The stone-and-timber-clad house with terra-cotta roof tiles was commissioned in 1932 and has had only three owners since. The sellers bought it in 1992. They made few substantive changes, most notably combining the ground-floor servants’ quarters into a kitchen, updating mechanical systems and adding a heated Gunite pool and hot tub.
Set high in the village (the street is called Rockledge for a reason), the house is in the crux of green space created by the Pelham Country Club and less than a mile west of Long Island Sound. (The waterfront Shore Park and larger Glen Island Park are five minutes away by car.) It is two miles southeast of downtown Pelham, which includes a Metro-North train station with service to Grand Central Terminal, and two miles southwest of downtown New Rochelle, where there is also a train to New York.
Size: 6,805 square feet
Price per square foot: $247
Indoors: A winding bluestone path takes you up to the main door and the first of scores of leaded-glass windows. The grand foyer features arched doorways, textured stone floors, faux plaster walls dating from the 1990s and a winding Art Deco staircase with a wrought-iron railing. One archway leads to an immense living room with oak paneled walls hiding storage in some places, square-mullioned windows, a limestone wood-burning fireplace and delicate plaster crown molding and ceiling borders. The foyer is also connected, though solid double doors, to a study with knotty-pine paneled walls (some with secret storage), built-in bookcases and a stone fireplace.
The dining room has variegated-width floorboards and diamond-mullioned casement windows (the panes change orientation, from square to diamond, as you move to the rear of the house). It opens into a sunroom with stone flooring and walls with a hand-painted botanical pattern. The black-and-white kitchen dates to the 1990s and includes a working 1932 Magic Chef range as well as double GE Monogram wall ovens and an additional cooktop. A central island, set on a diagonal, divides the room into a work area on one side and a lounge with a marble-clad fireplace on the other. A powder room was given a vintage look with white subway tile and a black console sink. (A second half bathroom is off the foyer.)
At the top of the front staircase, double arched windows add roundels to the leaded-glass patterning, and an Art Deco lamp hangs from the ceiling. The primary bedroom includes vaulting, four windows, a window seat, a fireplace and an en suite dressing area and bathroom. A second bedroom has direct access to a western-facing balcony and to a bathroom that can also be entered from the hall. A third bedroom features wallpaper and dusty-pink trim, and has a similar bathroom arrangement. There are three additional bedrooms, as well as a carpeted room lined in diamond-mullioned windows that was used as a family room.
Two additional bedrooms (one almost 27 feet long, with a walk-in closet) and a full bathroom are on the third floor. An arched side entrance to the house takes you down a flight of stone steps and through a wrought-iron gate into the lower level, where a former reception room has been turned into a wine room that holds 1,000 bottles. Somewhat at odds with a wine cellar, but attractive nonetheless, is a working fireplace with a carved wood mantel. This level also contains a three-car heated garage that opens out to a motor court.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
