The Record
The house went up in 1796, twenty years after the Declaration, in Old Chatham, a hamlet that had been settled for about forty years by then. It is a three-bedroom, two-bath farmhouse of about 2,000 square feet, and the rooms are the original Shaker and Greek Revival work: white walls, flat wood trim, wide plank floors, a mantel in most of them.
Shaker furniture dealers owned it in the 1970s and 80s, which is the right trade for the address. The Shaker Museum began in Old Chatham in 1950, on John S. Williams's farm a few miles away. A couple bought the house from the dealers, one of them a creative director at Ralph Lauren, and changed nothing. Dorian Grinspan, a film producer born in Paris, found it online in late 2020 and bought it with nearly seventy acres, three timber-frame barns and a pond.
What changed
The back wall of the entry hall was replaced and the lounge got a new floor and ceiling. Air conditioning went in, and some windows. Where there had been a portable sink and a stove he built a back kitchen, with a counter cut from a salvaged carpenter's bench that still carries its nicks. The rest of the fabric stayed as the dealers left it.
The rooms
The lighting and the furniture came from friends. Louie Isaaman-Jones, a London artist and designer, made the sconces and the pendant over the dining table. Talia Nidam Warshawsky, a London ceramicist who trained in Mashiko, made the table lamps for the guest rooms. Ray Suzuki and Yudai Kanayama of Chowa, the Tribeca studio that makes paulownia kiri-bako boxes, rebuilt the attic as a Japanese room on Shaker bones, with two twin beds; the house calls it the Chowa Room. Roman Spataro made the outdoor dining table and the bench inside the door. Ceramics by Dohm and Troy Town sit among antiques Grinspan brought back from France and Japan, and the dining chairs are Charlotte Perriand. T Magazine ran the house in March 2026 under the line Japanese handicraft meets British whimsy; the British whimsy is the lighting.
By the night
The whole house, up to six guests. Check-in after 1pm, check-out by noon. Once a year an artist moves in for a month; the first, Tom Bull, showed the work at Times Square Space during Frieze New York in May 2026. Grinspan has bought the house next door and is making it an inn of eleven rooms and a suite.
