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A Place in History

Left: White Carrera marble figure sculpted by great-grandfather Chauncey Bradley Ives. Right: A view of the barn’s pristine surroundings.

Architect Gerald Ives and his wife Kay, an artist, share the property with sixty-five relatives, but the couple stays here most often, and they’ve renovated the barn to be their year-round getaway home. “Autumn Acres” has been in his family for 150 years.  “My maternal great-grandmother bought this land in 1904,” says Gerry Ives. “It was the first camp in the area, at a significant time in American history. Land here was farmed until after the Civil War, when New Englanders discovered that the Midwest was better suited to farming. In the 1880s and 1890s, the farmers moved away. In their place came city dwellers seeking respite, ‘rusticators,’ who came to New England to find fresh air and a rustic lifestyle. It was the beginning of the Teddy Roosevelt era of fly-fishing camps.”

The post-and-beam barn was built around 1810 in classic early-. Although not large, just 30' x 50', it was well constructed, with the original farmhouse and a small cottage steps away. It is one of four barns remaining in the area from the pre-Civil War era.

There is no mechanical heating or cooling. Natural ventilation is provided by large, high performance, glazed “Scotia” framed windows complemented by strategically installed insulation, and roof insulation applied over the existing timber frame.

Early New England barns fall into two styles. English barns, like this one, were designed for threshing; hay was a cash crop. German-style barns were meant for animals. Ives speculates that with so much ledge covering the land, it was ill suited for animals, although the first owners may have raised a few head of cattle and had a subsistence garden before selling out to the “rusticators.”

In 1929, Ives’s grandfather Pratt retired from his career as an industrialist and converted the camp for use in the autumn, giving the property its name. He expanded the adjacent farmhouse and renovated the horse stable, adding a new wing with bedrooms and a garage for two baby blue Pierce Arrow automobiles. Long interested in technology, he owned one of the first refrigerators. Now alternate-year Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinners are a “homecoming” for the couple’s extended family, with up to twenty-four seated at a ponderous black table designed by Gerry’s great-uncle Harry, who was an architect with the renowned Boston firm of McKim, Mead and White. 

The barn has led many lives, and carries a wealth of meaning for the Ives family. “There are many layers to consider here,” says Ives. “First, there’s its place in history; then its role in our family homecomings. A third layer I  think of as a temple, a spiritual space for yoga and contemplation. But above all there is the land that surrounds us. We  and everyone else on this lake are here because of the setting, so we adapt our ownership, our design, our use of the lake to fit within and celebrate that environment. In many ways, the barn is an example of that environmental design.  . . . Walk softly, fit in, and celebrate the seasonal wonders that surround us,” he says.

Indeed, the setting has influenced the careers of several Ives family members. His sister, Anne Groth, is an avid ornithologist and teacher at Massachusetts Audubon. Gerry remembers her as a child often exploring in the woods. His wife, Kay, paints abstracts inspired by the landscape. Together they have collected and eaten more than thirty varieties of mushrooms. “Fortunately, Kaysie knows which are poisonous and which are not,” he says.

Ives’ interest in “green building” goes back decades, placing him among the first in New England to focus on environmental design. His Boston-based firm, Ives Architects, has designed private homes and education centers for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, Science Center of New Hampshire, and New England Wildflower Society, among others, adapting the contemporary needs of clients to the traditional New England landscape and community. His first project, at age 16, was launched when he decided to refinish the floors of this barn by himself.

Furniture is away from the walls and transoms open or close as needed for continuous air flow, all part of the environmental design.

Autumn Acres today is owned by a family corporation. Everyone has a voting share and participates enthusiastically in the business, but the barn was Kay and Gerry’s “own space,” and together they oversaw its most recent renovation in 1995. With its mellowed wood floors, walls, and roof, wonderful acoustics and generous space, he says “the barn is like a living cello.”

Environmental Design

Open shelving helps maintain the original scale of windows and generous space.

Ives created zones in the barn that allow for expansion of living space in summer and contraction in winter, when they retreat into the “winter core.” The design means negligible energy is required, and there are no mechanical heating or cooling systems.

