge replaced an unsightly 1960s garage. All the wood in the room, which serves as a den, is cherry. The floor is bluestone. Two large windows, and a bank of curved windows, reveal the open ocean.

The goal was for the addition to act as a bridge between the main house and the pool area. To that end, Thad and Hugh worked together, as they have on several projects. “Thad looks at architecture working into the landscape, and I look at the landscape working into the architecture,” Hugh says. “The blending of the two professions in that manner, from early conception in a project like this, is critical.” Thad says the Shieldses had two main objectives—that the addition “look like it had always been there,” and that it be practical.

A one thousand-square-foot addition designed by Siemasko + Verbridge replaced an unsightly 1960s garage. All the wood in the room, which serves as a den, is cherry. The floor is bluestone. Two large windows, and a bank of curved windows, reveal the open ocean.
The couple’s feeling, Thad says, was “we have this beautiful home that was built for a different era and some things about it are not necessarily ideal. We want function considered, as well as form.” And, he says, it had to be “the right size, no more.”

The addition is 1,000 square feet. “It’s funny how little square footage we added, but how much impact that square footage had,” says Thad. Thad describes the main room of the addition, which serves as a den, as “the little jewel box.”

It’s entered from the kitchen. Just inside the room is a wet bar with a black granite countertop and mosaics with a dolphin design. The floor is bluestone. And all the wood in the room is cherry.

On the ocean side are two large windows, joined by a bank of curved windows, under which sits a curved wooden bench. Thad says the shape was inspired by the turret in the front of the house. “It was a way to make the transition from front to back,” he explains.

And the windows enhance a breathtaking view. “You definitely feel you are out on the edge of the world,” says Thad. On the other side of the room, windows look out to the pool area.

The den features a gas fireplace framed by black granite. A television above the fireplace is hidden behind wood paneling. The one-story addition has a cathedral ceiling, allowing for lots of natural light. The furniture is deep brown leather, and the walls are painted a pale blue.

Decorating one wall are large yellow-and-blue fiberglass models of dolphins chasing flying fish. The art was a gift from the couple’s college-aged son, who found it on the Internet. “We are fishermen, so occasionally you’ll find fish on the wall,” says Jack.

When it came to the exterior, the challenge was matching the angles of the original house. “The house has an interesting roof line, and [the architects] kept that,” says Judy.

The Shieldses also took pains to match the slate roof they had put on the main house years earlier. Over time, the slate had turned into muted orange, gray and green. “It’s quite a nice pattern because you get this randomness of color,” says Jack.

A hands-on project
Skerryvore is clearly a labor of love for the Shieldses, from overseeing the renovations, to doing their own interior design and planting the gardens. “We know what we like and think we have pretty good taste,” says Jack. “We just kept going. We get into projects and lose our heads.”

Jack even designed the circular stone driveway in the front of the house, where 150-year-old oak trees stand and where an occasional peacock can be seen. Yes, peacocks. “When we first moved here the people on the other side of the property had llamas and peacocks,” Judy explains. “When they moved, they left the peacocks.”

Over the years, the peacocks became wild. “You think of them as tropical birds, but they are pretty rugged old things,” says Jack. There’s also other wildlife, such as fox and deer. “It very nature oriented here,” Judy says. “It’s really separated from the rest of the world.”

Wendy Killeen is a freelance writer in West Newbury, Massachusetts, and a regular contributor to ACCENT and the Boston Globe. She can be reached at wdkilleen@comcast.net.

Joseph St. Pierre (js-photography.com) provides creative photography and digital solutions for editorial and corporate clients throughout the United States.