Yale Farm

Maureen Jerome spent 18 months turning Yale Farm into both a family home and the working headquarters for aRTLIFEdesign, LLC. Nearly three centuries old, the main house had been a tavern, an asylum, and a bettering house (a refuge for indigents). When Jerome found it, the entrance to the property led straight to the building’s front door. She moved the drive, creating a new route through a barn and past outbuildings that delays arrival until one has experienced a variety of natural — and architectural — surprises.

Inside, the approach is similarly indirect. A front hall leads to long passageways in which the journey is as compelling as the destination. At the end of one passageway, a new wing contains a large chef’s kitchen and family room that create an inviting warmth for large groups but is equally intimate for the solitary visitor. At the end of another passageway, a sitting room, a glassed-in dining room, and an early 18th-Century barn-turned-living room are alternately transparent and opaque. The variety of textures and moods and seemingly causal arrangement of rooms means that nothing in the house feels obvious or pat.

Photography by Carlos Emilio.