Natural ventilation is provided by large operating windows and “Bahama vents” that are louvered for rain. In cold weather it is heated by local wood when necessary.

Roof insulation was applied over the existing post-and-beam timber frame. Invisible inside and out, it keeps heat indoors when needed and rejects summer solar radiation. Ives says the insulation has made a dramatic difference––and there are no more dead flies on the floor of the barn. A traditional louvered gable vent was retained and paired with a new low-level louvered vent for welcome breezes over the master bed.

Large new window and door combinations fit the historic frame of the structure while opening up views of the mountains, lake, field, nesting birds, and common, or “community” space in a courtyard formed by the ell of the barn and the house. The renovations quadrupled the use of glass, using “Scotia” windows set flush with the old paneled walls.

Just three-eighth’s inch thick, rather than being set in the typical three-quarter to three-and-a-half inch casing, they are so narrow they almost disappear. Foam insulation in the walls intentionally provides uneven, radiant temperatures. Close to the windows, it is warm in winter while above, uninsulated, there’s quite a chill.

“Bahama vents” over the master bed are louvered to welcome lake breezes all summer, even when it rains, but are airtight in winter.	“The Alter” is an eclectic collection of multi-generational family treasures clustered around the elaborate “Cardinal’s desk.” Above the baseboard, electrical wires are hidden by a wood capped raceway, one of numerous modern details that make the mundane disappear.

Other “disappearing details” in the new design mask unsightly but essential elements. Two parallel wiring circuits were incorporated into the wall baseboard detail (one is a dimmer controlled from a central panel) to eliminate duplex outlets around the perimeter of the pine walls.

Lamps plug into floor outlets and dimmers provide atmospheric lighting.

The Ives’s winter core, a one-room apartment dubbed “Badger’s House,” as in The Wind in the Willows, is designed around a centrally located Jutol wood stove from Norway, surrounded by local granite to remind occupants of their mountain hikes.

In this former stable (“the smell is gone”), Jack the horse’s sink was removed but the marks were left on the wall, and his kickboards of solid clear-grained oak were remilled and used as a kitchen countertop.

Furniture is kept away from the walls to encourage heat flow.

“When I’m away, in my mind’s eye I see our family in the barn around the big table with its uncomfortable, baronial chairs, and the humorous, eclectic collection of things that make me smile,” says Ives.

“Psyche” a white Carrera marble figure sculpted by great-grandfather Chauncey Bradley Ives adds classic grace to an informal setting.

“My great-grandfather, Chauncey Bradley Ives, was a sculptor who worked in marble. Although he’s from the other side of my family I have his white Carrera figure of Psyche in one corner, on a simple dark green stand. Lots of wooden snowshoes and skis hang on the wall around a somewhat pretentious old piece referred to as ‘The Cardinal’s Desk’ because my grandfather brought it back from Rome. A decrepit, elaborate Dutch mirror hangs above the desk, which is covered with framed photographs and another of my great-grandfather’s marble sculptures, a bust of a stillborn infant which he sculpted in his grief. There is a leather hat with feathers and iron bells Kaysie and I brought back when we trekked in Nepal.”

Well-worn hiking boots rest beneath the desk. Family members refer to the collection as “The Altar.”

Under Uncle Harry’s table, with its gargantuan legs, are children’s board games, crayons, and origami paper. Above it hangs an oxen yoke Gerry bought in a local antique store as a twenty-fifth anniversary gift for his parents. His father turned it into a light fixture.

Today the barn is a living space for all seasons, well suited for the annual summer yoga retreats co-led by Ives, who is a certified yoga instructor.

“October 30 is poignant up here, when it’s no longer easy to heat the barn and the foliage is over,” he says. “November, December, and January are too cold, leafless, and it is lonely except for the holidays. But then February arrives, full of light, great for snowshoeing and skiing and just gorgeous. And come spring, in May, we feel like we’re returning to our Russian dacha. Our ‘Ice Palace’ welcomes us back to our very northern environment.”