The Record
Middlefield came to market yesterday under MLS 1045092, carried by Ashley Whittaker Spence of Compass and distributed through OneKey. The record reads three bedrooms, four baths, 4,000 square feet and 45.03 acres, built 1999.
The house is not old, and the listing does not pretend otherwise. It was designed in the classical manner rather than inherited from it, which is a different and in some ways harder thing.
Schafer
Gil Schafer built his practice on one proposition: that a new American country house can be made with the proportions, materials and craftsmanship of an old one and still be a house somebody actually lives in. The listing calls it a masterful interpretation of Classical architecture and describes his approach as timeless in its proportions and craftsmanship, yet relaxed, comfortable, and entirely suited to modern life.
What that looks like here is a Greek Revival residence at the end of a winding drive, a classical double height portico, and a plan built around a center hall that opens into living and dining rooms scaled to match the front. The windows are the other half of it: expansive, and placed so the rooms are held in the landscape rather than merely looking at it.
Inside
Antique wide plank floors, newly installed. Custom millwork and hardware. Antique mantels. A three season porch extending the main rooms into the garden. The kitchen is where the house does its living, with custom cabinetry, generous workspaces, a wood burning fireplace and a butler pantry off it.
Three bedrooms upstairs, the primary looking over the rolling land, and three baths in classic fixtures and traditional detailing, with new marble showers in the primary and the guest bath put in without breaking the character of the rooms around them. The current owners have finished the third floor and the lower level, replaced the roof and overhauled the mechanicals, and the listing is careful to say the new work was done so it would feel as though it had always belonged.
Nevins
The landscape is by Deborah Nevins, and it is integral rather than decorative. Garden rooms defined by hornbeam and yew hedges unfold around the house; mature specimen trees, lawns, terraces and hand laid stone walls do the rest. A kitchen garden and a stone terrace are where the outdoor dining happens.
Forty five acres of it, in the country east of Millbrook that the hunt has kept open since 1907.
