English Arts & Crafts | Vanderhorn Architects

VHA Honored with two 2023 Alice Washburn Awards from AIA CT

We’re proud to announce that VHA is the recipient of two 2023 Alice Washburn Awards from The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Connecticut.

The Alice Washburn Award

The Alice Washburn Award is named for the distinguished Connecticut designer and builder of the 1920s, whose work is known for her thoughtful stylistic and programmatic invention. The program acknowledges excellence in traditional home design through the thoughtful adaptation of tradition to address 21st-century needs. Learn more about The Alice Washburn Award program here.

Mid-Country Manor Excellence Award

Our Mid-Country Manor has been selected for an Alice Washburn Excellence Award in the category of New Construction.

The architectural detailing and brickwork of this Greenwich CT English Arts & Crafts manor take center stage, highlighting its beautiful masonry with elegant proportion. The project began with a hundred-year old carriage house previously converted to a 3,600-square foot home. The clients happily raised their family there but always dreamed of expanding to a full estate, with room to entertain and welcome back now grown children and their families.

The manor now stands at over 12,000 square feet. Carefully detailed materials and forms merge seamlessly with the historic carriage house and stylistically follow the client’s favorite Edwin Lutyens designs and Edwardian English Arts and Crafts precedents.

The Alice Washburn Award jury comments for our Mid-Country Manor included, “Alice Washburn’s spirit raised to the nth power. Superb, beautiful, classic design with nice, and sometimes surprising, detailing.”

Interested in seeing more of our Mid-Country Manor? Check out a tour of the project here.

Connecticut River Shingle Merit Award

AIA Connecticut also awarded our Connecticut River Shingle project with a 2023 Alice Washburn Merit Award in the category of New Construction.

Just beyond one of the lower Connecticut River Valley’s most charming historic villages is this new 8,500 square feet shingle-style home, designed to take advantage of its challenging site and river views. The house is situated on a steep hillside, and between it and the river is an expanse of lowland with ponds.

The jury comments for this project included, “Faithful shingle-style creation, well executed inside and out.”

To see more, we welcome you to take a tour of our Connecticut River Shingle home.

We’d like to thank AIA Connecticut and its distinguished panel of jurors for recognizing our work on these two wonderful homes.

Click here to learn more about what our firm is working on this year.

Westchester Manor

At the end of a grand drive lies this stone and slate family home, hearkening to the grand estates of a bygone era.

Mid-Country Manor Tour

Introducing one of our newest completed projects, our Mid-Country Manor home! The architectural detailing and brickwork of this English Arts & Crafts residence take center stage, striking a beautiful balance between skilled masonry and elegant proportion. Let’s go for a tour!

The new home was built around an existing 100 year-old carriage house, so the brick had to match in terms of color, texture, coursing, et cetera.

A look at the original carriage house

While the general plan was rectilinear, volumes were pulled forward and pushed back to create rich, textured elevations as seen with this custom frontispiece. There are also terra-cotta accents throughout the exterior, including the soffits. The slate roof is a lively combination of green, maroon, and grey to match the existing carriage house.

Moving to the interior, the home’s millwork design draws on English architect Edwin Lutyens precedents. At the entryway, the oak Corinthian colonnades rest on a simulated brick base of the same species and the design themes flow into the adjacent living room and hallways.

The floor in the entryway is made up of an antiqued marble field with contrasting accents, while quarter-sawn white oak flooring is typically used elsewhere.

A few peeks at the elegant, entry stair, living room, office, and family room spaces are shown below.

For the design of the home’s kitchen and serving pantry, the owner requested a clean, modern look with honed marble backsplash and countertops. The kitchen is located in the original carriage house section, with original brick walls still exposed, but painted white.

The contemporary theme established in the kitchen continues into the master bath. Dramatic, highly figured marble adorn the walls surrounding the tub and sink alcove.

The rear of our Mid-Country Manor was designed to maximize light and visual interest, while tying in the existing carriage house to create a cohesive appearance.

The rear of the house blends seamlessly with the existing carriage house on the left and is complimented by a limestone balcony, brick brackets, beautiful roof lines and a triple archway leading to the covered loggia. The loggia offers a sheltered place to dine or relax while enjoying the outdoor fireplace.

As you can see below, it was quite a dramatic transformation to build our clients’ English Arts & Crafts dream home around the existing century-old original carriage house!

Interested in seeing more of our projects? Be sure to check out our portfolio of completed new homes, and stay up-to-date on DVHA’s latest news by subscribing to our newsletter and following us on Instagram.

Mid-Country Manor

The architectural detailing and brickwork of this English Arts & Crafts residence take center stage, striking a beautiful balance between skilled masonry with elegant proportion.

5 Most Requested Architectural Styles

The VanderHorn Architects team lives to see our architectural creations come to life as we cater to our clients’ individual tastes and needs. While we’ve created homes in a wide variety of architectural styles and find that each project is unique, there are a few styles that have proven to be the most popular in our recent custom renovations and new home builds. Today, we’re sharing our 5 top requested architectural styles.

SHINGLE STYLE

Our most requested style over the past five years, the shingle style is known for its broad expanses of shingle and roof, generous porches, and creative use of design elements inside and out.

Originally prevalent between 1880 and 1920, with earlier work being an offshoot of Queen Anne architecture, this style was increasingly influenced by early American and classical precedents. Our shingle style projects work particularly well with their settings, taking advantage of their topography, view aspects, and available sunlight.

COLONIAL/FEDERAL

A perennial favorite with many regional variations, the colonial style has an adaptable and elegant simplicity, ranging from rambling rustic cottages to symmetrically dignified homes in town that work well with today’s sensibilities.

The federal style is generally considered to be a more formal variation. This is a style that always has broad appeal and works with virtually any property.

Vanderhorn Architects | North Country Colonial

CLASSICAL REVIVAL

A varied offshoot of classical styles such as Georgian and Neoclassical, and from a time when architectural styles were less compartmentalized than they are today, classical revival homes exude a dignified and elegant presence.

Some examples are textbook studies in classical design, while others are an amalgamation of styles generally considered colonial or even Victorian.

TRANSITIONAL/MODERN(ist)

These styles have made their presence known in the local market. Transitional can be most simply described as a blurring of traditional and modernist elements. While everything created today is modern by definition, the style of Modernism’s direct lineage can be traced to the likes of LeCorbusier and the Bauhaus.

We have used a transitional design palate to create updated classical homes, and have even been asked to design full-on modernist homes for clients.

ENGLISH VERNACULAR

Perhaps because we are known for specializing in this style, we have had the privilege to work on a number of English homes over the years.

Our Mid Country English Tudor project provides a rich palette of architectural features, including a graduated slate roof with octagonal brick chimney flues on the stone base, as well as brick infill laid in a variety of patterns.

Ranging from tudor to Arts and Crafts and numerous regional variations, this grouping of styles in America is known for its dramatic rooflines in tile or slate, generous use of masonry and timberwork, and layouts that afford surprising amounts of light and cross-ventilation.